Re: Nail in streaming's coffin

[umar@nerodia.wcrb.com]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 dan.strassberg@att.net wrote:

> I gather that none of the geniuses that run these groups 
> have enough smarts to figure out that, because of the 
> Web's unlimited geographic reach and the large variety 
> of signals large groups can offer, the Web need not be a 
> financial drain but can actually become a significant 
> revenue source via the national spot load.

I doubt that. No single streaming source is likely to have more than a few
hundred simultaneous listeners, and those will be scattered all over the
planet. It'll never make sense as an advertising medium.

What *might* make sense is something like Surfer Network, which controls
all the available inventory of the streams it originates and can offer
advertisers targeted campaigns across different stations based on
demographics or geography. But the lion's share of that money goes to
Surfer Network not the stations it streams. And Surfer Network owns the
database of registered listeners -- you must register in order to be able
to listen.

For individual stations there's no profit... now, if Clear Channel set up
something similar to Surfer Network for its eleven hundred stations, maybe
it could make some money... maybe.

I remain skeptical. I enjoy listening to streams -- there are some twenty
eight thousand on live365.com alone -- but streaming's a toy. Unless
people are willing to pay to listen to it, I doubt it'll ever make much
money.



Rob Landry
umar@nerodia.wcrb.com