By Charisse Massay
I knew that it was just a matter of time before someone put a search
engine online for radio stations that have streaming audio websites.
Convergence at its best. On WarpRadio, there are two dozen featured
sites as well as "Top Ten Stations" which are ranked by
the "warp factor," I'm not certain what a warp factor is
or how it is determined. WarpRadio has access to both AM and FM radio
stations with streaming audio. On the home page, there is search engine
where the user can search for a station by format (i.e. genre), call
number, frequency, city and state. The website also gives the user
the option of registering so that it will recall your stations ('pre-tuner').
There are also promotions for the registered user. There are five
links off of the main page, 'What's New', 'Internet Only', 'Radio
Affiliates', 'Contact Warp', and 'About WarpRadio.'
'What's New' includes new stations to the WarpRadio roster as well
as all of the featured radio stations. I was soon to find out that
if a station was not 'featured' then the user had to go through several
other websites to access the audio. For the stations that were not
registered, they could only be found if the user conducts a search.
While searching for a specific station, I was sent to the streamingaudio.com
then sent to the station's website and then through another website
to access the audio. Through this entire process, I had to fill out
the same "first-time listener form twice. Sometimes while looking
up something simple (e.g. genre and city), I was told that there were
no matches. This question was addressed in the FAQ's and the answer
given was to request a new search so that the previous search queries
would be cleared. I tried this too. Sometimes it worked and sometimes
it did not. The search engine was efficient but far from user friendly.
'Internet Only' displayed radio stations that were online through
WarpRadio only. These could be found by searching for a genre. Unfortunately,
they did not have internet radios stations for certain formats. The
'Radio Affiliates' page was for stations interested in WarpRadio,
either to have their station featured on the website or to advertise
for WarpRadio on the station's site. 'Featured Stations' is a list
of two dozen stations. 'Contact Warp' contained email addresses for
General Comments, Sales & Advertising and Investor Relations;
there was also a phone number to call for direct person-to-person
contact.
"About WarpRadio" was the most extensive link. It contained
sections such as search problems, player/sound (how to download the
proper software), streaming ABC's (what is streaming audio), company
profile and online news clippings from when the site started in 1999
to the present. The company profile defines the site as a "dynamic
internet company focused on the radio broadcast industry and streaming
technologies."
I thought that this website was really impressive. I had never encountered
a search engine quite like this one. I was excited to listen to my
favorite radio stations from home but quickly learned that they were
not registered (note: the site only listed FCC issued commercial radio
stations). Oh well. I started listening to some other stations through
the site and was disappointed when there were random silences. The
player had to rebuff the connection about once every minute or two.
I found this very distracting. Also, when I asked my computer to perform
several applications at once, the silences became more frequent. Eventually
I realized that it was easier to turn on the radio and search for
a song that I liked. The concept of the website is great and I would
definitely listen to it if I did not have access to a radio or was
out of the country but it wasn't worth giving up my radio for.