Even on the Web, radio is local. People still tune into their favorite college or hometown radio station from hundreds of miles away. Today’s relaunch of AOL Radio (in beta) embraces that aspect of radio in many ways. First and foremost is its partnership with CBS Radio, which is replacing XM Satellite as the provider of music for 150 radio stations on AOL Radio (AOL itself continues to program another 200). Along with providing much of the music people can listen to for free, CBS is also taking over selling the ads. CBS sales teams are already selling local radio ads, and now those teams will be selling ads on AOL Radio as well. CBS Radio’s ability to sell local ads was major reason why it won the partnership deal, especially with online music royalties increasing sharply. Lisa Namerow, the general manager of AOL Radio, tells me:
The royalties have gone up significantly. We had to reevaluate our business. We needed to partner in order to monetize radio better. We have grown advertising year-t0-year 100 percent, but with the increasing cost of royalties, we need to do a better job by leveraging local markets and advertisers. CBS has a string foothold in that local sales market, with over 140 sales teams.
That statement is an eye-opener for any music service hoping to make money from advertising. If AOL Radio, with three million unique listeners per month (according to Namerow), is having a hard time, how are smaller ad-supported music startups supposed to survive? And affiliate links are not going to cut it. Every song on AOL Radio has a link to iTunes or Amazon, yet Namerow cautions that “those commerce links are a very minor revenue source.”
So how does the new AOL Radio stack up versus other free music services on the Web? It is not bad for basic radio-listening, but is lacking any social features beyond the ability to share a station via email or AIM. It is definitely a vast improvement over the old AOL Radio, which didn’t really work that well in most browsers other than Internet Explorer. The new AOL Radio pops up in a separate Flash player that works on IE, Firefox, and Safari. There is plenty of music and sub-genres to choose from. Some stations: Rock Anthems, ’80s Alternative, Salsa, Rockabilly, All Stevie Wonder, Sports, and Opera. You can also search stations by city (that local thing again). The player highlights 10 preset stations, but you can manage an unlimited amount of presets and change them around.
AOl has also done a better job of deep linking into AOL Music. If you mouse over any album cover, links to album, artist, and song information appear. The service also keeps a history of every song you listen to so you can learn more at your leisure. There is also a pause and skipping ability. You can skip six songs per hour. And right now there are about four video ads per hour. I don’t mind the ads as long as there aren’t too many. But one suggestion: don’t subject people to an ad at the very beginning before they can even listen to one song.
Two more suggestions: 1) Make personal music recommendations based on my listening habits; 2) Integrate with CBS-owned Last.fm for more music choices and social recommendations.
Update 6/12/08: AOL Radio also designed an app for the new iPhone, which was one of the winners of the Apple Design Awards. The iPhone App notes your location and serves up the nearest CBS tradio stations, so it acts like a regular radio in that regard.
AOL fails at life.
Actually, some of the AOL Radio stations (Spinner) are quite decent. I agree that Last.fm integration is sorely needed. And I wonder how the new AOL Radio will integrate with Winamp, which is really one of the only reasons I ever tune in? Currently looks like the same old Winamp AOL Radio functionality.
In Europe, AOL Radio *is* powered by Last.fm.
If you go to http://radio.aol.co.uk or http://radio.aol.de you can see that it is a very quick and dirty reskin – i.e. take Last.fm, put an ugly AOL Radio banner on top, and sprinkle with banner ads. This has been the case for a couple of months I believe.
CBS replaces XM as host to AOL radio. While we wait the F.C.C. to approve the merger between Sirius and XM, XM goes down for the final count.
The Democrat party is the leader in keeping the F.C.C. from approving the merger, if I can’t receive my baseball games (only on XM NOT Sirius) I will be a very unhappy voter come November!
Anyway, a very good deal for CBS.
The CBS stations aren’t available in the stand-alone AOL Radio app for Mac.
Another very cool aspect of what CBS is doing here is that they are working with TargetSpot.com , a self serve “AdSense” style ad network designed for streaming audio advertising that allows for hyper local and demographic targeting. This should also open up this inventory to many more advertisers that wouldn’t buy terrestrial radio.
Is it just me or has AOL been rocking it lately? AOL Radio isn’t an “omg amazing” product or anything, but it’s very competent, doesn’t include any glaring “this would be sweet if only” caveats, etc. And that’s more than can be said for most gigantic corporations that try and make inroads in the web.
And this isn’t the first AOL product that’s been impressive in the last 12 months. TC spotlighted AOL Finance and it’s (surprisingly) high quality, as well. And AOL’s game group has been doing a great job.
I still can’t help but think it’s a little bit like polishing the brass on the Titanic, though. (it’s all still going down).
Rogee —
Understand that’s coming (i.e. winamp and mac client adoption of the combined CBS/AOL streams) but wasn’t scheduled for concurrent launch with the web properties.
one glaring omission (i think) – search for radio stations in either the flash player or (properly) in the main aol radio section. sorely needed when you’re offering so many choices
Personalized radio stations based on our users’ listening habits are on our roadmap, and in fact were one of the main reasons, we were excited to partner with CBS Radio. We’re looking forward to launching these features in an upcoming release. In the immediate timeframe, we are focused on rolling this product out across a wide range of spots in AOL Music, AOL.com, AIM, Winamp, Mac client etc. Once we’ve got this work complete, then we’ll turn our attention to the upcoming release schedule. AOL Radio listeners can keep up with the latest in what’s happening with AOL Radio on the AOL Radio Blog – http://journals...ioblog/aolradio
Lisa Namerow
AOL Radio General Manager
It is a good move from AOL & they are upgrading their player &, so that they can add more functions and expand the services reach. It looks like good deal.
Hmm..this does not suck. AOL has been offering less horrifying services lately. I’m concerned. I will proceed with caution as the 1990’s are still relatively fresh in my mind.
AOL Radio now in Winamp with 128k near cd stereo streams.
Just released winamp 5.4 player
This is pretty good stuff now the audio has been upgraded. Sadly CBS stations still in naff quality
why dont you go back to the old system.at least we could hear some good music like Frank Sinatra.I am 87 years old and dont like most of the new music please feel sorry for an old couple that likesto listen to good music.Thank you