Fans of OnlineClock.net everywhere should know that we invented the world’s first clock radio for your web browser back in 2008. However, internet radio itself has been around for much longer.
As a way of tipping our hat to those involved in the invention and development of streaming internet radio, we at OnlineClock.net thought it’d be a good idea to research the History of Internet Radio. We were even more enthusiastic about writing this article when we discovered that there are apparently very few articles around which summarize the invention and history of internet radio, so we hope this particular blog post will be interesting, informative and useful for a lot of people out there in internetland.
Before the popularity of XM and Sirius satellite radio surfaced, most people could only access the radio stations that were in close proximity to their location – except on the internet. The world changed in the mid-1990s when the first internet radio station hit the world-wide web waves. Today everyone can enjoy listening to nearly any radio station on the internet, free of charge. Internet radio is also referred to as “webcasting,” since broadcasting is accomplished with wireless technology.
Webcasting is somewhat different than traditional broadcasting in the respect of the technology used, but it should not be confused with podcasting or MP3 hosting sites. Internet radio cannot be stopped and paused as it can be with storage or podcasts, which must be downloaded. Live streaming is used for internet radio stations. Distribution of an internet radio station is made by using an audio codec.
As noted by Wolfgang Hoeg and Thomas Lauterbach in their book “Digital Audio Broadcasting: Principles & Applications Of DAB, DAB+ And DMB,” formats designed for streaming commonly used in this type of radio are MP3, Windows Media Audio, Ogg Vorbis, RealAudio and HE-AAC. The data being sent is streamed using either UDP or TCP packets, then the transmission is assembled when it reaches the receiver and the actual audio plays about two seconds later; the time gap is referred to as “lag.”
Although it is highly disputed as to who officially formulated the first idea of internet radio, the first actual internet radio station, a nonprofit organization called The Internet Multi-casting Company of Washington, was formulated and produced by Carl Malamud in 1993, according to media.org.
Carl Malamud - creator of the world's first internet radio station and all around Tech Hero.
In the Columbia Journalism Review, Malamud recounts this among his many accomplishments. As reported by the NNDB, Malamud not only invented the first internet radio station, but he also headlined his own personal show, “Geek of the Week,” on this station. Malamud is also credited with founding Invisible Worlds, NetTopBox, the internet’s EDGAR database and the 1993 Cyber Santa. During his professional career, he has also penned several books and continues to move forward in the virtual world, now as a Senior Fellow for the Center for American Progress and on the board of directors of Mozilla Foundation, which is the company responsible for creating the popular Firefox browser.
After Malamud’s station had been airing for some time, the New York Times published an article by Peter Lewis in September of 1994, stating that the new radio station planned to air its broadcasting around the clock. This phenomenal idea to make broadcasts available to others grew quickly. Today nearly everyone is familiar with MP3 music files. In 1992, these files were created as a computer-based storage system for audio. Because of these becoming available, internet radio stations playing music were made possible. Another important factor influencing the existence of internet radio stations took place in 1991. In a report published by the Federal Communications Commission, better known as the FCC, all restrictions for the internet that had prohibited commercial use were lifted in 1991, allowing it to grow into what it has become today.
Geek of the Week: one of the very first internet radio shows!
For two years, “Geek of the Week” and the Multi-casting Company of Washington dominated the internet airwaves, but, as reported in Time Magazine, listeners spent a large amount of time waiting for pages to load. During this time, DSL was not available to consumers who relied upon their slow dial-up connections. Rob Glaser of Progressive Networks, a former well-known head at Microsoft, created RealAudio in 1995 and made it a free download. (Actually, OnlineClock.net’s clock radio application requires that you have RealAudio’s free RealPlayer plugin installed in order to hear the hundreds of streaming radio stations available via our clock radio application!)
RealAudio made it possible to enjoy better speeds and quality. Rob Glaser’s program used compression to make everything run faster by compacting the size of each file. With the ability to store data, this tool also made it possible for internet radio listeners to hear past broadcasts, instead of simply whatever was streaming at that moment. Users of internet radio could now hear their favorite morning show, even if they didn’t feel like waking up at 6 a.m. for it. In 1996, London’s Virgin Radio became Europe’s first radio station to put their entire broadcast on the internet.
RealAudio played an important role in the evolution of internet radio with improved streaming technologies.
As with any new major technology trend that has money-making potential, the emergence of investor interest in the internet radio created a competitive market.
In 1998, Saul Hansell of the New York Times wrote about the famous Broadcast.com internet radio broadcast company. This company began by the ideas of Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner in 1995, when they started broadcasting a Dallas radio station on the internet using a friend’s computer in his bedroom. At the time of this 1998 report, the Broadcast.com company had lost excessive amounts of money, with their initial stock opening of $68 diminishing to an offering of $18.
It is reported that Broadcast.com had the United States’ largest initial jump in stock offers, as it had shot up to $74 after its opening, before diminishing. With so many competitors, decline in profits happened to more companies than only this one; larger companies often bought out smaller stations. The well-known internet giant Yahoo bought the Broadcast.com company in 1999 for more than $5 million.
Broadcast.com - once an important player in the world of internet radio, now just another skidmark left on the information superhighway.
As DSL and Broadband internet replaced the old dial-up phone line connections, internet radio became more popular, especially after the dawning of the new millennium in year 2000. Phone-based internet connections had very little bandwidth when compared to Broadband and DSL. Very few people could afford the other very expensive T1 connection option. The use of streaming that had previously consumed every bit of bandwidth now began to load faster with speedier connections and more bandwidth.
As more consumers purchased PCs and internet packages, the number of internet radio listeners increased, meaning that the amount of stations increased also. Instead of being limited to what was regionally available for stations, listeners could now enjoy stations from all over the globe. Some stations that were originally aired on traditional radio now moved their broadcasts to the internet, providing access to everyone at any time. According to official copyright record published by the U.S government, during the years of 2001 to 2004, 335 radio stations registered their Initial Notices of Digital Transmissions of Sound Recordings. This number does not reflect the amount of radio stations streaming from other countries or the radio stations based solely on the internet. The sources that we’ve been able to find indicate that in the mid to late 2000s, the number of internet radio stations was at “five figures.” A research study published in 2008 by Arbitron and Edison Media Research showed that the number of Americans listening to internet radio increased from 11% in 2007 to 13% in 2008.
As pointed out by The Bridge Ratings Report, nearly everyone today owns a cell phone, laptop or desktop computer on which they can access the internet; this means they also have better access to internet radio stations.
In a statistical research project, The Bridge found that of the estimated 168 million U.S. residents who use wireless technology, 56 million listen to radio stations on the internet at least once per week. In other words, about one third of wireless users now listen to internet radio at least once a week!
By the year 2011, they expect that the number of internet radio listeners will grow to 77 million, as a result of wireless technology continuing in popularity and becoming more commonplace.
Internet radio: you’ve come a long way, baby! And you’re growing strong…
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