Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" is actually a phrase from Alighieri Dante's Divine Comedy. thought it is more properly quoted as "All hope abandon ye who enter here." But that's beside my point. I read some news lately that you might have read too. It's not quite time for the white flags but what I'm trying to say is we have met the enemy and the he is us. That's a quote from Pogo.

The gist is that Pandora is kicking radio's ass in markets where bandwidth permits. For radioland this is not good. The RAIN newsletter probably covered this tale of woe better than anyone else so far. Most of the trade s have been suspiciously mum. Link here: Pandora beats all terrestrial stations among A18-34 in top five markets. the markets of the aforementioned whupping are as follows: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston-Galveston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Boston.  Edison hedged their bets a little and excluded the Pandora One customers that pay to omit ads... in other words THE CUSTOMERS WHO LISTEN MOST! Knowing that, I assume these numbers are optimistic.

The only saving grace here is that Pandora is not one radio station but many. So the numbers are a tad misleading. It's sort of like pitting the combined ratings of all the Sirius/XM stations against you instead of just the one you're competing against in your format. The realistic view is that you're only ever competing against similar formats and formats with similar demos. You are not competing WHTZ (Z100) in New York is not competing against my personal Howlin' Wolf Channel on Pandora. But they are competing against the untold number of Lady Gaga channels begin served up to my neighbors kids and all their friends.

The problem is that Pandora can serve up a surprising level of nuance among similar playlists, each tailored to the listener. I set up several channels as a test: Howlin Wolf, Pee Wee Crayton, Louis Jordan, the Black Keys, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. That's three post-war blues artists, one pre-war and two jokers in the deck. Pandora served up similar playlists for those 3 pre-war but not identical. But it also intuitively understood from it's existing listener data the common ground between the Black Keys and Howlin' Wolf. I can even stream it to my home stereo system with a Roku box.  They can tailor a channel to a single listener in a way that a broadcaster absolutely can not and should not try to do. Just hoping that your local cell providers keep it out of the car is not a plan. Their strengths still leave some gaps in the armor.

1. Pandora is not local and can not be local. 
2. Pandora is not geared to deliver local music
3. Pandora (at least for now) has notable catalog limitations
4. Pandora is not live in the same sense that radio can be
5. Pandora cant deliver news, traffic, weather or emergency information

So exploit that where you can and while you can. I'll keep aware of updates.

A Day of Silence

You've probably read something about the change in royalties for internet radio. If you've managed not to hear the growing ruckus over the 24 hour hum of DWI heiress/prisoner coverage allow me to summarize.

Webcasters pay royalties. It's less than radio and TV pays, but more than colleges usually pay. To my general thinking, that's about where they fit in the scale of things. But some king shitheels in Washington want to increase the amount they pay in artist royalties to exceed their actual income by up to 400%. I dont mean senators by washingtonshitnheels.. I mean lobbiests for the RIAA. Yes the very same gutless heathen shitheels that sue 12-year-olds.

Obviously this would be the end of internet radio for major and minor players and even non-profits. One cannot pay out more than one takes in, only the government allows itself to do that.

Today you may have found that your favorite internet station was silent. Thousands are. It's a silent protect to the collosal screw-job being handed down to them. I'll quote Jake Ward, a spokesperson for the SaveNetRadio Coalition:

"With nearly a half million e-mails and phone calls from Webcasters, listeners, and the artists they support sent to Congress in just the last two months, this national grassroots campaign has certainly captured the attention of lawmakers, but there is more to be done and time is running out. During the National Day of Silence Webcasters will urge their listeners to contact their congressional representatives and ask them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act and preserve the future of Internet radio."

Not only is the protest wide but also deep. the list of silent stations include not only all Greater Media stations but also Yahoo!, Rhapsody, Live 365, and even MTV Online. Clear Channel is notably abscent from the list of participants, but with their long history of donating to the neocons, it'd be ignominious for them to do otherwise.

Contact your Rep, be sure the RIAA already has. they hav ethe advantage in dollars, btu we have it in numbers. http://www.savenetradio.org/