Webcasts a channel for change in radio

When Jimmy Buffett takes the Starplex stage Thursday night, Francine Marcum and her neighbors will gather around her computer in a beach home south of the Great Barrier Reef.<br><br>“We all put on stupid

Friday, April 14th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6


When Jimmy Buffett takes the Starplex stage Thursday night, Francine Marcum and her neighbors will gather around her computer in a beach home south of the Great Barrier Reef.

“We all put on stupid hats and grab tropical drinks,” writes Ms. Marcum, an enthusiastic Parrot Head, as Mr. Buffett’s fans are called, from near Brisbane, Australia. “Watching Jimmy perform gives us all a rush and a smile. We wouldn’t miss it.”

Ms. Marcum will be among an estimated 23,000 Internet-connected fans watching the same video feed that concertgoers in Dallas will see on megascreens towering over the soldout Starplex amphitheater.

Video and audio from this stop of Mr. Buffett’s “Beach House on the Moon Tour” will be piped straight to the Orlando, Fla., home of his year-old Internet radio station, Radio Margaritaville (www.margaritaville.com). From there, it heads across phone lines to Seattle and the RealPlayer streaming headquarters. Then it’s on to Francine Marcum and the rest of the world.

Enthused audience

“Internet radio isn’t that big yet,” says Steve Huntington, the station’s disc jockey. But Mr. Huntington says he wouldn’t exchange “what we’ve got going with worldwide listeners” for a local FM station. “The feedback we’re getting is amazing.”

Although live audio and video streamed over the Internet can still be hard to watch on slow connections, it’s getting better. And a growing number of artists are moving live feeds of their concert events to Web sites, where fans can connect with a whole range of interactive activities.

For example, visitors to Mr. Buffett’s Web site can order garish tropical garb and see the wildest Parrot Head hats displayed. A newsletter is dispensed via e-mail, keeping fans apprised of concert and recording news. Message board participants trade concert tickets or share thoughts on lyrics. Margaritaville Stores in New Orleans, Charleston, S.C., and Key West are given a little corner on the site. So is Mr. Buffett’s philanthropic effort, the Singing for Change Foundation, and a “Good Deed List” for Parrot Heads.

“It’s just nice having all that Buffett in one place,” says Ms. Marcum in an e-mail interview. “There’s four houses of Buffett fans in a row down here. Now we all gather to watch - and get horribly smashed in the process, of course. It’s great fun.”

Seizing opportunity

If artists such as Mr. Buffett aren’t streaming their own concerts, clubs and Webcasting companies are jumping in. Where there once was a handful of Webcasts, now there are hundreds.

Earlier this month, Lou Reed played three soldout dates at The Knitting Factory in New York. The final night was Webcast on the club’s Internet site. Rollingstone.com features regular performances of chart-topping acts, as does House of Blues (hob.com), which also offers pay-per-view for those with high-speed Internet connections.

Broadcast.com maintains intriguing concert archives, and the Digital Club Network (www.digitalclubfest.com) has been signing agreements worldwide with more than three dozen venues to present regular Webcasts of live performances. That Mr. Buffett is at the forefront of the online concert experience is no accident. Webcasting makes sense, and it’s fairly cheap to produce.

“And it’s not like Jimmy’s screwing himself out of concert tickets or something,” Mr. Huntington says. “It’s a wonderful thing for people who can’t get to the show. There are so many cities that he just doesn’t get to.”

Mr. Buffett and other artists are experimenting with additional electronic options as well.

Between concerts on Radio Margaritaville, for instance, Mr. Huntington presents around-the-clock stereo programming from the likes of James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, The Neville Brothers and, of course, Mr. Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band.

The Internet station took wing after a disheartening effort to purchase a regular radio station several years ago.

“Jimmy thought we’d buy a radio station somewhere, start up and see how many other stations we could get interested in getting to carrying our programming,” says Mr. Huntington, a longtime Buffett acquaintance and former Sarasota, Fla., FM jock. “On the FM band, we found that’s just prohibitive anymore. The value of stations is $25 million or more just in markets like Orlando. That’s ridiculous.”

As an option, Jay Barrett, program director for IBM’s IntelliStation computer system, says he and IBM outlined an idea involving the Internet.

“Buffett and Huntington were looking for a way to reach people who are interested in the easy listening music and lifestyle,” says Mr. Barrett. “They looked at the Internet as a way to get more touches with their potential consumers.”

Radio Margaritaville started slowly, and Parrot Heads gradually began flocking to the Web site. The site now averages about 151,000 unique visits a month, says Webmaster Marty Lehman. “We get the cream of the crop, the true fanatic,” he says. “God bless them all.”

Mr. Huntington says the response has been rewarding. And the freedom to develop playlists with Mr. Buffett has given him new hope for broadcasting, he says.

“Radio has painted itself into a corner, and it deserves this breath of fresh air,” says Mr. Huntington. “Regular radio is a ridiculous proportion of commercials and ridiculously tiny playlist. No matter what your favorite genre of music, you’re going to get the same … songs over and over again.

“I think the Internet is going to play a key role in providing an alternative to all that.” Radio Margaritaville takes listeners around the globe, right to the exotic locales where Mr. Buffett’s songs were born. It now features regular feeds from Radio Bougainville, a favorite station in Papua, New Guinea.

Occasionally, the station features interviews of note, such as the one with a Parrot Head as he watched a volcano erupt half a world away in the Pacific.

“It’s kind of refreshing,” Mr. Huntington says.

Vicarious enjoyment helps sell the concept.

“We’re really big in cold weather climates,” Mr. Huntington says. “We have a lot of listeners in Alaska. But now they’re all over - Europe, Australia, everywhere. It’s really gratifying.

It’s cool. And it’s got nowhere to go but up.”

Mr. Barrett agrees. “You’re seeing other artists who are looking at the Internet as a mechanism to communicate with their fans, not just through a CD, but by showing them how they made a video, showing them making music, offering up unreleased songs and things like that.

It’s becoming a rather attractive marketing tool.”

If artists such as Mr. Buffett can someday wrangle marketing rights for their music from the major record companies, Radio Margaritaville and other sites also may provide the digital downloads.

“I’m sure that’s in the back of Mr. Buffett’s little brain,” says Mr. Lehman, the Webmaster.

But right now, Mr. Huntington and the Buffett Web crew are busy building on what they’ve started. Satellite transmissions and subscriber-based digital radio may be interested in the programming, Mr. Huntington says. And Radio Margaritaville has begun airing on a DMX music channel offered by cable television.

Nothing would please Mr. Huntington more than to see Internet radio become a force for change. “As radio strangles itself formatwise, I’d love to see some stations start saying, ‘Why don’t we pick up this Radio Margaritaville thing and put it on midnight to six?’.” he says. “I mean, anything’s possible.”

At the Kagan Streaming Media Summit held last week in New York City, giants of new and old broadcasting were blunt in their assessment of the uneven quality of Internet audio and video technology.

“The Internet destroys streaming media in its current incarnation,” Bob Davis, vice president of sales for iBeam Broadcasting, told Wired magazine.

At the same time, Mr. Davis said, clients seem bullish on its potential.

“The beauty of the interactive entertainment experience are things like Launch [www.launch.com] and MTVi, where I go to the radio stations,” Mr. Davis told the conference.

“I listen to them, and if I don’t like the song, I click ‘I don’t like it’ and I never hear it again. ... So I’m actually programming my own entertainment model accessible from anywhere on the Internet.”

Says Mr. Barrett of IBM: “The spread of fast Internet infrastructure is still about two years away. People in the market realize everybody wants a better video experience, but it’s really just getting started. I think we’re getting closer. By the time it gets here, the rest of the world’s going to be ready.”

Some Parrot Heads already are.

E-mail Staff Writer Doug Bedell at dbedell@dallasnews.com
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