By Quentin Brown (c) October, 2004Internet radio is just broadcast quality content being streamed over
internet. That is it, nothing more.
There are 2 variations, and both are considered internet radio. One version is live content being streamed in real time based on a time schedule, but in reality that is not really necessary or cost effective for that matter. What I believe to be next wave of useful marketing tactics using audio on web, is building a niche internet radio station which will have tremendous marketing and audience building potential. It will be in broadcaster's best interest to produce killer-archived content and post that regularly to stream on demand for their listeners.
This is so easy and cost effective to do, and does not require live production techniques of traditional radio, nor high costs and server infrastructure of live feed internet audio streaming. Be aware live streaming can be done through web companies such as www.Shoutcast.com or www.Live365.com, and many other others that have data centers to multicast audio streams in real time.
Internet radio needs only to be great audio content available upon demand online, and I see it as an incredible opportunity for marketers of niche products and services to create to build audience or traffic to their online offerings.
The model of radio has been working and profitable for years. The only difference between WABC radio and YourDomain.com is they have an audience (akin to web traffic) and they are pros at producing audience attracting audio content that they broadcast 24 hours a day to a limited area geographically. With your dot com, and on demand radio streaming you can broadcast audience-attracting audio content just as good as theirs, broadcast it on demand to anywhere in world, and make profits with niches where they can't.
Example: Fly fishing radio, Pottery artist’s radio, Swing trading radio, Hair coloring tips radio, thousands of other possible niches would fail horribly in traditional radio broadcast models, but niches thrive on internet, and so does niche internet radio. Once audience is built, if yours is not already, all profitable techniques of traditional radio apply.
It would not be spam in an internet radio program to advertise and direct listeners to online offers. You could run all audio ads you want. But be careful, people are 1 click away from not listening. Yet, we are conditioned to hear, "This program is brought to you by XYZ advertiser" and 8 minutes of every hour, radio plays commercials, and you could do same on Internet radio programming.
