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Question: If Rolling Stone represented the chutzpah and hype of the '60s rendered into print, what would the hip-meets-commercial vibe of the '90s look like turned into an Internet application?
Answer: Rolling Stone Radio, the new streaming-media venture of JamTV/Rolling Stone Network and RealNetworks, launching Monday with an announcement at the Webnoize music and media conference in Los Angeles.
A spiffy front-end that sits on top of RealNetworks' new G2 player looking like a tuner on a dashboard, Rolling Stone Radio is an advertiser's dream, a recording executive's fantasy, and the latest, slickest effort of RealNetworks' founder, Rob Glaser, to build alternative mass media.
Before they can say, "Stop, hey, what's that sound?," RSR listeners will be able to consult discographies, articles and reviews archived on the JamTV site and rollingstone.com, and be two clicks away from buying the recording itself at Amazon.com. They'll also be able to rate the tunes using the Rolling Stone star system, the "tuner" displaying an aggregation of audience ratings in real time. The ratings will be funneled into a database that will help determine which songs rise into heavy rotation, or tumble off the playlist.
JamTV vice president Scott Hess calls RSR "a revolution on the scale of SoundScan," the record sales-tracking network that took manipulation out of the charting process and revealed the true extent of the markets for hip hop and country.
"Record companies do a tremendous amount of focus grouping for singles, but how many are in their sample? My sample size could be in the millions," Hess says. "The label guys perceive a targeted promotional opportunity the likes of which they've been dreaming about."
Just as the print Rolling Stone stood on the shoulders of underground newspapers to end up on the coffee tables of the hip-oisie, the Rolling Stone Network and Real are betting that smaller sites have paved the way to acceptance of Internet radio by the record-buying youth market. And they're hoping that the Rolling Stone brand will bring in a wider audience than Spinner and Pseudo, to become not only the fresh-media favorite in the dorms, but the cubicle surfer's soundtrack of choice.
Jupiter Communications media analyst Anya Sacharow thinks that an online radio station is "a good move" for the Rolling Stone Network.
"It's a way to lure in additional ad dollars, pull in the demographic from the magazine, and extend their model," she says. "For serious music fans, having the Internet be a part of it allows them to go deeper into their obsessions."
RSR will get a huge boost on RealNetworks' site by being an option when netsurfers download the G2 Player. RealNetworks is clocking 120,000 downloads a day of the G2, which is still in beta release. The G2 offers better fidelity, and fewer net congestion rebuffering errors, than the RealPlayer.
The success of Spinner -- a two-year Net veteran with its own powerful database technology -- bodes well for RSR. Spinner.com logs 750,000 unique listeners a month by serving up over 130,000 songs in RealAudio, and has grown from the proverbial geek startup to a team of 30. Like Spinner and broadcast radio, RSR will offer programming targeted by genre. RSR has engaged Brett Atwood -- a former Billboard editor -- and editors from Rolling Stone and The Gavin Report to help sculpt the playlists.
Unlike Spinner, however, which streams out 110 channels, RSR is programming a narrower range of music, at least at first. Where Spinner supplements its Modernmix charts with classical, blues and such eclectica as the El Nino channel (rain songs), avant-garde jazz and a roster of weepers called Melancholia, RSR is playing it safer. The first dozen channels -- Pop Hits, R & B Hits, Modern Rock, Hip Hop, College Rock, Electronica, Women in Rock, Dance Hits, Country Hits, Classic Rock, New Wave Classics and Guitar Rock -- hew close to the hipper edge of the corporate-rock radio menu.
To pump up the glitz, RSR will host limited-edition channels programmed by celebrity DJs, such as David Bowie and Jimmy Buffett.
Women in Rock will take some demographically smart chances at launch, putting indie hero Ani DiFranco into heavy rotation. Joni Mitchell, revered but rarely given air time, has earned two spots on the Women in Rock channel. Mitchell's stark new meditation on ego and the soullessness of pop radio, "Taming the Tiger," gets medium rotation, while her dulcimer classic, "A Case of You," enters heavy. The presence of New York downtown jazz lights like Don Byron and Marc Ribot on the College Rock playlist also indicates that RSR is willing to stretch more than most major-market stations.
To advertisers, RSR is offering e-commerce buttons on the interface, channel sponsorships, and radio spots. Levi's, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, the Audio Book Club, and compare.net will all have buttons on the tuner at launch. Mazda is underwriting Women in Rock, and 800.com is sponsoring Pop Hits. Mentadent, Datek, and Q-Sound will get seven minutes out of every hour to hawk their products.
What about e-payola? For now, pay-to-play gambits are not being considered as another revenue stream for the site.
Says Hess, "Would I rule that out? Hell no. But what I'm excited about is that our programming is very credible now.... Who would you rather have choosing the music you hear, some burnt-out radio programmer or people who like the same genre of music that you like? Just as Amazon.com changed the way people think about book buying, Rolling Stone Radio is going to change the way people come to radio."
