The Truth About Internet Radio

With the public offering of Pandora and the recent U.S. launch of European music darling Spotify, as well as the emergence of other startups in the "streaming music" market, a great deal of media attention is focused on the online radio space. All of these music services are readily clumped together as "Internet radio." Streaming radio, is also sometimes called “Internet radio,” and they are essentially interchangeable. They involve delivering music (and/or other audio content) to a device via the Internet as a live stream. Internet radio is the opposite of a download. However, there are different types of services in the Internet radio basket, and many who speak or write about them end up comparing apples and oranges.

Within the scope of Internet Radio there are two categories of service, "non-interactive" and "on demand." With a non-interactive music service that is Digital Millennium Copyright Act-compliant, the listener cannot dictate exactly which songs to play or in what order. You can choose the type of music to listen to, but not a specific song. As the name implies, "on demand" services allow listeners access to a library of songs in which they can play any song, in any order they choose. Non-interactive services also offer "terrestrial simulcast” streams and "pure-play Internet only" streams. Terrestrial simulcast refers to the Internet streaming of actual broadcast radio stations.

[Carson is CMO of Myxer, an ad-supported provider of free entertainment content on the Web.]