Internet Radio Will Soon Sound More Like… Regular Radio

from the here-come-the-ads dept

If you thought one of the nice things about internet radio was that you didn’t have to sit through ads, we’ve got some bad news for you. It turns out that a bunch of online radio stations, including those from AOL, Yahoo and Live365, have teamed up in order to sell traditional-style radio advertising across all the stations. Since they’ve been having trouble selling regular radio ads, by teaming together (behind a company named Ronning Lipset Radio) they’re hoping the combined audience can entice advertisers to give internet radio a shot. AOL and Yahoo both claim that the amount of advertising will be far less than what’s found on traditional radio – but you can almost hear the silent “for now” added to the end of that sentence. In the meantime, satellite radio stations are still making a go of it without any advertising at all…


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Comments on “Internet Radio Will Soon Sound More Like… Regular Radio”

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6 Comments
Bryan Price (user link) says:

Commercials free commercial radio...

I’m currently listening to a commercial radio over the Internet. The really weird/bizarre/zeitgeist thing about it, since it is a commercial station (Clear Channel no less) and with the current webcasting rules about commercials, I’m listening to it totally commercial free. I get an inane sequence mixture of song bits, a woman with a British accent saying “Audio stream returns in moments”, self promotion and stupidity

Pun theater!
(dog barks in background)
Male 1: Cockerspaniel.
Male 2: I would, but he might have worms.
Male 1: Huhh???????
Male 3: I get it…
Sorry.

I understand that this is geared towards their demographic. I also wonder if that were to actually be aired, would that be considered “indecent” and get the DJ fired?

Jim Kloss (user link) says:

No Subject Given

One of the great things about running a small, independent webcast like Whole Wheat Radio is that we can make up humourous ‘ads’ that don’t sound like ads. We just tell people about our experience with various ‘products’. It’s word-of-mouth advertising and because we’re not paid to do it, it’s more honest and powerful than paid advertising. And none of sounds like ‘ads’. I guess we’re not advertising at all huh? Just informing people of music, software, services and cleansing agents they might want to buy.

Big-boy webcasts that used canned ads only increase the little non-commercial webcast potential audience. Thanks AOL, Yahoo and Dead365!

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