One thing I hear over and over is that internet radio is the future. Radio broadcasters will leapfrog DAB by going straight from FM to streaming online.

Bull. If you believe that … consider this;

After at least 10 years of radios availability online, RAJAR the UK radio ratings company, report only 2% of people listen to radio online. This morning Irish station Today FM has a reported JNLR 1/4 hour audience of 150,000. A quick check of their Shoutcast servers shows 2,000 people, or 1.3% of the current audience, are listening to online. See for yourself.

In the world of television, Nielsen, the American TV ratings company, report the average American watches 140 hours of TV a month. Of this time 2.5% is spent watching TV online.

These and many other examples show the trend of consumer demand for online radio and television is very low.

Streaming is hugely expensive for broadcasters. For example Dublin’s FM104 have an AQH of 30,000. To serve these exclusively online at a cost of just 50 cent per listener per month equals an annual “transmission” cost of €180,000. The current FM option is a hell of lot less!

You also have a problem of bandwidth. Spotify, the Swedish online music service, uses more bandwidth than all of Sweden. This is a single service. It’s only available in a handful of countries, not including the USA, and already they use that much bandwidth. How would it be if every radio station in Sweden broadcast solely online? It would crash the ‘net. And that’s just Sweden!

Online is important and a great addition to a radio service for both listener and broadcaster. However technically and financially it just cannot compete with the simplicity or cost effectivness of FM or DAB one-to-many broadcasting.

If I’m wrong do add a comment below or contact me directly.

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