NET RADIO NUMBERS REBOUND (AND THEN SOME) FROM LOW JANUARY: Arbitron-rated Net radio services generally enjoyed increased listening in February 2008 over the previous month, which itself was down from December 2007. In fact, the Arbitron panel aggregate “workday” (M-F 6a-7p) AQH was 825,100, up from both 743,500 in January and 793,573 in December. AOL Radio, Clear Channel Online, Live 365, and the RL Network (webcasters represented by sales rep’s Ronning Lipset Radio) all saw listening bumps in February (Yahoo! Launchcast and RL “Select” stations did fall slightly). Only Yahoo! Lauchcast, in fact, still hasn’t significantly recovered its December mark. A larger graph with February’s numbers is here. A chart with January numbers is here.

RAIN SITE OF THE DAY: MUSICOVERY ALLOWS TAILOR-MADE PLAYLISTS, COLORFULLY PRESENTED: The Times Online (UK), in its “WebWatcher” column, touts a service called Musicovery, “a wonderful little internet radio application.” The Flash-based interface looks like a remote control. First, pick whether you want your music stream to focus on “Classics” or “Discovery” (new music). Next, choose your favorite decades of music history, using a cool “slider” to set a timespan. Then, three tabs allow you to tailor the music based on “Mood” and “Energy,” “Tempo” and “Dance” (which you plot on an XY graph), or “Me” (which seems to base a playlist on songs you’ve previously marked as favorites). Finally, you select/deselect check boxes for the genres of music you want included in the mix. When the stream starts, a “music map” appears which visually plots individual songs on the screen, and “connects” them with lines (I’m unsure as to what this signifies). As each song is played (or rolled over), CD artwork appears, as well as stream controls (volume, skip, play), and buttons that allow you to choose the song as a favorite, ban it, or buy it from Amazon, iTunes, or ebay. The title and artist names on the “music map” indicate the song’s genre (but it’s unclear if the differently shaped starburst patterns indicate anything). We agree, it’s a nice service, but the “on-demand” ability to listen to any of the presented songs at will leaves us to question the service’s legality under the DMCA.

LAST.FM, AMERICAN MEDIA SERVICES MAKE NOTABLE MANAGEMENT ADDITIONS: Two new industry hires to report… CBS Interactive’s social networking/online music service Last.fm has named Orlena Yeung VP/Marketing, and Charles “Andy” Whatley has been named Director/Sales & New Business Development for American Media Services Interactive. Yeung comes to Last.fm from Microsoft Xbox, and she’ll now head Last.fm’s marketing strategy. Whatley will oversee product development, marketing, client services, and business development. Whatley’s experience includes roles as Emerging Media Consultant at Jones MediaAmerica/New York, and VP/Sales & Marketing for Information Radio Network and VP/GM of KBZS/San Francisco.

FCC’s MARTIN NOT INTERESTED IN MONITORING NET RADIO FOR INDECENCY: Follow-up to last week’s story (here) about possible FCC obscenity regulations for Internet radio: FCC chair Kevin Martin reportedly told a Senate committee yesterday he doesn’t “believe any additional regulations are needed at this time.” He said his agency is focused on illegal content (e.g. child pornography). An American Media Services survey found 61% of American adults say they would want at least “some” government regulation of Internet radio content with the intent of filtering obscene or profane language.

“RADIO HEARD HERE” LIGHTNING STRIKES RAMSEY AS BAD BRANDING: “Radio Heard Here’s” branding is not “retro” and “cool,” it’s “old” and “stupid,” says Mark Ramsey. The brand strategist behind the campaign says focus groups found the Radio Heard Here logo’s lightning bolt motif “energetic, bold, and fresh,” but Ramsey finds fault in that you can’t gauge response to marketing when it’s not in the context of the object being marketed: radio. He calls it “perspective divorced from context – the worst kind of research trash.” Trying to compete in a world on P2P, online radio, and iPods, the last thing radio needs to be is “retro.” (The image is Ramsey’s — read his blog here.)

GORMAN SAYS RADIO SHOULD WELCOME SATELLITE MERGER: John Gorman is advising the radio industry on XM/Sirius to “just let the merger happen.” Gorman says radio has much bigger bugbears on the horizon, like a Microsoft-owned Yahoo! or the ever-growing Google. “Show me how (a combined XM/Sirius) is going to take money away from radio?” Gorman challenges. “Or listeners? You can’t.” In fact, Gorman contends that if the companies can’t merge, they’ll up their promotional efforts (and thus the competitive heat on radio). Read the blog here.

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