"This was going to be a comment to your macadamia blog, but the blog software is failing to accept them (I assume it's temporary since it has worked before).
Personally I like Radio Paradise and XTC Radio. The latter is continuous trance, excellent for working to, the former plays about 50% stuff I already have, 25% stuff I don't own but like, and 25% stuff I haven't heard before. It's my perfect radio station (I gave up listening to anything that come sover the airwaves in this country some time ago).
I'm reasonably convinced internet radio is the killer broadband App.
RP funds itself by donations, I don't know about XTC. I'm ambivalent about the DCMA - the killer appears to be their intent to claim backfees, which seems to me unreasonable. Their quoted rate of .14 cents per listener per song on the other hand means that a back of the envelope calculation gives 100 hours per month times 10 songs per hour =
$1.4 a month, or the cost of a full price CD a year. Double that so the broadcaster gets something and you've still got a price I wouldn't even notice and would happily pay to get introduced to new music.
So: the rate quoted is high, unreasonably so by comparison with the rates other broadcasters pay, but I don't think it's necessarily the death of Internet Radio - as long as the broadcasters can figure out a way of enforcing payment (which shouldn't be too hard, just protect your stream with an account/password).
As for Dr Plokta, maybe he should just buy the iMac, then when he sees its beautiful design marooned amidst all his clutter he'll be moved to throw the crap out!"
While Internet Radio is clearly a fine thing, I doubt it's the killer app for broadband, because nobody is going to decide to get broadband at however much a month just so they can listen to the radio. And similarly, small webcasters like the one I mentioned yesterday are unlikely to put up with the hassle of tracking every song listened to by their visitors.
My study now has a beautiful iMac surrounded by clutter, but I'm mostly playing with the iMac rather than sorting out the clutter. So perhaps Dr P has the right idea.
5:01:30 PM comment [] 
