Confessions of a Chart Junkie

Remember: Half the people you know are below average.

My name is Jordan Mendell, and I'm addicted to charts.

I just can't get enough of them.


The amount of pie consumed.










The number of things Arnold Shwarzeneggar has been trying to get to.



Chances of an important call being returned


There are any number of potential interesting data points available in Internet radio. While you have no interest in charting the number of times Arnie yells "Get to da choppa", you may have a need to chart the differences between listening time of people on Rock stations versus Classical stations.

I believe one of the biggest value propositions between Internet radio and broadcast radio is that the former is a 100% measureable medium. Broadcast radio is a unidirectional medium, where the tower simply broadcasts the audio into the air and the actual number of people who hear it is completely unknown (or estimated). Internet radio is different because there is a two-way communication going on between the listener and the server sending the audio streams. Therefore, you know *exactly* how many people are listening to that stream.

Obviously I'm biased because I'm part of a company who's business model is based on measuring Internet radio, but why would you use estimates when you know exactly how many people listen?

Some people say that there is a difference between "knowing how many computers are connected and how many people are actually listening". This is the typical argument that there is a difference between counting listeners and counting computers. There is assumed to be a tiny percentage of people who repurpose Internet radio in commercial establishments such as restaurants, grocery stores and other places where there may be more than one person listening. This would indeed undercount those people. As it stands now, I have yet to go into my local grocery store and hear a local radio station's Internet stream playing.

I'm not going to bash any companies by name, but there is one who's name starts with an A has BITRO in the middle and an N at the end who states that putting 50 people meters in a large city will somehow tell you how many people are actually listening to Internet radio stations in that city. How absurd.

I was recently asked to give my opinion on a single station who's data was collected via PPM and Ando simultaneously over the course of a week in September. PPM reported that there were over 32,000 people listening to the station in question. Ando showed that there were an actual total of 1,746 people listening.

Let's make this absolutely clear.

PPM: 32,000 listeners
Ando: 1,746 *actual* listeners

I've been tracking listener data on Internet radio stations for over a decade, and to burst someone's bubble, there are NO STATIONS IN EXISTENCE who reach more then 32,000 listeners on a single channel station. Don't believe me? Hit http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=pjyxftcab.0.0.xyb5ilcab.0&ts=S0373&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shoutcast.com%2F&id=preview between 12 and 3pm EST on a weekday. The number one station listed there (.977 The Hitz Channel) is the largest single channel Internet radio station on the globe and they peak on average at about 25,000 listeners.
The fact that radio stations are using this seriously flawed data to sell against and promising advertisers a certain reach based on these numbers is quite scary. Especially when the advertiser expects some level of response (clicks, calls etc). In other words, if a radio station sells to an advertiser who is expecting to reach (for example) 32,000 people, but in reality they are *actually* reaching 1,746 people, they will immediately see that their campaign is not performing, and that radio station may ultimately lose them as a client.

Ok, time for me to go. I've got to print new cover sheets for my TPS reports.

Till next week!
Jordan Mendell

A Brief History of Time

My name is Jordan Mendell and I'm the CTO of a company called Ando Media.  I started the company in my living room in September of 2001.  Since then, it has grown to be the dominant software and services company to the Internet radio industry.  We now have offices in 3 states, manage inventory and ad insertion for 46 of the top 50 radio companies in the United States.  We inject more than 7 million seconds of ads into radio stations every day.  If you are the world record holder for solving the Rubik's cube, you'd be able to solve it 636,363 times in that amount of seconds.

 

I've been involved in radio streaming since July of 1998 when Internet radio streaming was in its infancy.  It's funny to think back to how the technology world was back then.  Streaming radio was virtually non existent because bandwidth costs were so high.  My first negotiation with a bandwidth provider was with a company called "@ Lightspeed", terrible name I know.  But they were the largest colocation and bandwidth facility in Denver.  I was able to negotiate a $100 per Mbps rate.  At the time, that price was very low.  Now, you can get wholesale rates through providers like Cogent for under $4 per Mbps.  Amazing how 10 years and a glut of fiber optic cabling will bring prices down.  

 

At the time, it was virtually impossible to get a highspeed Internet connection at your home or office.  DSL wasn't really around, and that was years before cable modem was prolific so everyone was stuck using dial up modems or ISDN connections from the phone company.

 

Things were much different then.

 

Anyway, this is "Volume 1" of a newsletter I'll be sending out weekly.  I've had the opportunity to be intimately involved in the digial radio industry since these days.  I have watched and contributed to the advancement of the industry by developing software and working with radio networks to define and evolve their businesses.

 

There are many interesting things going on in radio right now. In this newsletter, I will write my candid thoughts about where I believe digital radio is going both from a technology and business perspective, where Ando is going, and how we will continue to innovate and educate the world to drive up revenue and increase awareness of this medium.