radio

Day of Net radio silence

Tomorrow, some of the most popular and prominent Internet radio stations will go silent to protest the imposition of new fees that many Webcasters claim will drive them out of business.

The protest stems back to a Mar. 2007 decision by the Copyright Royalty Board to impose per-song performance royalties on Web radio, starting at 0.08 cents per song (retroactive to Jan. 1, 2006) and increasing gradually to 0.19 cents per song by 2010. The former rules forced Webcasters to pay a minimum annual fee and 12% of their revenues. (Small Webcasters might be able to abide by these old rules … Read more

The Open Source CEO: Toby Oliver, Path Intelligence (Part 12)

For this next (and twelfth) installment in the Open Source CEO Series, I looked a bit farther afield, both in terms of geography and in terms of mindshare. Toby Oliver, CEO of Path Intelligence, is based in Portsmouth, England, where he and his wife, Sharon, have built a hugely interesting (and innovative) product on top of the GNU Radio open source project, key parts of which they've helped to fund.

Name, position, and company of executive Toby Oliver, CEO and Co-founder, Path Intelligence.

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Coming this fall: Two new Tivoli Wi-Fi radios

Tivoli Audio is well known for its tabletop radios, but the company has always remained somewhat on the conservative side when it comes to features: AM, FM, and CD, plus the occasional iPod dock and satellite radio. But the company is taking a firm step into the 21st century with a new pair of products, the NetWorks Table Radio and NetWorksGo. The models are essentially network-enabled updates of the Model One and the SongBook, respectively, with the Table Radio intended for stationary duty and the NetWorksGo offering space for six rechargeable C batteries (which you have to supply). Both models … Read more

Low Power Radio Bill Introduced in Congress

Early this morning, Free Press announced the introduction of a new bill in both the House and Senate that would remedy legislation from 2000 which prevented low power FM stations from obtaining licensing in major media markets. The Local Community Radio Act of 2007 has achieved bi-partisan support and is sponsored by Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.) in the House, and Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Senate.

With media consolidation at an all-time high and Clear Channel dominating the airwaves, the vital role of local radio programming is being eroded away. Five years ago a train derailed in Minot, North Dakota and thousands of gallons of dangerous chemicals were released into the environment; many people were injured and one person died. The commercial radio stations in the area were all owned by Clear Channel and none of them carried any advisories about the disaster. Low powered FM stations will ensure that local information will be readily accessible amongst a landscape of national stations.

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Internet radio to go silent on June 26?

If you depend on the sounds of Internet radio to get you through your workday, don't be surprised if your headphones pipe out little more than dead air next Tuesday.

In protest of the elevated royalty fees Webcasters are poised to begin owing to the record industry next month, Internet radio operators are planning to stage a "day of silence."

So far, Live365 and AccuRadio.com have agreed to cease their music programming on June 26, save for brief audio public service announcements sprinkled throughout the day, according to a Wednesday report by Kurt Hanson of the Radio and Internet Newsletter,. … Read more

Mundu Radio

Category: Mobile

Mundu Radio is a service that lets you listen to radio stations on your mobile phone. We're not talking normal radio though--Mundu works with Internet radio stations. Users can create their own playlists of favorite stations and access them from anywhere with a data connection, either through their provider's network or the handset's integrated Wi-Fi.

Mundu Radio works with most phones that run on Windows Mobile, Pocket PC, Palm, and Symbian. The developers are also working on making a Java version that will run on "nonsmart" handsets. While the audio quality of these … Read more

Rocket Man (then and now)

When I was about 10 years old, technology changed my life. It was 1974, and my parents brought home the most amazing thing: a clock-radio. Until then, the technology of Radio and the technology of Alarm Clock had been two completely separate functions, housed into two distinct areas of our house.… Read more

SpongeBob boom box doesn't make it hip to be square

I guess you could say that SpongeBob Squarepants is about as close as the U.S. gets to having the equivalent of Japan's Hello Kitty, in the sense that you can plaster its frighteningly cute face onto anything and it's more or less a guaranteed hit. (Full disclosure: I used to keep my pet goldfish in a SpongeBob aquarium. And that was, um, in college.)

So yeah, here's this SpongeBob radio and CD player, which retails for $45. It kind of reminds me of a twisted version of the old boom boxes that the "cool kids&… Read more

Major Webcasters to face billions in new fees?

We already know that Webcasters small and large are outraged at the prospect of having to pay higher royalty fees to the music industry, particularly when compared with what is required of their satellite and terrestrial radio counterparts.

But the heightened royalty rates enacted by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board earlier this year and scheduled to take effect July 15 are not the only thing that's firing up leading Internet radio industry companies like RealNetworks, Yahoo, Pandora and Live365.

In letters distributed to various Capitol Hill offices on Thursday morning, the four companies' CEOs argue that the music … Read more