Following The Stream
Written Jul. 16, 2008 by Edison in Internet Radio with 1 Comment
This shouldn't be remarkable, but it is.
I went to the Website of non-commercial Triple-A WFUV New York today, and front-and-center on the home page is this announcement:
"Due to a change in streaming service, your saved stream links may need refreshing." And then the "listen live" link takes you to a choice of four streams for multiple audio players.
In 11 years of heavy listening to Internet radio, I have never encountered such an announcement. Or, for that matter, an acknowledgement that you might want to or be able to save the stream link to your own player.
The station's goal is usually to force you to us their own embedded player -- lest you miss their pre-roll or don't log in to the frequent listener club. So you're left to see if you can figure out the stream on your own, enter it into your player, and then repeat the process three months later when the station changes the address of its audio again. And one well-known streaming audio provider recently announced that it was going to try and clamp down on any stream aggregator that allowed people to get directly to its station feeds.
I haven't been a regular WFUV listener, but they get points for transparency and being user-friendly. I've just bookmarked them. And I don't even mind that there's a (brief) pre-roll even on the stream I bookmarked..
Reader Comments
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Hey, thanks for the shout-out! Part of the (usually) unspoken relationship Public Radio can have with its listeners isn't just sparing them from commercials; we are able to treat them with respect. So we give people information and freedom of choice, knowing that the honorable among them will appreciate it and contribute what they can to the cause. (And if listeners are unaware of that arrangement just by listening - from any kind of radio or player - we're not doing our job.)
It's a completely different mindset than collecting the largest sellable market we can and then trying to control every aspect of our interaction. I know many of us at WFUV feel lucky to hold up our end of that relationship with a community of people who really 'get it.'
Of course, sharing great music doesn't hurt anyone, either.