Abacast Inc.

 Michael Dalfonzo, former Vice President of Sales for Spacial Audio, steps into the role of Major Accounts Manager for Abacast Inc.

Previously, Michael served as Vice President of Sales for Spacial Audio where he was instrumental in establishing and building the inside sales team and developing their major new accounts. Michael has held nearly every position in a radio station including Station Manager, Program Director, Music Director and on-air talent.

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We’ll be exhibiting at the 2010 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 12th through the 15th at booth #C1339. The show is always very informative, entertaining, and is a great way to get the latest information in the broadcast industry. Our focus is to help radio stations learn the best ways to monetize their online content. We’ll have our top representatives at our booth offering best practices and proven methods of generating revenue for online radio stations.

We’re also a sponsor for the 8th annual RAIN Summit West held in conjunction to the NAB Show just across the parking lot at the Renaissance Hotel. The Summit takes place Monday, April 12, from 10am to 7pm and is the premier learning, sharing and networking event of the year for Internet radio.

At the summit, Jim Kott, our VP of Sales and Marketing,  will be giving a presentation about our Internet radio platform and how it fits into online radio business models helping to build revenues. He’ll also be going over techniques and best practices providing expertise for stations to be able sell their advertising.

It was nice to see the Radio Advertising Bureau’s 2009 Year End news release and how it pointed out the momentum in revenues from online radio.  The RAB release showed that the digital sector brought in $480M in revenues in 2009, a 13% increase from 2008.  These results compare to radio’s overall revenue, which dropped 18%, from $19.55B in 2008 to $16B in 2009.  Many large terrestrial stations reported revenue drops of 20% to 25% for 2009. 

Creating some excitement as move in 2010, the RAB report pointed out that 2009 Q4 revenue saw a 15% increase over 2008’s Q4 number.  The RAB reported that “Marketers increasingly recognize Radio’s loyal audiences who tune in via multiple audio devices such iPods, HD, mobile apps, etc.”, and that “…the digital sector has maintained its upward trajectory throughout 2009”.

Yes, it’s nice to be in the online sector.  

In a related report, the Radio and Internet Newsletter’s 2/22/09 edition cited BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast for 2009 that online ad revenue will grow from $15.2B in 2009 to $36.7B in 2014, and that there will be “a steady shift toward digital media.”

Streaming quality is heavily dependent on a few key factors. One of them is your ability to push out your content to a distribution server. Even the highest quality content can be rendered choppy with a poor internet connection.

So what are some things to look for in a service? Your key aspect is upload bandwidth. This is normally not as important as download speeds to a normal ISP customer, but because your priority will be sending data out as opposed to downloading, you need to pick an ISP that can provide you with AT LEAST double upstream of the bitrate you will be broadcasting at. You will most likely not achieve full upload speeds to any server due to internet/server fluctuations. Stay away from wireless routers or mobile cards as much as you can as these connections typically drop data packets and need to retransmit. This is normally not a problem with web browsing but in a constant data stream, these are transformed into cutouts and video quality degrading for your viewers. Also, make sure that no one else is using the connection for other work while you are broadcasting, that steals your bandwidth!