by max van kleek
The space of Internet radio stations has become more crowded than
ever,
now that bandwidth and compression quality has allowed streaming music
to start to approach the quality FM radio. Yet, out of the thousands
of
popular Net radio feeds, only a few have treated Net radio as a medium
different from traditional analogue broadcast radio. Net radio, without
a doubt, should have far more potential for interesting interaction
between providers and listeners, simply by the nature of the fact
that
on the Internet, music providers interact on a one-on-one basis
directly with the listeners. Traditional radio, on the other hand,
is far more passive on the listener's end -- music is pushed from
broadcast towers, and listeners' only main mode of interaction is
thru
the radio tuning knob.
What set radio.sonicnet (then ImagineRadio) apart from the rest of
the
early net radio providers was the company's vision. ImagineRadio
wanted to use streaming media technology to deliver
something that many of us had previously only dreamed of having :
your own personal radio station and digital DJ. They took Imagineradio
away from what other net radio stations were suffering from; the
idea that the net was just another transmission medium - a
transformation from electromagnetic waves over air to data bits over
copper. By doing so, became a pioneer of the literal sense of
'net narrowcasting'; delivering individually personlized music streams
to
its listeners. They also made listeners take an active role as critic,
by allowing them to rate each song, various music genres, and artists;
this information was then used by each individual's digital dj algorithm
to influence the mix of music. This simple example of how they turned
radio, which was predominantly a purely passive experience, into one
that required listener involvement and input.
The company transformed into radio.sonicnet.com in late 1998, and
continued to expand. Even today, after millions of net radio stations
have opened up services with similar narrowcasting features, Radio
sonicnet still maintains unique features that set it apart from
most competition. Some of these are as simple as a large "skip"
button
that could be pressed when a disliked song was played. Moreover,
most songs are accompanied by a thumbnail of the album, and links
to
personal artist bios. In mid 2000, radio.soncinet started to
ask celebrity DJs and artists to create feature special "Guest
DJ"
channels for their fans on the sonicnet site. Among the artists were
electronica superstars, Moby and Everything but the Girl, and the
list
of DJs seems to be constantly increasing. They also expanded their
Standard Channel offerings to just under 90 channels, offering
everything from the obscurest IDM Leftfield Techno to Brazillian popto
top 10 MTV hits.
While the service was redesigned and transformed, several things
still
remain the same from its ImagineRadio days. For example, the degree
of
respect that the service seems to have for its listeners still shows
very clearly, for example by the way that it has replaced many of
its
obnoxious in-stream audio adverts with lesser obtrusive banner ads,
despite the former being its main form of revenue. These qualities
make
Radio soncinet a good model for streaming media services in the future.