More and more brands are using Internet radio for music and messaging to connect to their fans and followers. Online radio listening numbers are huge and continue to grow. The latest 2013 research shows the weekly audience of online radio at 86 million Americans age 12+, reaching 33% of the population. Weekly online radio listening time averages almost 12 hours per week, up by more than two hours over 2012 listening levels and nearly double the listening in 2008. Brands can now join that connection without having to throw away advertising money on commercials.

The growth is being driven in part by the popularity of services like Pandora, iHeart Radio, spotify and TuneIn. Growth has also come from lifestyle brands using Internet radio to connect with customers through web, mobile and social media.

How to use Internet radio wisely

Go where your customers are! Internet radio can be heard everywhere. It’s on a brand’s own web site and Facebook page; it’s on iPhone and Android smart phones and iPads; it’s easily shareable by fans through social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Having an Internet radio station is a modern way to reach consumers directly with music and messaging that’s created, curated and delivered without having to go through traditional media or other distributors. Fans have direct access; brands have direct content control.

What’s playing on a branded Internet radio channel?

We recommend a customized music mix that reflects your brand and target customer’s lifestyle that they can’t get anywhere else. They love your brand – give them more of it.

With Internet radio, brands have the opportunity to tell their story to an audience that’s actually interested in hearing it. The story, delivered as short messages between songs, is part of the entertaining content and not viewed as an interruption or intrusion.

Internet radio can be easy and affordable

Having your own custom Internet radio station is easier and less expensive than you might think. Many of our fully custom clients take their in-store music mix and re-purpose it as Internet radio so the additional cost is only listening time, often as little as 5 cents per listening hour. It’s smart marketing when you can have a person engaged in your brand for one hour for only 5 cents.

Brands are using Internet radio to stay connected with fans and followers when those people are not in the store or using the product directly. To find out how to connect your in-store music mix to a branded Internet radio channel, or launch a new branded Internet radio channel, please contact Custom Channels. See and hear examples of branded Internet radio created by Custom Channels.

When Comfort Dental wanted to upgrade their music, they turned to custom channels.  Comfort Dental already had a history of being connected to music. They are the title sponsor of the 18,000 seat Comfort Dental Amphitheater, the largest outdoor amphitheater in the Denver area with concerts from May to September.

With over 100 offices in ten states, Comfort Dental is one of the nation’s largest dental franchises in the U.S.  Each office is independently owned and operated.

The music problem Comfort Dental faced was that each office was playing whatever music source was available, from local FM radio with talk and commercials, to satellite radio, to iPods.  Comfort Dental wanted to:
a) get a unified music solution for all their locations
b) step away from stereotypical “dentist office music”
c) brand their in-office music with their own messages directed to patients
d) avoid commercials for competitors and other products on FM radio
e) comply with ASCAP and BMI licenses for in-office music

So Comfort Dental turned to Custom Channels. One of our goals was to match their philosophy: “With a name like Comfort Dental, you can be sure that your office visit will be a pleasant experience.”  Part of that pleasant experience is great sounding music.

Within a short few weeks, we rolled out an exclusive channel called Comfort Dental Radio (CDR) and started streaming it to Comfort Dental offices. The music is mixed fresh daily to minimize repetition and maximize variety; new and old songs are added weekly; and the range of styles is broad.  Here’s a sample hour of CDR:

Not your stereotypical dentist office music, is it!  Be assured that if it looks too different, it all fits together and sounds wonderful. CDR is heard throughout each dental practice, from the waiting/lobby area to chairside where dentists and hygienists work. You can listen to CDR without having to make an appointment. It’s streamed on the Comfort Dental web site.

Not only does CDR play a wide variety of music with low repetition, it’s branded with patient-targeted messaging, too. Occasionally between songs, there are easy-going messages about braces, oral screening, proper brushing, community events, multiple locations, and refer-a-friend.

Comfort Dental loves music! Here are some of their Rockin’ Smiles posters (click to enlarge)

Thanks to Neil Norton, Executive Vice President of Comfort Dental, and Rob Medina of Medina Communications Corp. for leading the way on getting over 100 Comfort Dental offices in ten states listening to Comfort Dental Radio.

Here are some of the positive comments we’ve received from the dentists:

• It is the best mix of music I have ever listened to. Our patients love it. Hey, any entity that plays Steely Dan is the bomb. Great job!!
• We have yet to hear the same song played twice. Staff loves it. Excuse my enthusiasm but it is conducive to great business and care for the patient. Keeps that “pop” in our step!!!!
• We just installed our Comfort Dental Radio 4 days ago and have had it on nonstop with no intention of going back to regular radio. It’s got all the songs I already have on my iPod plus everything I wish I had on there, too! What a great mix of music and I love the internal marketing.
• The radio is awesome, period. Wish we had gotten it hooked up sooner. I am sure my partners agree.
• My first shift with Comfort Dental radio. FANTASTIC!!!!!  I love it.  Thanks for bringing it to Missouri.

If your dental/medical office would like the same professional music service programmed by the music curators who do Comfort Dental Radio, check our All Access service. It’s a ready-to-go, non-customized music service with a wide variety of channels designed for a single office or a several locations.

If your dental/medical office is ready for a branded custom channel with music and messaging created just for your single facility or multiple locations, please contact us.

Here’s an update to a blog I wrote last year about how the Billboard Hot 100 music chart is created.  The Billboard chart matters.  It’s been around since November, 1955 (there were also music charts prior in the 1940s and 1950s). Back then, three music areas went into making the Billboard chart position – sales of singles, airplay reported by disc jockeys at AM radio stations, and plays on jukeboxes.

The Billboard chart is still an important way to measure the popularity of music in 2013, but wow, have the monitoring systems changed over 57 years. Jukeboxes and DJ’s at AM radio stations are gone; Internet videos and digital downloads are mainstream.The Billboard chart matters today because labels, managers, artists and the media judge a song’s success, or failure, by the Billboard chart. Did it have a bullet? Did it reach top 10? Is it Number One?

The Billboard chart matters for historical purposes. Music fans, trivia nuts and the media cite chart numbers as fervently as sports fans cite baseball or football statistics. “Which artist had the most number one singles in 1988?”The source for such questions and answers is always the Billboard Hot 100 chart.Data gathering seemed much simpler when there were only three ways to listen to music in the 1950s (buy it, listen on the radio, listen on a jukebox), albeit the data was rife with exaggeration and manipulation. Modern life has given birth to so many ways to listen to, be exposed to, buy, share and stream music that’s it’s getting difficult to track it all.

Here’s a glimpse of the ingredients of today’s Billboard Hot 100 chart.  This helps explain the basic idea of why “that song” is number one and why “that other really good song” isn’t.  Of course, there’s a secret formula that goes into the final numbers.  While a song can be massive in one medium it can be absent in another. That’s why Billboard’s goal seems to be to pull together the many music platforms and be the ultimate measure of success in music.

The Billboard Hot 100 chart ingredients

• YouTube video streaming, including Vevo on YouTube
• digital download track sales
• physical singles sales
• airplay from a thousand mostly FM radio stations
• on-demand audio streaming from Spotify, Slacker, Rdio, others
• online radio streaming tracked by Nielsen

Here’s Billboard’s chart explanation.

See this week’s Hot 100 chart (it’s updated every Thursday).

Read here how incorporating videos on to the Billboard chart had a dramatic effect for one song.

Wikipedia has a good history and explanation of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Custom Channels delivers music and messaging over the Internet to business locations. Occasionally, we hear from a customer who is having a problem with their in-store music cutting in and out.  Technically, this is often called “buffering” or “rebuffering” and it usually means the Custom Channels media player is not able to receive data fast enough to play music uninterrupted. The music stops, or stops and starts, or has a skipping effect like the hiccups.

Our music streams require a small, but constant, Internet connection. The typical Custom Channels streams are 64 to 96kbps. We’ve processed our streams so even though the bandwidth is low, the audio quality is excellent. Under normal circumstances, our Internet music service should use 5% or less of available Internet bandwidth.

Usually it’s not the music stream itself that has a problem. What’s causing the music to hiccup is likely also causing other things on your network to run slowly or not run at all. Music hiccups are an obvious first sign of trouble on the network or Internet connection, so it’s worth investigating and solving.

Recommendations for the most reliable Internet-delivered music service:

Corral the Bandwidth Hogs. These can cause all kinds of slowdowns and interruptions. Primary hogs are:

• Public WiFi.  All it takes is a few customers streaming YouTube videos, playing games, listening to Pandora, or downloading photos to put a real crimp in your bandwidth.

• Security cameras.  Many stores stream the security video. The boss might watch the store from another location. If you must stream security video (beyond storing it locally), use a setting that requires less bandwidth. The combination of streaming security AND public WiFi can cause significant slowdown and network congestion.

We recommend to ALWAYS use one Internet service for public WiFi and one for the main business use – this is smart for both security and stability reasons.

Manage your network traffic. Most small business networks are fairly straightforward – a modem and a router with a bunch of computers and devices plugged in to one source. If there’s too much connected to just one Internet connection, it’s like having every electrical appliance and light bulb in your place plugged into one power strip – eventually something’s going to overload or stop working. Creating dedicated bandwidth for Internet music is easy. It’s small, less than 100kbps, and gives the music priority status with bandwidth to keep the music playing without hiccups.

An IT professional can suggest equipment and network configurations such as Quality of Service (QoS) that can ensure all of your network devices (POS, security, music, phones, computers) get the bandwidth they need without interfering with each other or being a Bandwidth Hog.

Do an internet speed check (www.speedtest.net) to make sure your Internet Service Speed is as fast as it should be. Slow speed coming into your location can be a problem for a lot of services you depend on, not just music.  If it’s slow, call your ISP to have them investigate.

Check new computers or new devices may have been installed recently on your network resulting in decreased or slow service all around. Also, check to see if anyone has made any changes to the router or firewall settings.

Custom Channels offers service after the sale for our Internet-delivered in-store music. We rarely have to troubleshoot customer issues but when a problem does crop up, we’re available to help find a solution. No one wants their music to have the hiccups.

My name is Jana Everett. I’m the newest member of the Custom Channels team – the Customer Care Specialist. But more about that later. First, let me tell about my business background and how I arrived at a music company when my experience was in food.

For the past 2 ½ years Custom Channels has been a part of my life even though I didn’t work here. Let me explain. It all started one morning when I was working as a coffee/tea/chocolate buyer for Whole Food Foods Market. There I was stocking the shelves with tea and a great song came on the overhead music. I was singing along and heard “Thanks for listening to Whole Foods Market Radio!” I decided right then and there to figure out where Whole Foods Market Radio was coming from and how I could become involved, figuring it was a Whole Foods Market corporate project. I’ve always had a passion for music and this something special and I wanted to be a part of it.

I did some research and discovered it was Custom Channels music service that created this wonderful, customized music channel for Whole Foods Market. As a Whole Foods Market employee, I loved that we now had our own station where messaging, designed to improve the customer’s shopping experience and boost sales, could be inserted between the great music.

I emailed Custom Channels to see if they were hiring but, sadly, they were not. Flash forward a year. I left Whole Foods Market and took on a new project called Tea Bar, a tea/coffee shop I helped build from the ground up, open and manage. In the process of opening Tea Bar I knew we’d need in-store music. At first we talked of buying an iPod and uploading music maybe weekly or monthly. This gave me anxiety because I knew it would be a lot of work and I’m such a music fan that I would end up obsessing over my playlists. I had to focus on other, more important issues of running a business. But I DID want a cool, unique sound.

So I decided to give Custom Channels a call since I had loved their Whole Foods Market Radio. Would they have a music service for a “small fry” single store like mine? They did! It was a perfect fit for our coffee/tea shop. The installation was easy; the support was very personalized and efficient; the price was affordable for a start-up; and most important to me: the music was stellar. I was again so impressed with Custom Channels that I wanted to work there; but I was starting to manage Tea Bar.

Jump forward another year. Tea Bar was going smoothly yet I still yearned to be closer to a music-centered business. I took a chance and asked Custom Channels, yet again, if they were hiring. This time, they said “yes”.

I’m now a full-time employee of Custom Channels! My job is Customer Care Specialist — partly because I have experience as a store manager and also because I’ve actually used the Custom Channels music service as a retail store manager. My main goal here is to help improve our customer’s experience in a variety of ways.

I’ll be reaching out to our existing music-for-business customers, small and large, to get feedback on our streaming music channels and how we can improve to serve them better. I’ll also go full circle and be involved bringing Whole Foods Market Radio to the next level with music and messaging. In the near future I hope to help our amazing company grow as well as help create an even better in-store music experience.

Yes, I’m gushing about Custom Channels because now I’ve been able to see it from both the outside and the inside and I love what I see.