Hey I was wondering if anyone can think of any way to make money in internet radio. It seems easy enough to set up something like an online radio station, or at least a podcast. Automating this with free music couldn't be too hard... And then sell audio or visual advertising. I don't think you would even need a microphone. I feel like online radio and podcasting are slowly taking off, to the main stream anyways (shows like TWIT already have hundreds of thousands of tech listeners). And these podcasts and radio stations seem to have pretty devote followers, not just random traffic which could work, as long as you got the automation process working right. The only downside I can see is it eating up a lot of bandwidth, but its better than video... What are your thoughts?
Think of the costs you need to pay for playing copyrighted songs over your radio... I'm sure the DMCA will catch you if you don't also. Also keep in mind the cost of the bandwidth
Not copywrited songs, free, fair use, or whatever its called music. Playing copywrited music would just be asking for trouble.
Where do you expect to find "free" music that people actually want to hear?? I don't think that animal exists.. But, even if it did you would be competing with good sites like http://www.pandora.com .. And their stuff rocks..
actually, have it to do buffering music online. I think that would be great, if we could have out own list of musics whenever we go to your site. Its like an online MP3 when we are online. Well just a thought. Getting the technology and license would be the challenge.
Short version? No. Pandora, probably the most popular internet radio service is dead broke thanks to insane royalty fees.
Give local radio stations calls, saying you will launch their internet radio for free and host it for free for them. You say, you want to keep 20% of what they make online through internet radio for the next 2 years. Then they promote their new internet radio on their real radio, and you get visitors and make money.
Look around on Myspace, maybe you can start up an indie station. There's actually a lot of people who are actually good that would love to be played on the radio. If that fails, well, WillMarflow has a good idea too.
Hmm I didn't think about Pandora... Why would people listen to other stuff if such a great tool like that exists... It makes sense. I'm gonna keep researching this though as I think theres potential in this field.
When I saw this thread title I was going to jump in and bring up the Pandora example. I listen daily and keep up with their business problems, so I immediately thought it was pointless to get in the internet radio business. Then I read this post: This is a pretty awesome idea. There's some issues I'm wondering about, like how do you get the feed to your hosting - but it would be a great way to use your own web production skills for someone who is already dealing with the content licensing issues.