WWDC2004 Session 725

Transcript

Kind: captions
Language: en
I'm he said George cap elbow and we're
from
but networks and now we're based out in
Boston and we make internet radio
automation software and actually before
we get started I wanna do a little
informal poll how many people here just
give me a quick show of hands are
actually broadcasting on on the net
right now don't forget so I'm great how
many people are how many people came
here because they want to go and start
doing that okay how many people missed
their flight in there and stand by it
there was this car - no I'm just kidding
but so I'm going to do something a
little different I know this is the
worldwide developer conference but I
think whenever new technology rolls
around weird things happen and internet
radio has been no different than that
and I thought we should take a look at
things and sort of more of a total view
let's look it looks like a radio itself
and how that evolved over time and then
also rather than just talk about the
tech and we will talk about some tech I
want to go into the business side of it
because some of you may or may not have
heard there are royalties associated now
if you're streaming music and it was a
very you know in the press so
inflammatory issue a few years ago and
things have kind of settled out and I
think a lot of people you know one story
or another and I want to kind of try to
straighten that out a little bit so that
you feel more comfortable about getting
back into broadcasting because things
are settled out to do that so yeah we're
going to look at we will look at all the
things you need to do to go ahead and
put up an internet radio station and
that includes like I mentioned the
royalties and the regulatory environment
so we'll go back and look at some
history we're going to go back about a
hundred years and talk about radio in a
very short time we'll go a trip through
time and about maybe three or four
minutes not too long we'll talk about
internet radio and how that fits in with
other types of radio well you know we'll
look at the regulation as I've said you
know basically you know how are you
going to pay for doing this if you have
to pay royalties how do you go about and
getting some money and to cover your
costs or maybe even make a small profit
and then we'll talk this is the plug
part we'll talk about what what we do
which is automation systems for internet
radio don't seem quite tells my clicker
doing here I don't want to I don't
flooding with this laser they show them
how to use this once but you know okay
so it's interesting the internet radio
is very similar you can look at it very
similar to the way you do regular radio
if you're driving in your car and you
switch it on you come in and you're in
the middle of a broadcast and maybe
here's some music you hear some
commercials of DJ talks and there's a
transmitter somewhere up on a hill that
you know the broad can
that signal and you received in your car
or your home or or you know your FM
device connected to your your iPod right
and you know basically internet radio is
very similar where you have a computer
sending the streams out to computers and
they're now going to be in the future
other devices that are not just
computers that you'll be able to listen
to it in a portable way and we think
that that's that's when internet radio
is really going to explode and then it's
going to become less internet and more
just another way of broadcasting just
just the way radio is so well I would
hope one of the reasons you're here is
you want to find out about doing radio
with OS 10 and QuickTime and as you know
I'm sure if we've tended other sessions
that OS 10 and QuickTime are all
standards-based and it's the same for
for internet radio and we we prefer
using MPEG 4 which is the same codec if
it's used actually for the iTunes music
store because it sounds great it plays
in a number of devices and it will play
on more in the future and finally as we
go along the technology framework we're
going to we're going to look at the
radio automation and that is a way to
simplify the operation your station now
if you're if you're a look at think of a
traditional radio station where you're
spinning discs you have to have somebody
sitting there doing that so a lot of
radio has moved to automation and we've
decided to build a product that allows
you to do that for the internet and very
simply with just a few computers driven
one computer so let's move on home so
let's talk a little bit about radio so
now we'll start going back in time and
you know you can look at there's a
definition of this it says it's a way to
broadcast information by electronic
means well internet radio will fit into
that definition and it's really an old
technology it's been around for a
hundred years and it's all based on
through the air or radio frequency
spectrum and basically originally there
were there was actual data sent Morse
code
you know dots and dashes have you
watched Titanic right they were sending
their messages with Morse code and radio
and that was really just about maybe 10
years after radio existed that they had
ability to do that on ships and then
from the 1920s it really blossomed
because they had the ability to do voice
and you know things get pretty
interesting so if you look at this
this slide changed from what I gave it
to people exciting
you see about 1901 Italian gentleman
named Marconi went off and did a first
transatlantic signal and then you see in
the 20s he started commercial
broadcasting and then radio at home you
know of Amos and Andy and all those old
shows the Green Hornet you know people
would during the Depression didn't go
out much and radios were inexpensive so
that really became it was what pretty
much television is now but obviously
television hadn't existed yet if you go
back you go further ahead in time about
the 1960s there were other forms of
media competing with the television so
you know radio changed as well and you
get the better quality of FM and then in
the 1970s you have the first satellite
networks now I'm not talking about like
XM or a serious where you listen you
listen for masala and I'm talking about
using satellites to distribute programs
around the world to affiliate stations
so imagine if you're listening to a
nationally broadcast baseball game
that's most likely coming over satellite
into a radio station that all originated
back in the 70s and then in the 1980s
there was actually low speed data that
was sent along with radio signals and
over these proprietary devices you get
stock quotes in weather and you know
that's kind of pre Sage's things you can
do with internet radio and things you
can do with what paging networks etc
that's all a lot it started and then in
the 1990s talk a little bit about the
business side they changed the laws
about how many stations a single owner
could have so you suddenly have these
huge groups coming out like Clear
Channel infinity broadcasting where
they're hundreds and thousands of
stations that are owned by one company
and that changed the flavor of radio
radio maybe before those days was very
individual to the city and now there's a
little bit more of a homogenous Asian so
it's kind of it's it's you know it's
some people like it some people you know
don't understand that it isn't different
in every city but some people don't like
it and then of course talk about the nut
later 90s we start talking about
convergence and when I remember when I
would go to the National Association of
Broadcasters show in the mid 90s they're
all saying now radio is going to get run
over by convergence convergence is
really about about video and funny how
radio seems to have done pretty well at
surviving this and found its way to
other mediums and it translated very
nicely to it so you want a broadcast
so it's very expensive to do traditional
broadcasts why because it's based on
nature provides radio spectrum and
there's a limited amount of that and
there's regulations for you know health
stations can be organized in a certain
city so that otherwise they interfere
with each other and that's all done by
the US government the Federal
Communications Commission and they
actually came up with the rules for all
this back and really the 20s and they
did trees with other countries so if you
ever go to Canada you see a lot of radio
stations along the border they have to
send their signal way up into Canada so
they don't interfere with US stations
and vice versa so there's a lot of
things that go on that you don't know
about you know with radio but that's all
controlled by a regulate regulated Tory
body and you have to apply for a license
to be able to broadcast it's not there's
not a cost to it but you have to prove
that you're doing things in the public
good and there's a lot of competition
for them and what the station get the
license it's very hard for them to lose
it unless they've broken a law or
whatever and that's some you know that's
that's limited by spectrum so if you
want to go buy or build a station into
let's say a market like San Francisco
you're talking maybe 50 hundred million
dollars which is you know it's not small
change and if you go to a smaller market
let's say name a town out in you know
the middle of California you're talking
maybe millions for small a.m. or FM
station so now recently in the last five
years you have satellite radio we've
talked about different kind of satellite
just for distribution this is actually
I'm talking about Sirius and XM and you
know how you can listen to the that in
your car well unfortunately if you want
to start with those you need a satellite
now there may be some channels available
but there's a limited number of channels
it was a few hundred at most and
basically that's pretty much taken at
the moment so that's hard to do so
there's pirate radio and I don't know
you know you've heard about people
putting ships out at sea off the coast
of California in New York and they
broadcast you know of out of
international waters and you can hear
the station and well you know it's sort
of dangerous thing well it's all sort of
elite it's illegal as well we actually a
few years ago at the broadcaster show in
Las Vegas there was a group of pirate
broadcasters they met they met in a
church so they were they were granted
asylum so they couldn't be arrested by
the FCC so
that's a you know not too much fun it's
there might be exciting life for some
people but you know if you want to start
something and have a business and
something you can enjoy doing you don't
want to be on the run from the police
right so that's or the FCC for that
matter so to address that the FCC
decided to put out a regulation said
well you can do low-power FM stations in
cities because no that won't interfere
with other big stations well of course
the large broadcasters have blocked all
that because they said no it can
interfere with its implies it's also
competition so that's what you would
expect them to do so that's you know
there's only a few hundred of them that
have been on the air and then there's
about most people to say you're thirty
thousand inquiries about doing this so
obviously there's a demand for radio
so finally we come to internet radio so
instead of using electromagnetic waves
we're using the Internet so it's another
electronic means as we as we talked
about earlier to transmit and well it's
a lower startup cost to do this so
really you could just get some computers
and some bandwidth if you're at a
college you might already have bandwidth
you can rent machines you know through
ISPs there are services that will give
you a stream where you have some number
of people listening and you know it's
very easy to go out and reach a
worldwide audience you can pretty much
yum you know heard things all over the
world without having negative with radio
you'd have to wait for the ionosphere to
bounce a signal to you right or you know
or get something on a satellite well
with this you can pretty much just do
this from any computer and it doesn't
cost you the person running the station
anymore to reach that person on the
other side of the world and Australia
will say then it would be to just be
local so it's um it's a pretty wide
reach so the other thing now while radio
frequency we talked about is a limited
spectrum well there really isn't the
limit to the spectrum is really just if
there's enough IP addresses how many IP
addresses are there there could be that
many stations so that's it's really a
lot more things that could be done and
we talked about it's the same cost to
reach people and one of the cool things
about internet radio is you can enhance
it you can have text annotation along
that you can have images you can have as
part of a webpage and you can do things
that people can see have feedback so
it's you know it's a pretty powerful
medium and a lot of people that we work
with or they're trying to reach a very
narrowly focused audience
just one type of you know of music and
you get a lot more in-depth and
interesting things that way then you do
just you know kind of the commercial
radio station that's to appeal to
everybody in town so they do they choose
a very broad spectrum so and you can
also one things you get from internet
radio that you can't get from how when
you do var for um of getting a ratings
book would ask you to fill this out and
say what stations you listen to right
okay so so that's that they do is they
do statistical sampling so they get you
know hundred people in an area and then
they base that a population that may
still lives how many people and
listening station acts with internet
radio you can track very precisely
exactly how many people are listening to
your station and you know if you want to
know where they're coming from so right
now there are about 12,000 stations
traditional radio stations in the US and
it took them about 80 years to get to
that point excuse me and internet radio
well less than ten years the first
stations came on the air about 1994 or
about 10 years off from that and there's
about thirty thousand worldwide and the
number is growing little hard to find
the total number but seems to be a
pretty good approximation if you add
together all the different services and
people broadcasting so that's that's
pretty phenomenal growth so you know for
now let's go back a little bit and think
about traditional radio it took it a
very long time for that technology to
get to get it but you know embedded and
mature and internet radio the curve has
just been us huge spike so this is this
is fun of explosive growth well not only
the number stations are growing but the
number of listeners are growing by about
twenty five percent per year so how many
of you've ever tried to listen to FM
inside an office cubicle
and all you get is you get the noise
from from the you know the fluorescent
lights or you do katie to get a signal
so a lot of people listen at work that's
one of the biggest audiences for NAT
radio and you get other things you know
people promoting their product or
services looking looking for a
particular service a lot of stations or
things that are promoting something
right and you know last night I was I
mean anybody from Boston here and I was
listening Red Sox game last night sorry
over the internet radio which is
terrific to do a outcome wasn't too good
but we'll get them later I'm sure so
that's that's pretty cool so now let's
go into some of the business side of
this let's talk about some cost well so
we have set-up cost you got to get
yourself some computers and actually
have some a typical kind of setup here
well this is really only kind of prop
this really isn't all connected up so we
actually could broadcast but we probably
won't go but it looks nice so I have a
nice studio mic here have a friend that
makes these done in Pasadena their
actual ribbon mics so you talked through
this you sound like Edward Armour oh you
know who that is it sounds great and
I've got a little mixing board and I can
connect that into a Mac I actually have
a nice Pro audio card here that's there
are a number of manufacturers for this
but this will do actual if you know what
balanced audio is and if anybody's an
audio person here you can do really good
sounding stuff you go to home and and
all that it'll actually take digital
inputs so there's a lot of power but you
know OS 10 actually is enabled this is
very easy to go and add devices in so
that would be pretty much all you would
need to be broadcasting from anywhere
and you know we can we can look at will
look a little bit a little bit later on
we'll go do a demo at the end of our
presentation here so Ryan costs well if
you're a traditional radio station you
need power to power your transmitter and
you could have some you know large power
bill electricity bill every month to do
that well with internet radio the cost
is or there some cost of bandwidth and
that's basically for each person that's
listening to your stream you have to
send those bits however you know however
many you need to have that person be
able to hear the audio to each person
there's a couple of ways to do this that
we'll talk about a little bit later but
but mainly you know you have to pay for
that bandwidth and that's that's one of
your running costs and the more people
listen it scales up there are depending
on what kind of deals you can get for
bandwidth there are some economies of
scale to some extent like you may be
able to get you know a bucket to start
out with that gives you pretty much your
normal listenership and then if you go
over that you pay more so you can
predict what the costs are well so the
other part is royalties and this is
because the contentious part that it's
evolved over the last few years and
there are two types of royalties so
they're actually the new royalties that
are applied internet radio which do not
apply to broadcast are performed
to royalties and that's all done through
the RIAA and there's a group called
sound exchange we're going to be talking
a lot about this to see you know and
there's also composition royalties which
traditional radio pays and that's pretty
much every you know percentage of your
revenue and it's it's a fairly low
number and that goes to the composer and
to the lyricist for the song and that's
been done you know for years and so
they're also their reporting
requirements for both traditional radio
for internet radio and the internet
radio ones are a little more detailed
and but computers help you solve some of
that so let's talk about our setup costs
so your computer now we talked about the
client-server model the transmitter on
the high hill right so kind of the
equivalent of Mount Sutro out here in
San Francisco is an ISP that's connected
to the Internet backbone so you can
locate your server there and then do
your remote broadcast from wherever you
need to be yeah that would be your
studio so that server takes connections
from your listeners we talked about send
some bandwidth to them and you can also
track that when they'll only come in
you'll know who they are and you have
some kind of encoding client or a
control client we'll talk a little bit
later on about the different models that
are typically used for doing an internet
broadcast and that can send a stream to
a server that control client or it can
just control what's going on in the
server so bandwidth so there's basically
the way bandwidth works out is the more
bandwidth you use the better quality
your sound is and that's probably pretty
obvious but you know you can with new
codecs you can actually keep lowering
that amount down so you can actually get
more listeners from the same amount of
Internet bandwidth and you know the AAC
correct we're going to listen to some
examples of that later on is a pretty
terrific and there's better stuff coming
along it's really kind of a moving
moving thing the technology is getting
better and the sound is getting better
and you know the ability of people
listed at their homes a lot of people
have broadband now that's gotten better
as well so I talked a little bit earlier
about saying there are a couple
different kinds of a unicast a unicast
connection to a server is you're sending
the same bits to each person directly
multicast is a pretty cool concept
Butcher unfortunately doesn't get really
get used in practice and that is you let
the internet routers to decide you know
who needs the stream so only one copy go
into your network so if there's a
thousand people inside your network
listening to this this network segments
listening to your station there's only
one copy of that going in
so that minimizes cost the problem is
most of the Internet is not really set
up for that it's not what happens is
multicast gets thrown out by routers so
that's you know that's multi gasps is
very close to what what it's like to do
traditional radio where you're just
sending one signal out and everybody
listens to the same thing okay so now
we'll get into the interesting part the
royalties so I talked about composition
royalties and those are there's a group
of BMI ASCAP and SESAC there's also
something called the Harry Fox agency
and basically you're paying as I said
you're paying for the composition and
you're paying us versus and I could
split up by this organization and it's
based on a percentage of revenue and
Mike you have a girl down here if not
evidence that's on the end of the
presentation that you can go there and
there's a calculator and you can punch
in the numbers of you know based on how
much revenue you have and they give you
a number and it's a fairly reasonable
thing all internet broadcasters have
paid that back to the you know that when
they started pretty much so the
interesting royalties are the
performance royalties so when the DMCA
came out back in the late 90s there's a
provision law that said you cannot stop
someone from broadcasting on the
internet there's a compulsory license
you can guarantee your over you're not
breaking the law by broadcasting the
internet however you have to pay a
royalty and in this this ended up
turning into a performance royalty right
which they've modified now to say you
know you can you can be charged either
for how many people are listening to a
particular sign this is for restricting
music okay and you know how many people
are listening a particular time to the
one that song played or you can just
count the amount of listening hours and
they have a number they say well you
know you played twelve or fourteen songs
in that hour and we'll give you a value
based on that okay and that's collected
by a group of a new organization called
sound exchange and I haven't role for
that but you can check that out and as
all the real details of that as well so
once again traditional broadcasters are
paying the composition royalties and you
know that's based on a few percent and
there's a minimum about two hundred
sixty four dollars and there's the oral
okay there we go that's the oil that s
Capcom you can find all that so as I've
mentioned the performance royalties are
very contentious I mean it was really I
may have seen stories about this is
going to kill internet radio it's going
to show that a lot of people pulled
their streams off the air and there was
a lot of you know fear and panic and and
it really made a lot of news and that
was because this was a new thing and
especially for the traditional
broadcasters who were putting stream on
the Internet
they're not used to paying performance
royalties they say you know we provide a
promotional value so it was it was
deemed that radio had it was a perceived
promotional value back in the 20s and so
we'll be that's helping the record you
know industry to promote their music so
because I think of because of the
reasoning for it was because of the
fragmented nature of a lot of internet
stations it's a small audience it's not
that you know the more general thing
that commercial radio does so they were
able to have negotiated out so they had
to pay performance royalties well so the
political turmoil lasted for about two
years and Congress get involved and
there was a settlement Act for a lot of
people that were broadcasting at that
time were able to get in and get
something that allowed them to stay in
business so and as I said this all goes
back to the DMCA and that was it it was
intended to address the the right
holders rights holder concerns and
digital media and you know you can
imagine if you you're in a business you
own something and suddenly people were
able to get it you know for free you'd
be nervous about it and if you're
someone who's already doing this you
know well then you'd want to keep doing
it right why you know why should I pay
for something I'm paid for before why do
I want were costs so the players in all
this are the Raa which sure you've heard
of that's a group that's made up of they
represent all the major recording labels
the US Copyright Office there are the
arbitrator's and there's a digital media
association which is the best-known of
of the webcast your side but there's
various other things and some technology
companies are involved as well so the
law said that
you know these groups could sit down and
negotiate something come up with their
own settlement decide this is what we're
going to pay well of course they
couldn't do that as I said you know the
webcaster said we don't wanna pay
anything cause we're not paying it now
and the Recording Industry said well
we'd like you to pay a lot so they
couldn't agree so at that point the
Copyright Office by law gets involved in
arbitrates it so they have something
called the copyright arbitration royalty
panel and these these meet they set the
rates for about two years so we're
actually coming near the end of a
two-year period the rates will be
possibly different next year so the
first set of rates were very high and
they retroactively 1998 and that's what
caused all the uproar so and there are
course different different rate levels
for college non-commercial or commercial
and we're going to look at those a bit
so first we'll talk about college
internet radio and this is this is the
current rates now so it's actually a
fairly reasonable thing it's actually
only if you go above a certain amount of
performances or tuning ours do you
actually owe more there's actually just
a flat rate of a few hundred dollars and
you pay $50 to the Data fund which I'm
not 100% sure what that is but I believe
that's do with how you collect you know
the information about the streams are
basically to keep track of all of it so
in that a little bit different in 2004
if you have if your college is based on
college size if you have more than
10,000 students your rates a little bit
higher but this is pretty reasonable and
you know college could easily make sure
the internet station could don't we
could stay on the air now they do limit
the number of stations you have if you
go up if you try to do a bunch of
stations once again we said the spectrum
is unlimited well they kind of put a
limit on you then you have to start
paying that the you know the per rates
for hours so if I'm non-commercial you
actually pay a flat rate of 400 dollars
and if you're if you do news it's less
when you say when I'm doing news and
talk why should I pay a royalty for that
well you might be using some bumper
music you know and things like that at
the start of your show so they kind of
just blank it in that you're doing that
and there's a flat rate for all of us as
well and once again if you go over a
certain amount of streaming well you
know then you kind of get yourself into
a quandary and you have to pay a little
bit more but you got to get fairly large
to do that so now we'll talk about the
commercial entries
commercial entities and this is the
compulsory license again and basically
one performance is one listener
listening to a song so if there are a
thousand people listening to a song
playing on on your music station that's
a thousand performances and so the rate
is or except about 0.07 cents which adds
up over time and they say that while
four percent of your performance is beer
know royalty that's to kind of deal with
people that only stand for a short
amount of time and miss connections and
things like that so that they give you a
little leeway for that the earlier rates
actually had something called an
ephemeral fee where they charge you for
storing music on your computer some
percentage of your royalty and that's
been that's not in this they simplified
it for this next round you can see it's
kind of moving toward something a little
more reasonable so there's a minimum fee
for this so if you don't really don't
stream much you still owe them five
hundred dollars and if you have multiple
stations the minimum and they only have
you know it's a few listeners than the
maximum you can do is twenty five
hundred dollars so okay so I have it
some examples here of the W of the rates
and this is for the aggregate tuning
hours and you see that if your internet
only station you pay the most if your if
you're doing if you're doing news talk
you pay the least and if your
simulcasting your radio station you pay
a little less than that's for
traditional broadcasters get a little
price break and all that and die some
examples here of what things would be
and I came up with it opposed to this
because my eyes are going bad can't read
my own the slide here uh what would this
should show us what that'll be okay
right to pay for this you'd want to run
commercials okay so if you imagine
someone that's running so many the you
know listener listeners per hour and you
know they had a bill of you know of
eight hundred dollars a month
they'd have to do about 3.50 cents an
hour and commercial time assuming yeah
you're running like eight hours of
commercials a day not the whole day just
kind of in the middle of the day you
could easily get some kind of revenue in
just just you know that's not a lot of
money to have to go out and raise or
give an underwriter to cover those rates
and they do go up as your audience goes
up but that's more valuable to your you
know to your advertisers as well so we
can talk a little bit about the small
webcast or Settlement Act now this was
designed for people that were already
webcasting
avoid a very onerous bill so they really
put a flat rate for the years that you
know they didn't know this dissolved
what was what things were going to
happen 1998-99 and basically you're
eligible for this if you fit in a range
of things and if you if you're in that
and that's actually I think it's expires
this year turning this year and this
basically a lot a lot of people who are
already broadcasting to stay on the air
and was you know a compromise and you
know compromise not a perfect thing but
a lot of people stay on the air so it
was it was probably a you know it's a
good thing that it all uh all happened
so part of the compulsory licenses you
must report so there's there's reporting
which revised which we required to
decide you know what you have to pay and
that's based on what you play and how
many people are listening here how many
tuning hours you have and there's also
something called the broadcast
compliment and that's the mix of music
and play this is they provide rules that
say you know how many songs can play by
an artist in a two hour period etc and
repeat them you know within a day and
you're supposed to follow these rules
they give you a little leeway but you're
supposed to roughly follow these rules
so it's a you know a little bit of a
restriction but done it's something that
you know traditional broadcasters have
always done and then there's finally
annotation so you have to display the
name and artist of the title artist of
the people that have made the music it's
music is part of the law so let's look
at the reporting requirements so every
three months you have to do two weeks of
log and basically you have the name of
your service and what type of they have
transmission categories whether you're a
news station or music or you know a
non-commercial etc then you talk about
each each song and say how many
performances of that song so you have to
give them a two-week period you can just
select that from whatever you want and
that's how they kind of they do a
statistical thing and they say okay yeah
okay he's pretty much playing what he's
what he says he's going to do and they
sure your your rates on that so here's a
detail on the sound performance son
recording performance compliment and
this is a thing fall over fall over I
said from a traditional radio
and it's designed to keep listeners from
recording music so the idea is it kind
of randomizes everything if you don't
know what's coming up so you can't say
what's going to play next and you can
say what's played but you can say oh
it's going to play next and you can't
play the same things at the same time
every hour so people will know if I tune
in now I can get that u2 song that's
popular so this is basically like I said
there's some leeway to this you can do
about 10% out of it so if there's some
special thing you play a lot of songs by
one artist in the music realm you know
for you know a special love someone it's
let's say if an artist pass through the
way you can even do that and not you
know not violate it so here's here's an
example of not see if we get that there
we go so there's an example of an
annotation this is actually from a
station that we stream is a Beggars
Banquet record recording company
internet radio station called AV deck
this is a track that they had a few
years back and you can see it's got
copyright and it's good artist and title
and you know it's a bonus for internet
radio which which is pretty nice you can
embed a link in that so it's commercial
you can have a point to the website of
the company that's buying the commercial
time from you if you're promoting music
you can have it go in point to you know
that the recording label or maybe a
music store you know or a number of
things so the Royalton summary the only
all royalties if you play music that you
don't own license to the compulsory
license that we talked about is not for
just absolutely for everybody if you can
work out a deal with someone or some
particular record company or if let's
say you're a bad and you own your own
music you don't own any royalties you
can go in broadcast with what you want
so there are a lot of things but this
allows people to kind of play music that
they like of different genres in do it
in a legal way so you may have to prove
that you do this they may come after you
and ask you you know wait a minute
you're broadcasting shows you could do
that so you may have to show a contract
or a log that shows what you've played
etc but you can do that so well here's
where computers start to come in now we
talked about all this report reporting
and in the royalty rates and there's a
lot of math there and if you had if you
had to sit down and do that by hand
looking at your logs you just be
day after day after day it would take up
all your time or you might have to hire
someone to do that and that would be a
terrible job to have really you know so
computers make that a lot easier and
that's one of the things that we do is
we track background radio my product we
track who's listened and your log and
then we we put it all in a relational
database and we allow you to go in and
just say you know hey what did I play we
give you a cue some example queries of
what that looks like and you can
actually just calculate that stuff with
a few clicks of a mouse so that saves
you haven't have a person and to do that
so and of course you can write special
software now that you've got this data
and there might be some interesting
things you could do you could show the
people that are buying commercial time
from you well look here's here's who's
listening at this time so you really you
know you really got a good you know a
good response based on this because a
thousand people are listening you know
that at that point or if you're if
you're promoting music you can look at
those demographics say what was more
popular what did people like to listen
to when do they turn off their stream
you know in the middle of a song maybe
that tells me something so and you can
look at what times things are more
popular so you can decide you know
what's the best what's the prime time to
charge you may be charged more for
commercials so you can pretty much do
your own ratings okay so that was all
the the legal parts and you know the
parts that you did that you required to
do to be able to do the station legally
so let's talk a little bit a little bit
about the technology of what's behind
all this so we talked about encoding
briefly and really got a trade off if
you send more data to the to your
listeners you get better quality but a
class you more we talked about the
client-server model and we're working
we're talking about QuickTime here right
because you're at WWDC so we use
something called the real-time protocol
which is an internet standard for
streaming and each QuickTime file
contains in it something called a hint
track which tells the server how to go
about building the real-time protocol
packets that need to be sent to a
listener and we standardized an mpeg-4
AAC just because you know it's it's it's
pretty cool and it sounds great and also
we're going to look at some broadcasting
models
we're doing this solo say what is been
coding while your source material could
be anything it could be a CD it could be
an mp3 that's high quality and you
basically perform math on this with some
software that says if I take out how
much data can I take out and it sounds
still sounds good so you can you can do
that and minimize the amount of data you
have to send to somebody yet keep the
quality and as I said it's a very
subjective thing and it's really a trade
off of how much you want to you want to
use for a band with anyone using how
much you want to pay how good the
quality is and you know it's it's a very
personal thing
so obviously higher day rates higher
quality in higher cost lower data rate
you know basically it's a good sound
okay but it's reduced quality for
example like the baseball game I was
listening to last night was sent at
about 10 kilobits a second it's just
voice so it really sounded like kind of
a bad telephone connection but I can
understand all of it but if you're doing
Tchaikovsky well you might want
something as stereo and a much better
quality so you might want to be able to
have different encodings for different
types so there's some other trade option
can do stereo is great but you can get
as good a quality at less data rate by
just choosing mono so we'll talk a
little bit about I am and pay for AAC
and this is done by Dolby labs and this
is included in QuickTime and it's
currently kind of the state of the art
for streaming and this is really it's
based on standards so is if you or I
wanted a few and I wanted to go out and
build our own codec we'd go get a copy
of the standard and sit down and write
some code and come up with something it
put out the same format as mpeg-4 and it
sounds better and we could have an
mpeg-4 codec and that's exactly what's
happening so there are codecs that are
on the way that I'm sure that what time
will adopt as time goes by that you know
it sound even better at lower data rates
but once you're in the standard you know
it's guaranteed to be backward
compatible and forward which is one of
the great things about about standards
and also standards mean that you know as
new devices come up but support the
standard they're going to be able to
play your your audio natively you want
have to do anything special to make that
all that happen and there are actually
no royalties as well
on that there were some talk about
mpeg-4 and this is for video if you go
above a certain number of you know of
users you pay some royalty on each video
stream but there's none of that for for
audio so I have some music samples we'll
see if we can hear this okay that's 128
field but a second
stereo mpeg-4 and that's kind of what
comes out of the iTunes Music Store and
it sounds pretty good okay so we'll go
to music sample number 2
and was going to start perfect well the
demo gods are not what we with me so far
but I do have a 48 oh okay I'll start
tip number three goes here this is not
happening well this town doesn't sound
as good as the others we'll have to uh
excuse er than that okay well if
our music is staying on as well
okay um could you I can bring down the
audio on that thank you so let's talk a
little bit more in depth about the
client-server model so as I said
listeners on the Internet are your
clients is very similar to traditional
radio where you've got the transmitter
in the high hell and people listening in
their car in their home you know to a
radio station well if you're listening
on your computer it's a very similar
thing so the difference in their radio
of course is as we mentioned that there
could be two-way communication so I can
get some information back from you you
know you can send me an email we can do
a chat etc and there so there's a lot of
things that are you know that's a lot
that's a very interesting thing you know
that traditional radio can't do so in
most cases as we said we talked about
multicast in unicast is Stream sent to
every listener so that's different from
traditional radio but it's there so
let's talk a little bit about how the
stream is sent the standards RTP RTSP
and RCS P is is the the control protocol
when you're quicktime player tries to
talk to a server it does a handshake
with it and it's told what it's going to
look kind of stream it's going to
receive what data rate and it does all
this under the covers you don't have to
do anything and if you're the listener
and you just hear a stream so the
real-time protocol is the way that the
data that's in the stream is broken up
into small pieces and sent to the player
and it's designed so if you're ever
driving in your car and you grow and
you're listening to FM and you go under
a bridge and FM drops off for a second
or real-time protocol is designed to
make that possible with computers if
there's some disruption stream for some
reason it won't just fall over it knows
that it can throw some data away and so
it can be lossy so it's designed to kind
of exist in harsh environments you know
and you can still hear pretty get a
pretty good stream
and of course all the packets have
numbers and so they're all sent from the
server they may arrive in any order at
the player the player decides you know
how to put them back together based on
their sequence number and when to play
them based on that there's a time stamp
in each packet so there's also something
called a real-time control protocol
which basically it tells the player if
you this is more important of your doing
video but it tells the player basically
you know this this video is frame isn't
at the same time as this audio so that
you can sync lip-sync and all that but
they're actually also reports that back
from the player to your server which
talked about the quality of the service
so your server can automatically adjust
itself saying well this guy's having
lost I'll send him some repeat packets
and there's there's kind of a you know
there's only a certain point of loss
that you can go to before you know
things fall over but if there's just a
little bit understate ten or twenty
percent you could actually compensate a
bit and you know and get a silky food
quality stream by spending a little
extra data so the control protocol so
when you're in your QuickTime Player and
you hit play and pause buttons are open
a stream you're sending RTSP commands to
a server which say just that i'd like to
listen to the stream set it up you know
i want to play or pause if it's if it's
a if it's a file you listen to the
stream you can actually move around
randomly you can't do that in a live
stream because obviously you know it's
live right so you're hearing what's
what's in the now it'll also tear down
the connection so the server knows if
you've disconnected from from the server
that it shouldn't be sending you those
packets if you can use that bandwidth
for somebody else and that's all done
under the covers so you can you can take
a player and you can encapsulate that
you know inside you have a stub movie
that actually just has information about
what the stream is and you can put that
inside a web page or you can mail that
to somebody you know or you can have
your web page launch an external player
so they can they can be scrolling
through different different pages as
they're listening to the radio stream so
there's a lot of a lot of details out I
won't go into a lot of that just because
that's that's some things that are going
on in and
and you know other sessions with it they
sure they've covered that in a lot of
detail so let me talk a little bit about
broadcasting models so how is internet
radio done so let's kind of look at this
is more of a traditional broadcaster and
you know they've got a studio so they've
maybe got a radio automation system that
just puts out audio all right so they've
got a hard drive somewhere and or
they've got some CDs or there's some
places they still do tapes but they put
that for a mixer and there's a
microphone etc and at some point that
comes out and it'll go maybe to us you
know it obviously goes to a transmitter
up on the hill the real you know RF base
broadcast but it goes into a compressor
and that compressor sends either over a
public Internet or sometimes they just
use an ISDN lines they guaranteed
bandwidth and they send that off to an
encoder or they send the encoded data
you know from the station it's really a
choice of the people putting it together
and then that goes to a server so the
good part about this is it's pretty
simple well that part of it is you don't
actually other than you might be able to
can track the number of hours people
listen to but you don't really know you
have to go correlate your logs to that
if you want to do performances you
really don't have that correlation of
who listened to what was played okay so
another type achill thing is I'm an mp3
hosting service so you upload some files
manual and you build a stick of fixed
playlists and that fixed playlists runs
and it could be very long you know and
it could place to do some things
randomly but it pretty much just repeats
and you have to go and manually go
change that to get that to be different
and once again you could you could get
some information on that on who's
listening and all that but that has to
be built into that software those
typically those are very simple they
just really just sending out a stream
they're not doing all the all the
logging so we can talk about internet
radio automation which is what I what I
do and in this case there's a control
client that actually controls the server
remotely from anywhere you are in the
world so you know really your server
just does what it's told and you can
also the server is a lot of intelligence
so it can do we talked about the
broadcast compliment there's a set of
rules you have to do or maybe you want
certain broadcasts to go on at certain
times the automation system can make
your station sound very fresh and at the
same time if you want to broadcast live
you
now cut in and just send that live
stream to that to that ISP so avoiding
having to have you know a stream that's
if there's some disruption in that if
you're not broadcasting live your
station is going to stay on the air and
of course that server is up on the high
hill at the isp and you've got your
listeners listening to that so and that
server can now keep track of all the
logs it keep track of who's connecting
and you know who's listening and allows
you to go off and build your and build
your reports so basically with the one
on an automation system you can encode
the clips ahead of time and put them
actually physically on the server so
they don't have to be streaming from the
client all the time they just sit on the
server and run when you know when they
need to and you can let that run
autonomously so you could have people on
the air that are just looking at what's
playing now and they know what they can
talk about or you can have them
pre-recorded there's a number of
concepts in radio that are built in
automation systems at the same time your
plate your program director could be
choosing what's what's played you can
have people doing commercials that track
that and that's called traffic and
traditional radio they could be doing
that offline and programming the station
ahead of time and it all works for you
know seamlessly and at the same time
that could be done from anywhere so
those people don't really even have to
be in the same physical building they
could be at a live remote somewhere they
could be you know in their home and
their office you can you can pretty much
do a station and have a lot of different
people involved in it and you know not
leaving a lot of bricks and mortar to go
and do that I talked a lot about doing
dynamic playlist basically if you use
you know rotation rules you can come up
with something it sounds very fresh and
you're not doing anything to do that
because you know it's going to be
randomized you'll be following the you
know the law of you know what you have
to play to broadcast and you know you
can have that set up with a month worth
of music and you know it'll play without
you having to go to see the station so a
lot of stations do something called
voice tracking where they actually
record the live inserts you know if you
if you say hey it's a great funny day
and it's raining well you know that
doesn't quite work out the next day but
you know you can do that in the future
and a lot of radio stations do that
and it allows them to create something
it sounds pre live but without having
people sitting there you know the air
talent can come in and do their show in
20 minutes half an hour instead of you
know being there all along but you can
also do live assist you can actually
have somebody doing a show and they can
be talking over their music or if
they're doing a live broadcast you can
have you know material running and
recorded and you know that's appropriate
and then they can cut in and do the live
show if they're doing a sporting event
or whatever or use the playlist staff
commercials while you're doing your
sporting event so and of course an
automation system does all the logging
as well so where's everything heading at
this point well the royalty situation
has really stabilized you know that one
of the problems in the period of the
early you know 2000's was that people
didn't know what it was we know what the
rules were going to be so that's the
tough thing if you're trying to run
something where you're going to have to
pay you don't know how much that is
well now it's very well known and now
it's going to evolve every two years so
all of you can get involved in this
process and you know lobby of you know
Congress and do things to try to get
things to you know come down even
further perhaps or or make it more
easier to report so it's not going to be
a fixed thing it's going to be it's
gonna be revisited every two years and
of course well there are lots of mobile
devices on the way in a few years you'll
build at your internet radio station
we'll be able to stream to phones you
know 3G and other and other things that
are coming along there's other standards
for high-speed data but thing is radio
doesn't need that much speed you don't
need the 1/2 megabits a second if you
have a phone that can do that and you're
just doing a 56k stream it's going to
sound great and of course this year the
theme of NAB 2004 was IP broadcasting so
every so this convergence thing has
really happened now and everything is
moving into being IP and I think over
time you may see traditional you know
traditional terrestrial broadcasters
become a little less important
especially with these portable devices
because you can imagine the next thing
might be though it might be in your car
and that's where a lot of traditional
radio is listening to now and given the
unlimited spectrum of the internet you
know that's it gives you as a station
operator a large audience to go choose
from so it should be it should be a
pretty cool future
well so I have a final thought before we
go up and do a little demo here well
there have been millions of downloads I
think they just said 250 million
downloads of iTunes since it came out
right that's about the number I'm sorry
fork time excuse me
a quick time thank you and well and also
when you don't download iTunes you do
get QuickTime for free it comes along so
everybody that's downloaded iTunes for
Windows has got a copy of QuickTime so
that means you've got people that can
listen to a stream done for most n
server and you know there's there's a
lot of market out there that's really
been untapped and you can do it much
easier and much better quality you know
in our in our world ok well so I'm going
to do a little demo there when you
switch to them the demo actually whoa
with that there we go okay so I have an
automation system here it's running so
we're actually looking at a server
that's running in Florida and I've got a
time of what's playing on the air now
and I get a countdown time and get the
time and date there various things I can
do to change the microphone gain what
might you know what my source is etc I
can look at a database well so I
actually want to do a little live insert
and I want to I need a volunteer from
the audience now we do some stage-diving
here and looks something I can someone
want to do that how about probably sir
would you like to be a DJ okay you can
multi sure welcome to up in your ear and
your name is a rock nice to meet you
okay okay so what we're going to do here
look at this microphone setup here and
I'm going to go open what is open up
[Laughter]
okay so I'm going to I'm going to start
this little playlist this has got a
little jingle and actually we bring up
the audio just a little bit on this so
you're actually we're going to go to so
in 23 seconds this this playlist will
start there's gonna be about a seven
seconds intro then you're going to see
it script come up and you just read what
you see so just read what you see you
can translate into Dutch on the fly if
you'd like okay and so this would be
kind of a live assist you were standing
on the rock rock WV HD okay so hey San
Francisco you're here this is WWDC mm m4
and you've just heard internet radio
in-depth from George kabab Louis that
your name was enough
oh thanks before we go to back and ten
great hits in a row it's your turn
step up and ask them thank you so now
there are a lot of things that we're
going on in Ellis I will briefly bubba's
to this automation system so the
streaming is based on delay and there's
about a five-second or so delay the bigs
half an hour automation system actually
synchronizes his live voice to what's
playing on the air so to him he just has
to look at the live cue and he doesn't
have to think about any of that and that
you know we were streaming to a server
is out in Florida and that's now off
playing the next thing