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- darcyh
- Unpaid Intern
Offline - From: Near Grand Bend
- Registered: March 27, 2014
- Posts: 12
Terrestrial radio stations that stream on the 'net
I listen to a few commercial Canadian radio stations on line and have always wondered:
1) Is it costly for the station to stream?
2) Is there a limit as to how many listeners the stream can accommodate?
3) Can the station determine how many people are tuned in?
4) Can the station determine the approximate location (like the city) where the listener is located?
Thanks for any information.
- Kilgore
- Unpaid Intern
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- Registered: January 22, 2015
- Posts: 20
Re: Terrestrial radio stations that stream on the 'net
Excellent topic:
5) - if listeners all disappear when an Oldies-format internet outfit plays "Sweet City Woman" does someone get the message that enough was enough?
- Hathaway
- Weekend Warrior
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- Registered: July 5, 2014
- Posts: 260
Re: Terrestrial radio stations that stream on the 'net
Darcy. I do not work in radio but I can answer your technical questions. I'm not an IT guy per se, but it's part of my business.
1. Yes. KROQ did a study and found that to serve all their audience with FM was 30K a year. To serve their entire audience streaming was 3 million
2. The limit is only on the server serving the stream. In this day and age you can spool up as many servers as you need on demand with things like Amazon Web Services. So the answer is "not really
3. Yes. they can. A connection is absolute though it doesn't mean you have a listener but it's likely you do.
4. Yes. For the most part you can pinpoint the location of an IP number but in some cases the ISP of the listener may change their routing tables to do mainteneance. That means I might be flagged as living in Victoria BC versus Vancouver/Calgary.
5. In the future IPv6 will bring about multicasting by default. This means the station will stream one single "stream" and everyone else will basically latch on to it. The introduction of IPv6 is when the "wall" of expensive streaming falls. It's at that point that "FM" will become obsolete.
- darcyh
- Unpaid Intern
Offline
- From: Near Grand Bend
- Registered: March 27, 2014
- Posts: 12
Re: Terrestrial radio stations that stream on the 'net
Irvine, thanks for the information. It's appreciated.
- •
Thread Starter- Hathaway
- Weekend Warrior
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- Registered: July 5, 2014
- Posts: 260
Re: Terrestrial radio stations that stream on the 'net
No worries
One of the future benefits of IP based radio is that it could & will do local advertising. Say you're driving down Hwy 10 in Mississauga listening to "Apple Top 40 radio". The location of your IP & GPS could be used to personalize the advertizing fed to you. They're going to use personal data to figure you out & market to you that way.
The advertising world is too cluttered. It's hard to stand out. So companies are no longer just going to roll the dice & spend money based on numbers, ratings etc. Advertising, like everything else, will be customized at a granular level. Just like Facebook does.
It won't be bad music or bad programming that smack down FM radio. It'll be new forms of advertising that radio cannot accomodate.
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