Virtual radio make air-waves, but it's not all net profit

Virtual radio make air-waves, but it's not all net profit
Santosh Vijaykumar

August 28: Television beware. Radio, the erstwhile mind of the masses that many thought was facing extinction, has returned and in more forms that one. With the launch of India's first interactive web radio station Radio FO on the site Gslot.com, virtual radio is now barely a click away. Those mushy request shows, that intermittent blab of the RJ and dial-ins; everything that characterised Radio Fm on radio will now be available on the net.

This is certainly not old wine in a new bottle. For, web radio is not meant to snatch listeners of `real radio' but is a catalyst to its illustrious predecessor. Radio on the net is (for the moment) meant for cybergeeks, surf-maniacs. It is also an opportunity for the ones with desk-jobs, to unwind while working.

Siddharth Kannan, the 21-year-old head honcho of Siddharth Kannan Production Ltd is the man behind Radio FO, working on which he found that web radio can actually get multipurpose. ``You can chat, surf, work and at the same time listen to music,'' says the whizkid. Hitesh Himani, web architect at Nazara.com also heads the website's radio limb and sees `choice' as the biggest USP of net radio. ``I can listen to rock, then reggae, then again rock if I want, but I don't have that liberty on real radio,'' he feels. But apart from the listener's angle, Anish Trivedi gives a different perspective: that of the advertisers'. ``The sponsors for net radio reach out to a massive audience in nearly the same money. Net radio is going to be the thing of the future, for sure,'' he declares.

But the netting of this new gain is silhoutted by a disconcerting factor -- the technology is not commonly available and legal riff-raffs bother. How is virtual radio made interactive?

`Interactivity', the latest plug to internet radio is not as convoluted as it sounds. Internet radio shows are produced like any other radio show. But once it is recorded, the show has to be converted from the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) format to the Wave Format (on the computer) and finally to the MP3 (a downloadable audio player) format. The first conversion is the one that nearly doubles the time taken to complete the procedure. But during one of his many trips to Dubai, Kannan slipped upon this software that would wrap up things in a jiffy. Once this software and the songs are loaded in the system, mixing can directly be done. Even the voice-overs of RJs can directly be taken onto the wave format. ``The time taken was halved and we overcame that dreaded DAT step,'' he proclaims.

Such technology sure marks one more reason to click and swing. ``The sound that you get is CD quality. Air-waves through which real-radio is transmitted, restrict the frequency and the sound quality too. But these problems vanish here,'' points out Nauzad Kapadia, the technical brain behind Radio Fo.

Great music, best sound, amazing choice -- and still behind bars! Not really. Though hosting a virtual radio station sans an IPRS (Indian Performing Rights Society) licence is illegal, there are millions of such stations that survive scot-free. ``It is impossible to catch them,'' says Mansur Ali, licensing officer at the IPRS. They, along with the PPL (Phonographic Performing Licence) are the only authorities commissioned to grant licences to web radio stations. These bodies have granted permission only to play Indian numbers. Even for these there is a stipulation on the number of songs that can be played in a month. The list is selected by the players who also have to pay licensing fees per song, per day and channel for reproduction and public performance. These fees are distributed to songwriters, composers and music companies in a 30-20-50 ratio as royalties.

Mushrooming of web radio stations and more so the illegal ones has spelt doom for music companies as they lose out on extra markets. ``Our direct sales also go down since people have already listened to it on the net'', complains Sudhir Upadhyay, Head-Internet of Magnasound Ltd who have called delegates from the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) to exchange piracy prevention techniques.

Are our own much-hyped cyber police listening?