 RAIN 10/26: Site enables listeners to visually compare UK FM stations' music ·Oct 26, 11:32 AM ABSOLUTE RADIO’S “COMPARE MY RADIO” COULD BE YOUR STATION MATCHMAKERWhere Pandora creates a radio station around artists you supply, CompareMyRadio.com aims to point you to radio stations that already play the music you enjoy. The search site from Absolute Radio pulls data from UK radio stations to reveal popular artists and tracks. For example, the site shows that NME Radio is loving Air and The Raveonettes of late, while BBC Radio 1 is playing The Temper Trap’s “Sweet Disposition” the most (61 plays in 30 days). Users can compare stations to one another and gauge their musical variety. Finally, users can search with a favorite artist to see which stations play their music the most.
The easy-to-use site puts radio’s programming under the microscope. As a listener, it’s a fun way to find new favorite stations, but the site’s potential is far greater. Imagine, as James Cridland suggests in his commentary of the CompareMyRadio (here), if the site could link with your Last.fm or iTunes data. And then imagine what Absolute Radio could do with such data. — MS ABSOLUTE RADIO PUBLISHES NET LISTENING STATS: 6.3M HOURS STREAMED IN SEPTEMBERAbsolute Radio has released statistics on its online listening — the first of what the broadcaster says will be monthly reports — in an effort to encourage other services to do the same. According to Absolute Radio’s data, it streamed 6.3 million hours of radio to listeners in September. The released listener data, published on the broadcaster’s One Golden Square blog (here), dates back to February. “This will ultimately allow us to demonstrate a relationship with our community [of listeners] based on measurement not panel-based research,” said the Absolute chief operating officer, Clive Dickens.
Dickens also said Absolute Radio is trying to encourage other music services, like Spotify, to also publish listening records, reports The Guardian (here). The BBC has been publishing such data since early last year. BBC’s Radio 1 network streamed over 5 million hours in September, while Radio 2 streamed over 4 million (compared to Absolute’s 6.3 million). BBC Radio’s overall hours in September hit 18.4 million (more here). IMDA CALLS FOR “INTERNET RADIO SANITY”The Internet Media Device Alliance (IMDA) formed nearly a year ago looking to create industry standards for devices that connect to the Internet — especially Internet radios (RAIN coverage here). But the IMDA faces an “out of hand” jungle of codecs when it comes to streaming radio, as Radio World outlines.
There are over 20 different codecs and a variety of bit rates to choose from. This results in high costs for manufacturers (who try to support the wide range of formats), webcasters (like Clear Channel, which streams all its webcasts in 12 different formats), and headaches for consumers (who can’t be sure their Wi-Fi radio will work with a given stream “until they got them out of their boxes and turned them on”). The IMDA believes the confusion is holding Internet radio back from mainstream success. Find out what the IMDA is doing about the “insane” situation at Radio World here. MEGADEATH JOINS WEEZER, AGUILERA AND EAGLES ON CC’S A.P.E.Megadeath is the latest artist to program its own web radio station through Clear Channel’s A.P.E. radio. “Megadeath Radio” will be completely controlled by Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine. Megadeath joins the likes of Weezer, The Eagles and Christina Aguilera on A.P.E. The new channel can be heard on iHeartRadio. For more on the story, check out Live Daily’s coverage here.share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
CommentCommenting is closed for this article.  Other stories RAIN has upgraded (and moved)! RAIN 9/13: RAIN Summit Chicago takes place today! RAIN 9/12: First Summit in RAIN's hometown takes place tomorrow RAIN 9/9: Summer holidays, "doldrums" impact July Webcast Metrics, but audience up over last year RAIN 9/8: Clear Channel launches new customizable iHeartRadio beta; RAIN goes hands-on RAIN 9/7: Meet more speakers you'll hear at RAIN Summit Chicago in less than a week RAIN 9/6: Clear Channel taps The Echo Nest to take on Pandora RAIN 9/2: RAIN reviews Spotify's radio-like product Artist Radio RAIN 9/1: UK online radio aggregator Radioplayer campaigns b'dcasters to create "all radio" ratings RAIN 8/31: Execs from Merlin, Triton Digital, jacAPPS and more to appear at RAIN Summit Chicago |
