RAIN ANALYSIS: UNIQUE STATION IDENTITIES GET LOST IN CBS RADIO PLAYER If you haven’t had a chance to check out the new CBS online radio player (announced along with the AOL Radio partnership, covered in RAIN here), here’s a peek. The ability to quickly navigate to other CBS stations (and soon, AOL Radio stations) is really helpful for “radio geeks” (like me) — and perhaps eventually for more typical radio listeners too. But now, each station has a virtually identical “look & feel” vis a vis the player. Thus, the stations lose something of their individual identities. Again, maybe it’s the radio geek in me, but each of these broadcast outlets have a unique history and personality, created and shaped by evolving and responding to a particular market. Maybe losing some of what makes these brands unique is a necessary compromise in building a global brand. But with this player, WCBS, WXRT, KLSX, and Live105 just seem like different channels on, well, AOL Radio. — PM

iPHONE USERS LIKE MUSIC? No one should be surprised that many iPhone owners listen to music on their devices. The news is that nearly 75% of iPhone users are tuning in, and those numbers dwarf the music-listening users of other smartphones. The NYT’s Bits blog reports today that only about a third as many owners of other types of smartphones use their devices for music, compared to only 6.7% of the overall “mobile-phone-toting public”. The article quotes an analyst at M:Metrics who accredits the big iPhone music numbers with the unlimited data plan that many users choose. A study breaking down iPhone users’ music consumption by age group would be interesting to see, and could lend some insight into what is driving iPhone users to tune in — the ultra-friendly multimedia interface and capabilities, or maybe just a general tendency among younger demos to take advantage of the music playing capabilities of a growing number of devices.

GORMAN TO NAB: AGREE WITH AND PARTNER WITH INTERNET RADIO Radio vet/journalist John Gorman is prodding the NAB to truly team with independent webcasters in their royalty battles with SoundExchange and MusicFIRST. Internet radio is “being spoken for by (too) many mouths. When everyone’s in charge, no one’s in charge,” Gorman writes in his Media Blog here. He says the NAB and Internet radio should combine forces and fight any royalties on music that’s broadcast or webcast. “What has worked up to this point for terrestrial radio will work for streaming audio,” says Gorman. “Airplay exposes music – regardless of medium.”

“INTERNET ON THE RADIO” COMING TO EDMONTON Corus Radio in Canada has announced it will launch an “Internet-driven” news radio station on its 880 AM frequency in Edmonton, to be called “iNews880.” Corus describes the programming as “continuous 30-minute information packages featuring news, weather, traffic, business news, sports and hyper-local news from citizen journalists.” PD Syd Smith tells Digital Home Canada (here) “the focus will be on getting the story from both radio reproters and citizen journalists and then packaging it a manner that fits the medium rather than simply documenting a story on the web.” iNews880 is to launch May 20th.

SONY PSP GETS NET RADIO FRIENDLIER A selection of 20 additional Internet radio channels will be made available to Sony Playstation Portable player (PSP) users through a new firmware update. A spokesperson for Sony said that the expansion of the free music options meshes well with the way many consumers use the PSP, noting that, “more than 50% of PSP users listen to music on their system.” Read previous RAIN coverage of PSP’s Net radio channels here.

GM TO MOVE HALF OF ITS AD BUDGET ONLINE AdAge says General Motors, the nation’s third-largest advertiser, will drop $1.5 billion in ad spending — fully half of its budget — into digital and “one-to-one marketing” within three years. And, AdAge reports, “as GM goes, so goes the entire automotive industry — the leading advertising category that pumped some $9.42 billion into the ad economy last year.” GM spent almost $200 million online in 2007, including gaming, search, mobile, and interactive ads. The new online spending will come from more traditional areas like television and print. See AdAge here.

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