Next Wave of the Web: Building the Perfect Radio Station, Part 2 - Page 7
February 26, 2001
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The ongoing slowdown in the Internet business has taken its toll
on media sites, and a couple of high-profile music sites have
gone under. But online media has a bright future, and we're going
to persist with building our perfect online radio station. This
month we'll examine a couple of existing sites that allow
partially customizable online radio, and discuss the technical
means to make our perfect radio station a reality.
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Well, it’s all over, everyone. The Internet is dead. We should
have listened to those folks back in ’95 (and a few even into
’96), who said that it was all just a passing fad. Let’s just
shut down all the servers and go home. Game over.
Well okay, so I exaggerate a little. But there’s no question that
the recent, and ongoing, slowdown involves more than just some
abstract figures floating around on Wall Street. Capital is
drying up, and Web sites are closing down. One of the sites I had
planned to feature in this month’s column has disappeared, while
a familiar old-Web music site has greatly scaled back their
operations.
Music sites are particularly vulnerable to any economic slowdown,
and unfortunately we’re likely to see more failures in the near
future. Music is still considered by some to be a "luxury," after
all. Also, part of the appeal of online music is that it’s
"free." In the real world, that means advertising, and ad revenue
has been at the forefront of the rapidly shrinking Web-related
statistics.
In last month’s column, we described a
Perfect Radio Station (PRS): 100% online, 100% listener-
programmable, and able to deliver any existing audio or video
content any time, anywhere. The term "radio station" was selected
for purely historical reasons - this concept could just as easily
be called a TV station, a multimedia delivery appliance, or a
personal entertainment environment.
As we saw, the technical means to create the PRS are not that
complex, and are easily available now. It’s simply a matter of
putting the pieces together. However, economic and legal
considerations dictate that nothing quite like our ideal station
will be seen for a while. The PRS, as described in the previous
column, would completely change the economics of selling audio
and video content. Once the PRS becomes common, today’s ways of
selling CDs, movies, video games and other media will become
irrelevant.
Thus, the PRS is like a nuclear weapon. It’s so powerful, and has
so much potential to destroy the existing system, that the
powers-that-be not only don’t want their competitors to have it,
they hardly dare to use it themselves. Nevertheless, it’s coming,
although it will appear as part of a gradual evolution. In this
column, we’ll look at some sites that are pointing the way to
this media ideal.
Contents:
Media Sites Come and Go
The Technical Side
Media Sites Come and Go - Page 8
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