Hot Topics at the AOL Mothership; Net Radio Day of Silence & New AOL News

Hi folks -- here are a couple of hot topics right now that involve our favorite, Dulles-based Internet service, community and content provider:

* Web Radio Goes Silent: A lot of Internet-based radio broadcasters have put a hold on broadcasting today, to protest an upcoming increase in Internet broadcasting royalty rates that's going to hose a lot of smaller Web broadcasters. (Here's a story from NPR, as well as the BBC.)

The local NPR affiliate, WAMU, is also participating, by silencing BluegrassCountry.org, which broadcasts bluegrass music 24/7 (WAMU used to broadcast bluegrass music during the day, then they changed to drive time news. Personally, I prefer the news over bluegrass, but Web radio allows people to find and hear what they want, even for smaller or niche interests, which is why it's so valuable.)

Now, AOL Radio is one of the bigger Web broadcasters out there, but we're apparently not particpating -- from a Washington Post article:

"Participants in the event include such online-only music services as Pandora, Live365 and Real Networks' Rhapsody, as well as radio stations such as WAMU in Washington and KCRW, based in Santa Monica, Calif. One notable service sitting out the protest, according to organizers, is AOL Radio. A spokeswoman for AOL declined to comment."

I don't like to speculate on things that I know nothing about, so I will just say that while a one-day embargo on Web broadcasting might not be the right thing to do for users, I'm a little disappointed that no one on our side is taking the opportunity to talk about it (it's not like we're unaware of the issues -- over at the AOL Radio Blog, they've previously addressed the royalty issue and a proposed remedy, the Internet Radio Equality Act.)

You can get more info at Save Net Radio.

* AOL News Builds New Furniture: Check out the new look over at AOL News -- it's a wider, more open, more community-focused (and bloggy -- their Newsbloggers blog is prominently featured) site.

Here's a quote from a Reuters article (also some analysis by PaidContent):

"I truly believe that when you go to most news sites, it's a Web 1.0 world," Lewis D'Vorkin, senior vice president of AOL News and Sports, said, referring to the first generation of Internet sites. "They have rearranged the furniture. We have built new furniture."

I will have to play around with the new site; when it comes to news site furniture, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on out there, both in mainstream media sites like Washington Post, USA Today, and  CNN (who had a beta site preview), as well as a lot of exciting stuff happening with citizen media (including South Korea's OhMyNews -- see this LA Times analysis from last week; Newsvine, NowPublic and more.)

As the article mentions, Lewis says there will be increased personalization and new functionality in the coming months, some of it coming from Relegence (a company AOL acquired).

I've seen some demos of the Relegence stuff -- it should be cool.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: netradio, day of silence, aol radio, aol news, aol mothership, citizen journalism, news furniture