Streaming Radio: What's New With 9 Top Services?

2:58 PM - July 27, 2012 - by Andy Patrizio

Table of contents

1. Pandora Is Bigger Than Seacrest

It's probably not news to you that traditional FM radio is dying out at an increasing rate. This trend has been taking place for the last two decades thanks to a string of events that have set us up for a brave new world of streaming Internet radio.

The demise of radio can be traced back to the 1990s. Thank your government for that. Before 1992, a company could not own more than two stations per market, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 completely took the shackles off ownership. Clear Channel went on a buying spree, purchasing more than 70 other media companies, plus individual stations. It now owns 850 radio stations in the U.S.

This caused a switch from locally-driven programming to corporate-directed programming. In the old days, the program manager of the station decided what was played. A smart PM knew the area and played what the area liked or was open to hearing. Now, that's no longer allowed. Playlists come from corporate HQ and there is no deviation from it.

The result is listeners are switching off in a big way. This April, the radio business got its first wakeup call: Pandora was now the largest radio station in Los Angeles. L.A., the city of so many aspiring artists, the city with more recording studios and music stores than supermarkets, the city with radio stations that gave us super DJs like Ryan Seacrest and Casey Kasem.

But a survey by Media Audit estimated that 1.9 million people in Los Angeles listened to Pandora between September and October of 2011 while Seacrest's station, KIIS-FM, had 1.4 million listeners during the same time period.

So what are the radio stations out there and which is best for you? We'll run down what's happening in this thriving space.

Comments

Comment:

jhansonxi 07/27/2012 7:45 PM

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I like some of the independent stations like Hardradio.com and wazee.org.

anonymous 07/29/2012 4:58 AM

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My personal favorite is 8tracks.com. it is really easy to select multiple genres and cross reference them to your specific mood. or try searching what your'e doing, for example "bored on the bus" and it will take care of all your listening needs. there's a good web, mobile web and android version. don't know about ios. no way to select specific artist\ album\ song though...

proxy711 07/30/2012 10:51 AM

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No Grooveshark?

jdragyn 08/01/2012 3:57 AM

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Pandora hooked me when it found me some very nice complimentary tracks to Orbital's Halcyon several years ago. I've experimented with a few other stations on Pandora for various moods, but always come back to that original station which has grown nicely. I would say 9 out of every 10 songs I haven't given a thumb to before get a thumbs up. That 10th song though sometimes makes me wonder what's going on under the hood.

My wife likes Jango and it even has an Android app, so I'm a little disappointed to not see a write-up for it here. I guess maybe it isn't as big as I thought?

Ivan Y 08/02/2012 3:33 PM

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I am very surprised you put Slacker on up-and-comers page. It's been around for quite awhile (they even had a hardware player) and is actually a much more direct substitute for radio than most other services since they've had pre-programmed stations from the very beginning (and you can actually tweak them to determine how "deep" of a catalog you want). And their mobile app was always free

I am a paying subscriber to Pandora, but I find myself playing it rarely -- I pay for Slacker's ad-free service for radio-like experience and then use paid Spotify service for whenever I want specific songs/albums.

amitku 08/03/2012 2:36 AM

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Shoutcast and Winamp is still my favourite. If I want to be the DJ and not listen to ads I use syncdocs.com to make playlists of my Google Drive music. That way I can stream my tunes from Google.

klockwerk 08/11/2012 4:13 AM

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Winamp is still indispensable. No other app comes close to it's usefuless playing my (huge) digital music collection. ITunes is a virus.

sanpatrick81 03/03/2013 12:10 PM

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Thanks for this information about iTunes, i really appreciate your given content and work that you have done for us.
Many thanks my friends,

Good Day