Is AOL Radio Going To Cause The End Of Local Stations? - By: audiogadgets

Online radio services such as AOL Radio, Pandora, Slacker and Last.fm have become quite popular recently and are even available on various mobile cordless products including mobile phones. Does this mean the end of conventional radio stations? I will take a look at the effect of streaming radio on the radio landscape.

Local radio would seem to be having a hard time in today's radio landscape with competing satellite and online radio services taking away listeners by providing commercial-free music and entertainment. There is virtually an infinite number of online radio stations available.

While historically local radio has been the only truly mobile radio, online radio services like Pandora are now available on portable products such as mobile phones.

AOL Radio utilizes CBS radio as its broadcasting platform. It comes with more than 200 music channels. Moreover it offers access to more than 150 local CBS radio stations. Listeners can also create their own customized radio stations at the CBS radio "play.it" website and save each track for playback on an iPod by using 3-rd party software iGetMusic.

Pandora and other online radio providers have in the same way begun to offer customized music. The user can enter music-related information such as artist, track or album name. These channels will then select tracks which are similar to the information entered. Other services, however, fail to offer fully customized music channels.

Is the end of local radio near? The increase of competition from satellite and online radio has started to take away listeners from local radio stations. Conventional radio seems to have a difficult time to halt this trend. Online radio has proved useful particularly for niche broadcasters due to the inherently lower broadcasting expense in comparison with local radio stations.

Online radio broadcasters have found it difficult to be profitable. The main cause is the enormous number of competiting channels which is diluting listeners. At the same time, on the other hand, there is less pressure to insert commercials because of the lower costs of broadcasting in comparison with traditional stations. This has made online radio content more appealing than terrestrial radio.

Local programming such as news and local events, on the other hand, will remain one of the big benefits of local radio. One drawback of local radio has been the poor audio quality of FM broadcasts. Nonetheless, that is being remedied by the recent introduction of digital radio broadcasts such as HD radio. The big factors that will ultimately determine the destiny of each technology are content and convenience. Online radio and traditional radio each have their own niche in terms of offering exclusive content and both offer high mobility and convenience so there will almost certainly be no clear winner.

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You can find further details about AOL Radio and wireless audio transmitter products at Amphony's website.

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