Broadcasting is both a strength and a limitation of broadcasting. While technological advances in the last 50 years, such as audio recorders and microphones, have made it easier to create a radio program, finding a way to broadcast that program is difficult for the average person. However, the proliferation of the Internet has turned this limitation into an insurmountable obstacle for businesses and individuals alike.
Internet Radio
At its core, Internet radio is simply streaming audio programs over the Internet. Back in 1994, radio stations such as Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s WXYC were broadcasting their signal over the Internet and thus potentially gaining a worldwide audience (WXYC). Soon, online-only radio stations were set up to broadcast programs. Services such as Live 365, founded in 1999, acted as distributors of Internet radio programs, charging broadcasters for broadcasting their programs to a wide audience.
Another type of Internet radio is Pandora radio. This radio website does not distribute existing programs, but allows users to create their own music radio stations. The listener creates a Pandora account and enters a song, composer or artist, and the service creates a station that plays songs similar to the user’s choice. This music analysis tries to gather as much detail about the song as possible, from lyrics to instrumentation to harmony, and then categorizes songs according to those attributes, allowing listeners to customize their own stations based on one or more of the catalog. attributes. The listener can remove unwanted songs from the playlist as well as create new stations. Pandora currently relies on on-screen advertising and has also introduced audio ads (Beltrone, 2009). Other music services such as Yahoo! Music, AOL Radio, and Jango offer radio stations with multiple programmed genres.
Podcasting
Unlike Internet radio, podcasting uses downloadable rather than streaming programming. The term podcasting itself comes from the use of MP3 players, such as Apple’s iPod, to use on-demand programming. Many terrestrial stations have used podcasting in addition to their traditional over-the-air broadcasting. Because they are individual programs rather than continuous stations, podcasts are easier to create than Internet radio.
Some podcast producers, such as Mignon Fogarty, have created programs that have led to book deals and steady income. Fogarty’s weekly podcast Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tricks focuses on simple grammar rules. Within a year of its creation, this podcast had been downloaded 1 million times and was nationally recognized (Faherty, 2007). Nevertheless, podcasting does not fit into the traditional concept of radio. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it follows in the footsteps of past radio programs and provides a potential insight into the media’s place in the coming years. Just as radio has evolved from a medium of soap operas and live music to talk shows and recorded music, podcasts are a window into what radio might become in the future.