Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.

Dave,

In article ,
Dave Boland wrote:
Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.

I'm with you on not liking Flash on radio station streaming
sites, Dave! But FYI, it does work on most Apple products.
I can't remember whether Flash support is built into Mac OS
X or whether you have to add a plug-in, but I view Flash sites
all the time on this MacBook and my big Mac Pro.

However, I believe it would be a problem with an iPhone or iPad.
Or has some third party come up with a Flash app for them?

One suggestion, if you haven't tried it already, is to see whether
the station is available via iTunes. I know of some stations that
have their own Flash-based players but are also accessible (via
an MP3 feed, I presume) through iTunes. Another advantage of the
latter is that you can quickly change from station to station
without having to switch between different websites or media players.


Patty

Dave Boland wrote:

Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.


The most likely reason flash is used for streaming is that it is OS and
browser independent. Until Apple decided not to support Flash, it didn't
matter to the sender which OS, which device or indeed where the user was.
That's also why YouTube still mostly uses Flash. HTML5 right now is mostly
a concept for most internet users, and it also requires different encoding
equipment.

You can blame Apple if it does not work on IPhones or Ipads, it was a
deliberate choice on its part to not include support for Flash nor allow
Flash add-ons.

Patty Winter wrote:
In article ,
Dave Boland wrote:
Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.

I'm with you on not liking Flash on radio station streaming
sites, Dave! But FYI, it does work on most Apple products.
I can't remember whether Flash support is built into Mac OS
X or whether you have to add a plug-in, but I view Flash sites
all the time on this MacBook and my big Mac Pro.

However, I believe it would be a problem with an iPhone or iPad.
Or has some third party come up with a Flash app for them?

One suggestion, if you haven't tried it already, is to see whether
the station is available via iTunes. I know of some stations that
have their own Flash-based players but are also accessible (via
an MP3 feed, I presume) through iTunes. Another advantage of the
latter is that you can quickly change from station to station
without having to switch between different websites or media players.


Patty

Thanks Patty. As an update, I see all CBS affiliates are now using
Flash for audio streaming (with the exception of WTOP). I'm guessing
that CBS is requiring the use of Flash. Since Flash won't work with the
iPhone and iPad, CBS has released apps for that. Here is my rhetorical
question -- wouldn't have been easier for CBS to stick with platform
neutral mp3's or other audio CODECS?

While I'm venting, I have to wonder what radio would have been like if
the FCC didn't standardize it? I guess we would have had the stations
using the Microsoft transmitters requiring the use of radios with Silver
Light and Windows audio. The broadcasters using Apple transmitters
would require receivers to be AAC. And there there are the Live365
stations that are something else. Wish the FCC would standardize
streaming audio so it is open. Ah, I feel much better now! Thanks for
listening.

Dave,

On 2/10/2011 2:36 PM, Dave Boland wrote:
Thanks Patty. As an update, I see all CBS affiliates are now using Flash
for audio streaming (with the exception of WTOP). I'm guessing that CBS
is requiring the use of Flash. Since Flash won't work with the iPhone
and iPad, CBS has released apps for that. Here is my rhetorical question
-- wouldn't have been easier for CBS to stick with platform neutral
mp3's or other audio CODECS?


For iPod/iPhone, look into the Tunein Radio app. It's well worth the
$2.99 cost. The only radio groups I haven't had any luck pulling are
Clear Channel (there's iHeartRadio for that for free) and Lincoln Financial.

In article ,
art clemons wrote:
Dave Boland wrote:

Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.

The most likely reason flash is used for streaming is that it is OS and
browser independent.

So is MP3. Flash is overkill for audio streaming.


Patty

Patty Winter had written:
|
| In article ,
| art clemons wrote:
| Dave Boland wrote:
|
| Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
| of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
| since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
| Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.
|
| The most likely reason flash is used for streaming is that it is OS and
| browser independent.
|
| So is MP3. Flash is overkill for audio streaming.

Any codec is OS and browser-independent if there is a version of it
available for the desired platform. For some Linux distros (e.g.
Fedora), one has to go to additional effort to get mp3 support.

That said, the radio-station streaming practice that I abhor is the insistence
on special clients, often functional only on Windows systems, that are
there to try to push garish advertising at you. They are bloated and
pointless.

An excellent use of Flash is the online player for France-Info (the
national all-news network in France, www.france-info.com). It lets
you know the name of the current segment, along with the names of
those immediately preceding (so that you can go back and listen to
them) and those that are coming up. So if a station uses Flash for
something more than just being a player and pushing ads, then I
think it could be a good thing.


--
Mark Roberts - E-Mail address is valid but I don't use Google Groups
If you quote, please quote only relevant passages and not the whole article.

* Dave Boland wrote, On 2/10/2011 8:38 AM:
Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.


One motivating factor for some stations is music licensing and server
operations. Many contemporary automation systems can generate a web
stream while simultaneously feeding the air chain, and those streams
contain meta-data that can be collected *at the stream server* and can
be correlated with server data to account for each song, each play and
each listener. It can be expensive to set up and maintain your own
server, which carries its own expense.

Large streaming vendors are well equipped to provide data collection
services for their clients, as well as having the "big pipe" Internet
connections to facilitate potentially large numbers of listeners. All
the station has to do is provide a single stream out of their playout
system. (And, BTW, a blanket license for Internet music streaming is
astronomically expensive, so you either do the accounting or you don't
stream!)

After 11 years of doing our own mp3 Shoutcast streaming, we recently
farmed out our streaming to a third party. It's less expensive than
hiring qualified personnel to continue with the DIY method.

With the third party service comes the almost inevitable Flash player,
one value of which is that, in addition to a customized interface for
your organization, it can also relay song meta-data easier than if you
were using a combo of mp3/Windows player and pushing the song data to
a web page. In our case our streaming vendor also provides mp3 and
...asx streams, but of course without the meta-data.

Some stations or networks are so caught up in corporate imaging that
the bean-counters and mid-to-upper level management can't see beyond a
custom Flash interface to push ads and promotions to listeners (who
have almost certainly minimized their player!), and they can't
conceive of providing or allowing alternate streams that don't carry
ads and promos, even if their streaming vendor is capable; the lost
listeners are irrelevant, as they wouldn't see the ads anyway.

Welcome to Music Streaming Commerce-101.

JT
--

Patty Winter wrote:

So is MP3. Flash is overkill for audio streaming.

MP3 however cannot for example also carry let's say a weather forecast or
allow a station to promote upcoming programming. I note that many public
radio stations with streaming via MP3 (m3u for example) don't always manage
to insert their reminder that streaming costs money and is paid for by the
contributors to the station without somehow not managing to provide the
content after the reminder. It can be really annoying if you have
contributed to that station but cannot get a reliable connection without
reconnecting several times.

Some commercial stations with flash also offer ads and if that helps offset
some of the cost of streaming, so be it. As much as I consider flash
players bloated and at times a security risk, flash has been reliable
delivering audio for me.

Dave Boland wrote:

Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc?

Probably to make it harder to save the content to disk? There are lots of
apps that save complete and streaming MP3 files to disk, but few that do it
for Flash. aTubeCatcher is one that does it for Flash files, but not for
streams that I'm aware of.