Jelli.net, a Total Request Live-esq Internet radio station, is coming out of beta on Monday night and is expected to announce that it's inked a syndication deal with Triton Digital Media that will get it played in actual terrestrial FM radio stations across the U.S. beginning next year.
The service revolves entirely around a playlist of songs that's managed by users in real time. Users can vote songs up or down before they ever hit the air, as well as when they're playing. If enough people downvote a song while it's in the middle of playing, it's pulled before it even finishes, something that can be either deeply satisfying or disappointing to those listening.
Jelli let susers vote on tracks to be played next, and are able to yay or nay a video out of playing live on air.
(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)Up until about four months ago this music had existed only on the Web, where Jelli streams as a 24/7 radio station. This changed in June when Jelli nabbed a two-hour spot Sunday nights on Live 105 KITS, a local San Francisco FM radio station. The company says the trial run has been such a success it made it much easier to sell the idea to other stations. And sold it has.
Jelli's deal with Triton will put Jelli's user-picked station on FM radio, twice a day on around 4,500 stations across the U.S. This won't start until early next year though. In the meantime, the company has done a deal with Australian media broadcasting company Austereo to get Jelli played as a daily show, both in FM and digital radio beginning next month in five Australian cities.
One very important detail here is that with all of these affiliate stations across the world, the playlist will continue to be controlled by Jelli users at large. This means the playlist can change drastically based on who's awake and where they're from.
Also worth noting is that Jelli users are not going to be working off the same catalog they do when it's streaming versus when it's on a real radio station. About 10 minutes before Jelli makes the FM switchover, the catalog changes to broadcast-friendly songs, which include things like the shortened and/or censored version of the tracks. It also cleans the slate for users to start up or downvoting the tracks.
As part of the beta, Jelli is introducing multiple stations that will let subsets of users control the content.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)As part of the beta, there will also be multiple stations, so users can continue to control the streaming Web version without having to worry about the aforementioned catalog changeover. This also gives a minority of users a better chance of controlling what's played.
Speaking of which, Jelli continues to work on are countermeasures to keep a group of users from completely dominating the listening experience. For instance, each user is given a limited number of "rockets" and "bombs" each day. Rockets let you jump your song, or someone else's to the head of the queue to give it a chance at playing next. To even those out, bombs (which are given out a little more sparingly) are able to wipe the score of any queued track to zero, which can keep it from making it on air if users don't vote it back up.
That's not the end of the game-like experience though. In a call with CNET News on Monday, Jelli CEO and co-founder Mike Dougherty (who was previously TellMe's VP of biz dev) told me that the bombs and rockets were just the tip of the iceberg and that other gaming "power ups" and ways to earn them were coming shortly but could not give specifics on what they would do.
The company is also working on more ways to keep listeners engaged and feeding the station with recommendations. For instance, Jelli gives the person who originally suggested a track and who successfully got it played a personalized call out right before it begins playing. Because the service has no real DJs, this is all done with a text-to-speech robot. Jelli will also be giving highly active users their own short audio signature, which will get played right before their chosen song starts.
A little farther down the line, Dougherty hopes to get hardware besides PCs involved, including a way to manage the song queue and recommendations from mobile phones. There also isn't currently a way to purchase any of the music that's playing from Jelli's site, which means users have to go off and do a search for each track on their own. This too is something that will be changing in the very near future.
Jelli's streaming service is definitely a fun experiment in controlling radio--both Web and now terrestrial. You can listen to it in any streaming audio player with this link, or sign up on Jelli's site to vote on the queue and get more information about what's playing--something that can be quite useful if you're trying to get the name of that song you loved that just got bombed off the air.
Online radio service Last.fm has always seemed to occupy an awkward middle ground between on-demand streaming music services that let you pick and play any song--like free services Imeem and Grooveshark, and Rhapsody, which charges for its service--and the radio-to-your-taste service pioneered by Pandora. (Disclaimer: Last.fm is owned by CBS, which is the parent company of CNET News.)
In my opinion, this is partly because of some flaws with the service itself. The radio service has a lot of powerful features for serious music fans who are willing to do a little work, as CNET's Donald Bell recently explained, but it doesn't work very well as an on-demand service. How do you add songs to a now-playing queue? Why hasn't Last.fm secured on-demand rights for huge artists like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin?
But there's also a bit of a branding gap. Compared with the organic buzz I hear about Pandora and Rhapsody, for instance, Last.fm hardly comes up. Now it looks like CBS is trying to address that issue. In an effort to increase brand awareness, CBS Radio will devote four broadcast HD Radio stations to Last.fm. The playlist will be drawn from listeners' favorites--Last.fm does such a fantastic job of tracking usage, I've referred to it for non-scientific measurements of artist popularity--as well as live performances in Last.fm's New York studio. The stations will make the cutover on October 5, and include KITS-FM (105.3 HD3) in San Francisco, WWFS-FM (102.7 HD2) in New York, KCBS-FM (93.1 HD2) in Los Angeles, and WXRT-FM (93.1 HD3) in Chicago. All four stations will play the same playlist.
HD Radio itself is still in a niche phase. Although it's available in more than 90 percent of major U.S. markets, the receivers are still fairly rare. That might change tomorrow with the launch of the Zune HD, the first MP3 player with a built-in HD Radio receiver. If nothing else, it shows that HD Radio technology is getting small enough and cheap enough to begin building it into a variety of consumer electronics devices--imagine when it starts becoming a feature in smartphones, for instance.
Google has sold its Radio Automation business to WideOrbit, a provider of business management software for media companies, the search giant announced Wednesday.
Included in the sale were all the assets of Google's radio automation business, including Google Radio Automation, Maestro, and SS32.
Radio automation helps broadcasters manage and program music, ads, and other content through customizable software. Maestro and SS32 are two specific automation systems used by many radio stations.
Started in 1999, San-Francisco-based WideOrbit is considered one of the leading business software providers for broadcast and cable companies. WideOrbit offers several products for media outlets, designed to automate everything from content to ads to billing.
"The acquisition of Google Radio Automation is key to WideOrbit's strategy to expand our product offering and deliver the most advanced and comprehensive solution to radio broadcasters," Eric Mathewson, founder and CEO of WideOrbit, said in a statement. "This acquisition greatly benefits WideOrbit radio customers and Google's radio automation customers alike."
Google entered the radio advertising trade a few years ago as an extension of its Internet advertising. In 2006, the company bought radio ad firm DMarc Broadcasting, which had an automated advertising system. At the time, some industry experts questioned whether Google would find success in this niche market.
Those experts proved prescient. Google announced in February that it would sell its Radio Automation business and exit the broadcast radio trade, cutting 40 employees as a result.
At the time of the sale, Google Radio Automation had about 3,600 customers, who must now be transitioned to WideOrbit. The employees of Google Radio will also move over to WideOrbit, said Google.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Tim Westergren
(Credit: CNET News)Internet radio got a break Tuesday when the sector reached an agreement on streaming-music royalty rates with SoundExchange, the group that collects royalties on behalf of artists and labels.
The two sides announced the deal, which comes after more than two years of negotiations, political maneuvering, and fans pleading with lawmakers to save Webcasting. It should be noted, however, that Webcasters are still at a disadvantage when competing with traditional broadcast radio. Over-the-air stations aren't required to pay royalty rates to artists or labels.
Steve Marks, an executive vice president for the Recording Industry Association of America and one of the people who helped close the deal, said the settlement is proof that the music industry wants to partner with technology firms.
"Supporting new business models through innovative licensing agreements is critical to the future of our industry," Marks said. "We are pleased to have found an alternative in the hope of avoiding costly litigation in favor of building partnerships."
The agreement calls for large ad-supported radio services, such as Pandora, to either share 25 percent of revenue with the music industry or pay a per-stream rate of 0.08 cent retroactive to 2006, whichever is greater. That rate will increase until reaching 0.14 cent in 2015.
Sites that generate less than $1.25 million in revenue must pay 12 percent to 14 percent of sales for streaming rights.
Lower rates were vital to the survival of Internet radio stations, Tim Westergren, Pandora's founder, said in September. The Copyright Royalty Board set a performance rate at 0.19 cent but Webcasters argued that the rates would drive them out of business.
But here's the rub: Pandora's heaviest users will now have to pay, according to a story in the blog All Things Digital.
CNET News Poll
Westergren told the blog that Pandora will begin charging listeners who use the service for 40 hours a month to pay $0.99 to hear more music after hitting that mark.
"There's a very small percent of listeners who are using it a ton," Westergren told the blog. "That's great, except when you're paying per song."
As for why Webcasters must pay these royalties and traditional broadcasters do not, that is at the center of a struggle going on now on Capitol Hill. The music industry is trying to get the Performance Rights Act passed in Congress, which would force over-the-air broadcasters to pay the fees, while the National Association of Broadcasters is pushing its own legislation designed to shield it from the royalties.
Dennis Wharton, an NAB spokesman, said that the Webcasters are subscription services that are trying to get people to pay, just as Pandora is doing now. He also says that traditional radio is a huge promotional tool for the major music labels and Web radio's following is still tiny.
"I think there is big recognition that the sheer number of people who listen to over-the-air radio generates a massive amount of revenue for the record labels and artists," Wharton said. "If you added up the competition, say Pandora, or Live365, we would dwarf them."
Satellite radio provider Sirius XM is preparing to raise prices.
The Copyright Royalty Board has raised music royalty fees and Sirius will pass those costs on to customers starting next month.
In a letter to subscribers, Sirius CEO Joe Zarella said "Beginning on July 29, 2009, a 'U.S. Music Royalty Fee' of $1.98 per month for primary subscriptions and $.97 per month for multi-receiver subscriptions will be effective" the next time they renew their subscription.
Royalty rates have risen steadily since 2007 when the CRB established performance royalty rates for satellite radio. The rate jumped from 6 percent last year to 6.5 percent this year and will go up every year until 2012, when the rate will top out at 8 percent.
Sirius and XM promised the Federal Communications Commission they would not raise rates as a condition of the companies' merger, but the FCC did allow them to issue rate hikes to account for any increase in royalty costs.
In an FAQ posted on Sirius' site, the company states plainly that satellite radio providers are being charged fees that traditional radio stations aren't required to pay.
"Unlike terrestrial radio, both Sirius and XM are required to pay copyright music royalties to recording artists, musicians, and recording companies who hold copyrights in sound recordings," the company said.
Howard Stern won't be coming to the Sirius XM iPhone app.
(Credit: Sirius XM)When Sirius XM released its iPhone application last week, one of the conspicuous omissions was Howard Stern. After fielding a call from a fan on Monday, Stern discussed why his channels won't be featured on the iPhone app.
"It was a rights thing, a contractual-rights thing," Stern told listeners. "It was a rights issue and a whole entanglement thing. So, we're not on it. Maybe one day, we will be."
Stern sidekick Artie Lange chimed in, saying, "Apple shouldn't profit off Howard Stern."
After trying to find the words to answer Lange, Stern responded with a simple, "Yeah, that's it."
Stern's production company is paid $100 million each year by Sirius XM. I guess that fee just isn't enough to include his channels in its iPhone app.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Satellite radio company Sirius XM Radio, despite recording a greater net loss for the first quarter of 2009, says it is encouraged by higher sales.
New York-based Sirius XM on Thursday reported a net loss of $236.6 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with $104.1 million, or 7 cents, in 2008's first quarter. Sales grew to $587 million from $270.4 million in the year-ago quarter, while operating costs dropped 23 percent.
Subscribers to the company's services dropped to 18.6 million, from 19 million at the end of 2008, which Sirius XM attributes to reduced auto sales. The number of subscribers added during the quarter sunk to 404,400 from almost 626,000 during the year-ago quarter. However, the cost of gaining new subscribers was slashed to $61 per customer, a savings of 26 percent from $82 a year earlier.
Operating expenses in virtually all of Sirius XM's key segments decreased in the first quarter. Satellite and transmission costs dropped 23 percent, programming and content costs were down 10 percent, and the cost of equipment dove 35 percent.
On a pro forma basis, which excludes certain nonrecurring expenses, Sirius XM reported that operating earnings showed a profit of $108.8 million, compared with a pro forma loss from operations of $70.2 million in the previous year. Pro forma revenue rose to $605.5 million.
"With a 5 percent increase in pro forma revenue and a 23 percent decrease in cash operating costs, these results demonstrate our focus on improving profitability, despite slower automobile sales and a 2 percent sequential decline in satellite radio subscribers," Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius XM, said in a statement Thursday.
The earnings and sales results are being compared to the first quarter of 2008, before Sirius' acquisition of XM Satellite Radio, but Sirius XM looks at the results as if both were one company a year ago. The latest results also factor in the hit that Sirius XM took earlier this year, when it borrowed $530 million from Liberty Media to save it from potential bankruptcy.
"Satellite radio is now a cash flow growth story," Karmazin said. "First-quarter 2009 adjusted income from operations of $108.8 million is our second consecutive quarter of positive adjusted income from operations and represents an improvement of $179 million over last year's first-quarter pro forma loss from operations of $70.2 million."
For the outlook ahead, Sirius XM says it expects to see more than $350 million in adjusted income for 2009. This is an increase from the company's previous estimate of more than $300 million for 2009 adjusted income, which it provided on March 10 of this year.
I'll readily admit that I'm not in the target audience for the new SlotRadio MP3 player from SanDisk, which became available last week.
The $99 device comes with a microSD card containing 1,000 songs, selected by Billboard editors from top-charting radio hits of the last 40 years or so, arranged in seven playlists--rock, country, hip-hop, and four others.
You can't edit or rearrange the playlists, you can't move the songs to your computer or any other device, and the only way to get new songs is by buying new 1,000-song cards for $39.99 apiece.
For a music control freak like me--I used to be the jerk at parties who'd secretly rifle through the host's CD collection looking for something I liked more than what was playing--turning my audio programming over to somebody else isn't easy.
There's a wee tiny rock band in there, and they're playing my favorite Steely Dan song.
(Credit: CBS Interactive)But I got a chance to play with the SlotRadio today, and there's something refreshing about its simplicity. I took it out of the box while sitting on the bus and was listening to music in less than 30 seconds.
There's no software to install, no USB cable to plug in, no CDs to rip, and no need for the instruction booklet. It's an MP3 player for people who don't know what MP3s are--and don't really care--but just want to rock out to some good tunes without carrying their entire CD collection around in their car.
While I agree with CNET's Jasmine France that the sound quality is only mediocre, the bigger problem is the mainstream, middle-of-the-road selections chosen by Billboard.
SanDisk had to start somewhere, and Billboard is one of the biggest names in the biz, but each playlist sounded like a heavily audience-tested radio station programmed by some anonymous machine in a building in New York. That is fine...but if I wanted the risk-averse sensation of radio, I'd just turn on the player's built-in radio. I ended up using the skip button quite a bit.
As I said when I first heard about SanDisk's SlotMusic strategy, the format will succeed only if SanDisk quickly signs up some more eclectic curators. I'd gladly pay $40 for 1,000 blues songs curated by Buddy Guy, or 1,000 reggae and dub tunes collected by KEXP's Kid Hops, or the top 1,000 songs of the year as chosen by the editors of Pitchfork.
Better yet, what if SanDisk teamed up with Pandora? The target audiences seem almost identical: music lovers who can't find a radio station that matches their taste, and don't have the time or motivation to hunt down and buy (or steal) a lot of music themselves.
Users could order customized cards based on their musical profiles or Pandora stations. They'd have to be created on demand, which would be more costly than mass-producing the same card thousands of times, but Pandora already has the algorithms and infrastructure to create customized radio stations on the fly, so how much more expensive could it be to rip 1,000 songs onto a microSD card?
Anyway, SlotRadio is an odd but interesting little device, and I hope that SanDisk gives it the chance it deserves by branching out into the niche markets in which music lives today.
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Troubled Sirius XM Radio announced Tuesday, following reports, that it will accept an investment from cable giant Liberty Media.
The investment, which will save the satellite radio company from bankruptcy or a hostile takeover, will take the form of $530 million in loans in exchange for an equity stake.
The first phase of the investment will consist of a $280 million loan, $250 million of which will be funded immediately on Tuesday, a statement from Sirius XM noted. The second phase, a $150 million loan, will be aimed specifically at the company's XM Satellite Radio subsidiary. Liberty, which owns a big stake in satellite television provider DirecTV, will also offer to purchase up to $100 million worth of XM's outstanding loans.
"We are pleased to have come to this agreement with Liberty Media, particularly in light of today's challenging credit markets," said Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin, whom creditors had been threatening to oust if the company chose bankruptcy over an investment deal. "Liberty's investment is an important validation of what Sirius XM has already achieved and a vote of confidence in what we will achieve. This agreement enables Sirius XM to continue to develop the opportunities first outlined in the merger of Sirius and XM."
Sirius XM was formed in July when longstanding merger agreements between two rival satellite radio companies, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, closed following FCC approval.
In October, Karmazin took the stage at a New York business-media conference and insisted that the company was on a firm path to profitability despite the fact that the credit crunch--then in its first throes--had hit Sirius XM particularly hard.
This post was expanded at 6:20 a.m. PST.
Sirius XM Radio's chief executive may lose his job if the company chooses to file for bankruptcy protection.
A group of creditors tells The Wall Street Journal that it will seek the removal of CEO Mel Karmazin if the company chooses bankruptcy over a deal with an investor that would allow it to remain solvent.
"Creditors will act quickly and definitively if they perceive that management is acting in their own interest and not in the best interest of the estate," Edward Weisfelner, a partner with Brown Rudnick, the law firm representing the creditor group, told the newspaper. "The board of directors should carefully consider the ramifications."
The company is reportedly meeting this weekend to determine a course of action, with a final decision expected as early as Monday.
Sirius is staring at a significant debt crisis. According to a story that appeared on Yahoo Finance, financial research firm Moody's "thinks there's a 'high likelihood' that Sirius will fail to repay or refinance its debt in 2009." And that debt is reportedly coming due Tuesday.
If the company does file for bankruptcy, the creditors could petition the court to have Sirius' management removed and have the company placed under the stewardship of an independent trustee.
Sirius has been rumored to be seeking some sort of an investment from Liberty Media, which controls DirecTV, according to several media reports quoting anonymous sources close to the matter. A deal between the satellite radio giant and the largest U.S. satellite-TV provider could help Sirius fend off bankruptcy and an unsolicited takeover attempt from satellite company EchoStar, which has bought up Sirius' debt.
The company is also rumored to be mulling a bankruptcy filing to pressure Charles Ergen, the satellite-TV magnate who recently bought up most of Sirius' debt, to make a formal offer for the company.
