May 11, 2004
It Seems that 97X Truly IS the 'Future of Rock & Roll'
I stopped by the WOXY studio (photo) today to say good-bye and thank the folks there for two decades of awesome music. I got to have a nice chat with Bryan Jay, WOXY's resident tech guru, about the situation facing the online side of the station's operations.
In a nutshell, and an oversimplified nutshell at that, to maintain the current online listenership would require a few hundred thousand dollars a year in bandwidth (they chew through several terabytes each month). Unlike my previous take, which is that the big barrier was royalties, it's these bandwidth expenses that are the largest hurdle. The good news is that there may be a way they can cut some of these expenses down, but that alone isn't enough.
The next hurdle is the fact that an actual online radio station (as opposed to someone just streaming music) would require about 4 full-time staffers. Salaries and benefits for those peeps would come out to just under $300K a year.
The final hurdle is indeed the royalties that an Internet broadcaster of this size would have to pay the artists and composers (unlike terrestrial radio, which only has to pay composers). IIRC what Doug Balogh (former owner) mentioned today, that would be a bit over a $100 grand a year.
Add up those figures and you're talking about $650 thousand or so each year that the station would have to generate through advertising and other revenue streams. And that's just to break even. Obviously, this isn't a trivial business model to make work on a for-profit basis.
97X's tagline is 'The Future of Rock & Roll.' To me, it has always been just that; I could depend on it to show me what's new and on the horizon. Today, 97X still represents the future, but no longer in a positive way. As 97X looks to go off the air this Thursday, the future of rock & roll seems to belong entirely to corporate radio and the RIAA. They are the ones with the lobbyists and the economic/political power. What do we consumers and music lovers have to look forward to? From here, it looks to be the death of independent radio and the ever-increasing homogenization of our culture. Yippee...I can hardly wait.
Posted by Craig | Permalink | TrackBackI know the catalogs are nowhere near as complete as what 97x possesses, but how feasible would it be to run the station from something like Live365?
I went to Miami, but never really listened to 97x consistently. However, I had a similiar experience with a small station from Texas called 'Texas Rebel Radio - www.texasrebelradio.com' that stopped broadcasting on the internet.
The problem is that none of these issues effect 99% of the population. They are more than happy listening to oldies, classic rock, top 40 pop, top 40 country, etc. The problem is for people who listen to niche genres that really never will generate enough revenue to keep a normal station in business in some markets.
Also, CD101 out of Columbus is the closest thing I've found to 97x and I believe they still broadcast on the net.
Posted by Aaron at May 11, 2004 07:58 AMXRT in Chicago is pretty good and they recently started streaming. http://www.wxrt.com They are taking advantage of the cheap/free bandwidth that AOL has access to in order to stream their content. Unfortunately, that means that it isn't a Shoutcast stream or anything else that you can do much with except listen to through a browser. :-(
Posted by Craig at May 11, 2004 08:09 AMWhy these independent stations don't charge subscription fees rather than beg for donations or shut down mystifies me. People have always been asked to pay a premium for niche or fetish products. Hell, create it as a co-op to encourage listener participation. Offer people the ability to buy their own air-time and host their own shows. Band together and offer a variety of stations for one group fee. Anything but throwing in the towel. It's time for people who don't want corporate radio to realize that they have to properly fund the alternative.
All the imagination at these places seems to be devoted to the catalog and none of it to actually running the business.
Posted by kevin at May 11, 2004 11:46 AMSupposedly, if you read their online comments, a subscription model was one of the first ones considered. The math didn't seem to work or something, primarily because Internet radio is currently a non-scalable enterprise. In essence, every additional customer (listener) you get costs you incrementally as much, if not more, than the previous customer. In contrast, a place like ebay enjoys huge scalability. Due to bandwidth and royalty pricing models, Internet-based radio isn't likely to succeed on any significant scale until some significant changes are made on the legislative and infrastructure sides.
Believe me, there are a lot of people who would be willing to pay XM Satellite's monthly fee just to be able to continue to hear 97X, but for whatever reason, XM has turned a cold shoulder.
BTW, the owners of 97X are retiring...not much you can do to stop aging.
Posted by Craig at May 11, 2004 12:28 PMSounds just like UHF, maybe Weird Al can save the day.
Posted by Aaron at May 11, 2004 02:23 PMhttp://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/05/12/biz_woxy12.html
Who knows what the format will really be like? My guess is some of the old stuff with a bunch of Blink-182 and Green Day kind of music.
Posted by Aaron at May 12, 2004 10:42 AMAaron, that wouldn't be awful, but there's an ugly, hideous rumor going about that the new station's playlist will include bands like Nickelback and Staind. I've never even _heard_ of those bands, but I'm told they're pretty awful.
Posted by Craig at May 12, 2004 11:19 AMGreen Day? Ewwww...
Sorry. Just kidding. :) Actually, I'm posting a comment because I can't seem to find any way to contact the blog authors (Craig, Ken, Mitch, or Sam).
Guys: is it ok if I link to your blog? Looks pretty interesting. If you like, you can check mine out; just click on my name.
Casey, um, sure...why would we mind if you linked to GearBits? I thought that was pretty much the point of the Internet. :-) HTH.
Posted by Craig at May 13, 2004 11:18 AMTo leave a comment or read updated entries, please visit GearBits' current site. Thanks.