Free
Internet radio stations and paid Internet radio stations have
redefined radio broadcasting.
Today, anyone can set up a radio station
on the Internet and start live broadcasts. The result is that
hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, colleges, universities,
non-governmental organizations, religious groups and music freaks
have set up their Internet radio stations.
The Internet radio stations
can be set for less than a hundred dollars, and can become operational
in a matter of hours. They are not limited in reach because the
sound is broadcast over the Internet which is seamless. A listener
based in Singapore can hear an Internet radio broadcast emanating
from New Jersey and vice versa.
This is not possible with the
terrestrial radio stations, whose range is determined by the power
of the transmitter. In fact, many university radios cannot be
heard outside their campuses because the broadcasts are made on
very low-powered transmitters.
Another big advantage of Internet
radio is that most Internet radio stations are free. They don’t
charge any fee from their listeners. The listener can click on
the hyperlink of his favorite song to listen to the music.
These radio stations use two
formats to deliver sound. The first, and more popular, is the
streaming audio. The Internet radio station uses this format to
run a set of scheduled programs that are listed on the site. In
this case, the user can listen to the music or the talk show,
but cannot save it on his system. Most of these live broadcasts
are free.
The second format allows the
user to download and store a song track in his computer. The user
can then play the downloaded song as many times as he likes without
going to the site again. Most radio stations charge a small fee
for these songs; since a part of this fee is paid as royalty to
the music company by the Internet radio station.
The rapid increase in the number
of Internet radio stations has led to the emergence of several
search engines and portals that classify radio stations by the
kind of programs that they play. This has made life easy for listeners
who visit these radio portals to locate radio stations of their
interest.
Most online radio stations
also encourage interactivity. They provide chat rooms and message
boards for listeners to record their messages. Several of them
also e-mail playlists so that a listener is aware of the program
schedule.
The only disadvantage
of online radio stations is bandwidth. The audio files need fat
bandwidth pipes to download smoothly. Listeners who use dial up
connections have to suffer constant buffering because the bandwidth
is not sufficient for the audio file to download.
|