By Quentin Brown (c) October, 2004
Internet radio is just broadcast quality content being streamed over the internet. That is it, nothing more.
There are 2 variations, and both are considered internet radio. One version is live content being streamed in real time based on a time schedule, but in reality that is not really necessary or cost effective for that matter.
What I believe to be the next wave of useful marketing tactics using audio on the web, is building a niche internet radio station which will have tremendous marketing and audience building potential. It will be in the broadcaster's best interest to produce killer-archived content and post that regularly to stream on demand for their listeners.
This is so easy and cost effective to do, and does not require the live production techniques of traditional radio, nor the high costs and server infrastructure of live feed internet audio streaming. Be aware live streaming can be done through web companies such as www.Shoutcast.com or www.Live365.com, and many other others that have the data centers to multicast audio streams in real time.
Internet radio needs only to be great audio content available upon demand online, and I see it as an incredible opportunity for marketers of niche products and services to create to build audience or traffic to their online offerings.
The model of radio has been working and profitable for years. The only difference between WABC radio and YourDomain.com is they have an audience (akin to web traffic) and they are pros at producing audience attracting audio content that they broadcast 24 hours a day to a limited area geographically. With your dot com, and on demand radio streaming you can broadcast audience-attracting audio content just as good as theirs, broadcast it on demand to anywhere in the world, and make profits with niches where they can't.
Example: Fly fishing radio, Pottery artist’s radio, Swing trading radio, Hair coloring tips radio, thousands of other possible niches would fail horribly in traditional radio broadcast models, but niches thrive on the internet, and so does niche internet radio. Once the audience is built, if yours is not already, all the profitable techniques of traditional radio apply.
It would not be spam in an internet radio program to advertise and direct listeners to online offers. You could run all the audio ads you want. But be careful, people are 1 click away from not listening. Yet, we are conditioned to hear, "This program is brought to you by XYZ advertiser" and 8 minutes of every hour, radio plays commercials, and you could do the same on Internet radio programming.
Lets face it in times gone by if someone wanted to listen to a certain broadcast on the radio they had to tune in at a specific time on a specific day. With most people leading busy and hectic lives this is not always possible and so savvy producers and Internet webmasters are now producing certain popular shows and allowing their listeners access 24/7.
What makes Radio, Radio.
The aural elements we take for granted and don't think about.
Below are auditory elements we hear every time we listen to commercial radio. They all can be produced easily with sound editing software, royalty free music, pro audio mics and sound cards, Add some creative energy and you can have an internet radio station broadcasting your creative content to the world. Listen to become familiar with the examples of the aural elements of radio.
Below is listed examples of radio style audio production you can create yourself to make your niche station
Advertiser Jingles
Station Call Letter IDs
Sweepers - Bumpers
Production Music Beds
Voice overs
Interviews - Talk radio
Advertisers commercials
Niche Internet radio station examples online now.
- All lawyers radio
All soul music radio
- All fitness radio
What is a great solution to host an internet radio station?
Flash is the best technology to stream archived audio over the web because it is the most common cross platform player, period. Real Media and Windows Media are the formats that allow live streaming, but I focused on archived, on demand audio in this article. The easiest method for hosting internet radio content is http://www.mp3soundstream.com
You can do it all with the right equipment, the right production software and a little learning curve, all available from http://www.InternetAudioGuy.com.
Hear you on the Internet!
About the Author
Quentin Brown is the owner of MP3 Sound Stream and has been an Internet Marketer for the past 8 years. His new site http://netstreamradio.com/ goes through the process of producing your own Internet Radio Show.