The author is president of StreamS/Modulation Index LLC.

This is one in a series about trends and best practices in streaming for radio stations.

The tables have turned, and we don’t mean turntables. 

Your new audience is now listening on high-tech mobile devices, web browsers and even dedicated hardware players, not the radio. 

As a matter of fact, have you tried to buy a radio at Target or Walmart recently? You will be lucky if your next vehicle even includes a radio. 

Like it or not, times they are a-changing. Portable radios are now in the form of mobile devices in everyone’s pocket and purse.

To remain relevant, terrestrial radio needs to understand this and embrace it. Your revenue now depends upon it. Streaming audio is no longer just a website gimmick like a cheap radio station T-shirt. It’s time to give it the same, if not more, priority and finesse as your terrestrial delivery. 

Streaming encoder systems should be industrial or enterprise systems, not consumer or repurposed office computers. The important takeaway is that terrestrial radio needs to understand and vet the streaming tech properly, similar to the AM to FM transition, years ago.

Failed promises

To stream and deliver content over the public internet to reach an audience, an Internet Service Provider and/or Content Distribution Network is usually required. 

The ISP provides the internet connectivity and the CDN will provide value added services such as server management, redundancy control, analytics, performance reporting and media players. 

This can benefit content providers that have limited streaming resources or do not understand streaming technology, which is common amongst terrestrial broadcast stations. 

However, many CDNs promise but fail to deliver.

Many do not provide state-of-the-art streaming technology, which compromises performance and security, causing poor audience experiences. 

Some even promote their services by downplaying new streaming technology, promoting their existing current legacy technology instead of investing in updates. 

[Related: “Your Streams Have Their Own Processing Needs”]

An example of this is shown by an FLV vs. HLS article from a certain CDN, clearly indicating their ignorance about HLS technology, the modern streaming tech of choice. They often get geo-blocking and performance reporting incorrect, which can greatly affect music licensing expenses. Development is often done by inexperienced software developers who have little knowledge of multimedia and have never even seen the inside of a broadcast facility. 

To avoid these traps, you must choose a content distribution network very carefully, and avoid their hype.

StreamS HLSdirect or DASHdirect allows the advantage of using simple internet cloud storage to deliver live and file streams. Since legacy streaming servers are no longer required with this approach, it lowers cost, increases reliability and scales to large audiences easily using standards-based protocols. 

Several ISPs and CDNs provide this, such as Amazon AWS S3 and Microsoft Azure Blob, or even so configured web servers. It is the absolute best way to stream content.

Your audience owns expensive streaming devices, mobile phones and automotive digital dashboards. They expect your content to perform. If the CDN can’t deliver, you sound and look unprofessional and inferior. Understanding these traps before going into a CDN contract gives you negotiating power.

To avoid additional expense, you might even consider streaming without a CDN, using only an ISP and cloud storage, if you have access to the necessary resources. CDNs are NOT necessary to provide streams but they can be a convenience, and with a competent CDN and the right price structure, they can work to your advantage.

Buyer beware

Many CDNs just want to get you hooked to take your money. Many pay little attention to all the details necessary for high-performance streaming:

• Many CDNs offer poor support and unknowledgeable staff at the help desk level, with no sense of urgency when there is a problem. Hours and sometimes days go by before there is a response. Even then, there may not be a workable solution to the problem. It is important that CDN IT professionals understand that broadcasting and netcasting are usually 24/7 operations — your stream had better be available when your audience demands. When your audience is unable to receive your streams, you lose audience share and revenue. With the importance of streaming to reach your new audience, you cannot afford to do business this way.
• Some Content Distribution Networks provide streaming encoders. Many of these use proprietary protocols with reliability issues and inferior audio quality, and provide no support for current advanced technology protocols. Some use old legacy ICY/RTMP encoders and convert to HLS on the fly with yet another special server, defeating the purpose of much of the HLS advantage. Legacy ICY/RTMP encoders produce a continuous bitstream and require a constant encoder to server connection, something the internet was never designed to do. If this connection is severed, every listener is disconnected with buffering problems, even though it is delivered HLS to the player in this instance.
• Metadata is also usually a problem. We have even seen some CDNs completely strip the encoder provided synchronous metadata and replace it asynchronously. This not only affects the timing of the Now Playing metadata, but also adversely affects content/ad insertion with embarrassing results. Many of these encoders are not even licensed for commercial use, which is a DMCA violation, whereas compliant HLS encoders output segmented bitstreams and are ingested with a new connection for each segment, thus increasing reliability.
• And then there are CDN-provided players. Again, many of these are proprietary implementations that use deprecated MP3 and proprietary out-of-band non-Unicode asynchronous metadata, causing poor performance and appearance. Most also do not support multi-bitrate switching. Proprietary players reach less audience. It’s that simple. 

Final words

StreamS Encoders and Encoder Systems using StreamS HLSdirect/DASHdirect are fully HLS/DASH-compliant and compatible with any competent standards-based ISP and CDN. The streams will play on any device or software player that supports compliant HLS.

They will provide you with the best potential for the largest audience.

As a sidenote, StreamS Encoders can now be used for reliable point-to-point audio links and/or STLs as an alternative to expensive satellite or other IP delivery. LOSSLESS audio is even possible.

Find examples streams and players at:

• Big 8 Radio Motor City – Player One
• Big 8 Radio Motor City – Player Two
• Super 70s

For more detailed technical information, please see “Making the Move to HLS” and “Audio Streaming: A New Professional Approach.”

This story is from the ebook “Streaming Best Practices,” available here.

The post The Current State of Terrestrial Radio Streaming appeared first on Radio World.