The good vibrations of a new song by former Beach Boys musical genius Brian Wilson will be sent across the radio airwaves Tuesday, when "Your Imagination," from Wilson's upcoming album Imagination, is released.
Rather than mailing the CD to radio stations, however, Wilson's record label Giant Records is distributing the pop song via the Internet. Participating radio stations will download the music file, using Liquid Audio technology, burn it to CD, and then play the music over the air.
Downloading music this way cuts days off of the distribution process; if a radio station hopes to be known for getting new music first, those few days could matter.
"If you have two stations in a market that are the same format, the two are blood competitors. If you get a single a few hours before the guy across the street gets it, to you that's a competitive advantage," says Stephen Dunwoody, Liquid Audio's director of broadcast interface.
While Liquid Audio is primarily designed to support music delivery from the recording industry to consumers, the company hopes to show that its software can easily be applied to a business application. It also hopes that word will spread back to consumers when stations make use of their software.
"When it's new and unusual, they're going to talk about it," says Dunwoody. "Especially if their competitors don't have the technology."
Gregory Glaser, engineer at radio station Y107 in Los Angeles, which is participating in the launch, says that technology should not be a hurdle for most stations.
"All competent engineers have already got a working knowledge about how all this is accomplished," Glaser says, "Any engineer who can get his email can manage to do this."
The price of CD-ROM burners and computing power has driven the cost of using a system like Liquid Audio's well within reach of most stations. Adequate burners are now offered at US$400 or less.
"Historically radio has been very slow to pick up new technology," says Glaser "I think that's been a matter of economics in the past. At this point a competitive radio station is going to jump on this with both feet."
