Clickradio.com offers access to variety of music

Ashley Hill
University Wire
11-20-2000
(Arkansas Traveler) (U-WIRE) FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- ClickRadio.com, an Internet radio service launched in August, allows users to store and play music from their hard drive.

ClickRadio is maintained on the user's hard drive, so the music may be played offline. ClickRadio can be downloaded, which takes anywhere from less than an hour to overnight, depending on connection speed.

Users can also request a CD-ROM, the quickest way to use ClickRadio. Each CD-ROM includes one to four stations for immediate use. When the CD is requested, the user can pick the type of stations they want included on their CD.

ClickRadio plays songs in a customized radio-station format. Users who like a particular song can click the "thumbs up" button and the song will be marked as a "keeper" and played more often.

Users may click the "thumbs down" on songs they do not like, and the song is marked as a "reject" and played less often in the future. If the user continues to click "thumbs down" on a particular song, it will eventually be purged from the user's database.

The listener also has the option of skipping a song by clicking on the "skip" button.

The song is marked neither as a "keeper" or a "reject" and is skipped over until a future time.

New songs are downloaded when the user signs online; the ClickRadio tuner can sense an open Internet connection. During idle time, the tuner tries to connect to the mothership to get new songs and content for the stations. The mothership usually downloads four new songs at a time.

The listener's responses ("thumbs up" and "thumbs down") determine what types of songs the program downloads. The listener's responses also determine what types of advertisements go to each user.

ClickRadio is a free service. Revenue is generated through advertisements played during the programs. Each hour of music includes less than five minutes of advertisements.

The listener does not have the option of what particular song to play. Federal regulations dictate for ClickRadio, just as for broadcast radio, how many times a particular artist or song can be played within a specific time period. ClickRadio plays the same artist no more than once an hour.

ClickRadio includes music from 40 different genres. From Third Eye Blind to B.B. King, from Duke Ellington to Fleetwood Mac, ClickRadio users have a variety of artists to choose from.

While listening to a song, the user can click on the "i" button for information about the song. The window displays song title, lyrics, graphics, album tracks and biographical and career information about the artist.

System requirements for ClickRadio are an IBM-compatible Pentium I PC or better, 64 megabytes of RAM, Windows 95 or higher, Internet Explorer 4.0 or Netscape Communicator 4.0 and a modem with speeds of at least 56 kilobytes per second.

A Macintosh version of ClickRadio is not yet available.

Each song uses about two megabytes of disk space. The initial installation requires approximately 350 megabytes. Each additional station requires a minimum of 250 megabytes.

Lucent Technologies Inc. has licensed ePac (Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder) to ClickRadio. The ePac technology is used to give listeners high-quality music as well as protect artists' copyrights.

ClickRadio officials expect its service eventually tobe played from hand-held devices, modified car radios and home-stereo equipment.






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