AOL Radio, Pandora, Slacker and Last.fm are some of the online radio services that have become popular these last few years. A lot of of these are also accessible on portable devices such as cell phones. I will take a look at the influence of online radio on conventional radio broadcasters to determine if this means the end of local radio stations.

I appears that local radio stations are on their way to become extinct. They are being threatened by the development of online and satellite radio. These competing services normally offer hundreds of music and entertainment channels. A number of the channels are even commercial-free. There is practically an indefinite number of online radio channels available.

Pandora and other online radio providers have become accessible on wireless audio transmitter and portable products by installing the appropriate app. This increases convenience and mobility of online radio. Mobility has up to now been the main plus of local radio.

AOL Radio which features 200 plus music channels of 25 genres utilizes CBS radio as its underlying platform. It also provides access to 150 national CBS radio stations. The underlying CBS radio platform “play.it” also allows listeners to make their own customized music channels. This is done by entering the names of albums, tracks or artists. The tracks played on each music channels can also be stored on an iPod for later playback by using 3-rd party tool iGetMusic.

Users can also create customized radio on other online music services by entering the artist and album names and these providers will play songs based on that information. On the other hand, most online radio broadcasters lack the ability to create fully customized radio stations such as the “play.it” platform.

Is the end of local radio near? The rise of competition from satellite and online radio has started to take away listeners from local radio stations. Traditional radio appears to have a hard time to halt this trend. Particularly niche broadcasters have found online radio very practical. The main reason is the low broadcasting expense of online radio in comparison with terrestrial radio. An additional reason is the problem acquiring frequency space licenses from the FCC. Nonetheless, increasing royalty fees have made the life of online broadcasters more difficult recently.

The big number of accessible stations is a big plus for online radio listeners. Still, this is a difficulty for online broadcasters. This large number of stations is diluting the number of listeners. Consequently streaming radio broadcasters have found it difficult to be profitable. However, online radio has less pressure to insert commercials which has made the content more appealing to listeners.

Local programming such as news and local events, on the other hand, will remain one of the big advantages of local radio. Furthermore, local radio is now improving the audio quality by using digital transmission technologies versus conventional FM broadcasts which has been a big plus of online radio thus far. The big factors that will in the end decide the fate of each technology are content and convenience. Online radio and traditional radio each have their own niche in terms of providing unique content and both offer high mobility and convenience so there will probably be no clear winner.