Internet radio central [more ideas]
Internet radio is one of those things that still keeps amazing me, even though it has been around since the beginnings of the world wide web. Although it seems to have fallen out of favor lately to more flashy things, like online video, it remains one of the most useful services online. It still blows my mind that I can listen to most local radios from anywhere in the world in almost any language in real time. It's a huge thing for expatriates to keep in touch with their homeplace, for language learners to listen to real-life content, for listeners of less-mainstream musical styles to find their stuff, and many many more. In this age of active time-wasting, radio still has that non-obtrusiveness, that allows you to do something else while listening to it in the background...
Additionally, at least for me, knowing that something is broadcast in real-time and followed by many people in the same time gives that strange sense of connection that various online media such as podcasts, youtube videos, personalized playlists can never replace. My hypothesis is that this feeling of synchronicity also accounts for the ongoing popularity of TV, despite the crappy content and aggressiveness of advertising. In my opinion, the current trend of personalized playlist radio completely misses the point in this sense. Some (most) people don't want to listen only to what their favorite music is, at least not all the time and especially not if no-one else is listening to that.
Internet radio however is undeservedly neglected lately. There are few good ways of finding radio stations. The existing directories are incomplete, have little information about the stations, in most cases just link to the radio websites. Those sites are mostly ad-infested pages with idiosyncratic designs, where the actual link for playing the radio is hard to be found, even more so if the site is in an unknown language (one can still look for radio in an unknown language for the music or just the melody of the speech).
These collections of links or "radio search engines" are often obsolete, listing stations that have technical difficulties or stopped broadcasting altogether. Then there is the link itself for streaming the sound. There can be different protocols used, different file formats, choice of various streaming bandwidths, etc. While most of the pages give some description of how to actually get the sound going, the process is often tedious, even more so if one uses less popular operating systems or media player software.
The system that I envision is a true internet radio search engine. It lets you find radio stations based on geographical location, language, type of content, musical style, etc. It contains most online radio stations. Constantly monitors them to remove or notify those that are offline or have changed the link url. The system could possibly give real-time information on the type of content played at the moment (if needed, by analyzing the audio signal to determine music/dialogue, etc.). By scraping the web pages of the radio stations, possibly with human assistance, the search engine finds various meta-information: name of the station, description, daily schedule, etc.
Information from other sources, such as wikipedia, news coverage, etc. can be aggregated as well. But most importantly the system gives a uniform interface for actually playing the stream, if possible, within the browser, with an interface like Songza. It should let the user choose bandwidth and various other parameters, but have sensible defaults, so that one can just start playing it instantly. In the spirit of our times, the system could include social aspects for tagging, rating, sharing radio stations, which would greatly help people find radio stations of their taste and form communities around various channels.
The practical question is whether it would be worth for the radio stations to participate, even if that means bypassing their web sites. In case they aim for as high audience as possible, it should be. The system could give links to the station web pages, possibly show discrete ads on behalf of the stations themselves, and generally drive more listeners and visitors to the radios. If some local radios can not support many simultaneous connections, the system could buffer and restream the channel, which would anyway be useful to provide a unified technical interface. This way the radio stations could get more audience, giving up part of the technical burden. The system could provide simple API for the radio stations to give more detailed information, for ex. the title of the song actually played, etc. This would enable the page to display focused advertisement (buy this record, etc.), from which the stations could get their share as well.
It is of course a difficult question how such a service could be profitable in itself with high bandwith and server costs, but the example of youtube shows it is possible (oops, they probably generate losses). Again discrete ads that suit the more international audience (travel, anyone), or ads for buying records come to mind. A service like this could however become a very popular destination for all the fans of internat radio and radio in general.