Why do some stations restrict their streams to certain geographical areas? Is it a budget thing or do they just want a chosen audience? Other reasons?
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Q. about geofencing
- Thread starter Dave Andrews
- Start date
Streaming is a money loser to begin with. Stations that geofence at least can tell their advertisers that the stream is reaching only people who actually could become customers and not people from hundreds or thousands of miles away who will never patronize a single local business.
the fees for music streaming are not cheap, one person on my FB radio board told me that by geo-fencing to the listening area they were able to keep a full time staffer employed with the money saved.
Streaming outside your listening area brings nothing to the table money wise, you can't get any more money from Mom&Pop drug store because you can get clicks from France.
When times were good and $$$ was rolling in, the extra $500 a week you might have paid in streaming royalty fees may have seemed trivial, in these conditions...every dollar is scrutinized to see what ROI it will bring.
Streaming outside your listening area brings nothing to the table money wise, you can't get any more money from Mom&Pop drug store because you can get clicks from France.
When times were good and $$$ was rolling in, the extra $500 a week you might have paid in streaming royalty fees may have seemed trivial, in these conditions...every dollar is scrutinized to see what ROI it will bring.
I've yet to run across a public broadcaster -- even one with a music rather than a news/talk format -- that geofences, though. Do donations they receive from listeners in far-off places reduce the impact of those onerous fees?
I know of a NPR affiliate in Alaska, in a town of about 350 people, that streams without geo-fencing.
That was my point. All NPR affiliates and most community/college stations as well seem to be out there for the world to hear. A couple around here -- WMNR and WJMJ, playing classical music and pop/soul/country from the '50s through '00s, respectively -- even brag about being available on the Web around the world in their IDs. All I can figure is they're getting donations from their small, far-flung audience that make up at least in part for the expense of putting their programming out there to begin with.
What b-turner said.
Geo-fencing is also required for local stations by many college and pro sports contracts.
Geo-fencing is also required for local stations by many college and pro sports contracts.
Hi!
Signed,
The PD of that Alaskan NPR station
P.s. WE arent just NPR, we play allll kinds of music, as @MRBIboredop can attest to. some of it back to back.. judas priest into garth brooks!
The patterns seem to be all over the map depending on the broadcaster, copyright laws, streaming agreements in place, budgets, and business strategies.
Here in Canada, Bell Media has licensed the iHeart name and actively promotes iHeart (USA) stations in their app. When I listen to WKTU, I hear locally relevant ads inserted into the stream when the station cuts to commercial breaks. I assume Bell has the pieces in place to monetize these streams which offsets royalty and bandwidth costs.
Unlike iHeart, Audacy aggressively blocks non-US IP addresses from accessing their streams. This is true regardless if I use the radio.com app, the website, or access the StreamTheWorld URL directly. Apparently, Audacy doesn't make exceptions for border markets such as Detroit and Buffalo which have significant cross-border audiences.
Someone mentioned in another thread that iHeart negotiated very favourable royalty agreements which may explain why they are the only major broadcaster that doesn't use geoblocking.
Here in Canada, Bell Media has licensed the iHeart name and actively promotes iHeart (USA) stations in their app. When I listen to WKTU, I hear locally relevant ads inserted into the stream when the station cuts to commercial breaks. I assume Bell has the pieces in place to monetize these streams which offsets royalty and bandwidth costs.
Unlike iHeart, Audacy aggressively blocks non-US IP addresses from accessing their streams. This is true regardless if I use the radio.com app, the website, or access the StreamTheWorld URL directly. Apparently, Audacy doesn't make exceptions for border markets such as Detroit and Buffalo which have significant cross-border audiences.
Someone mentioned in another thread that iHeart negotiated very favourable royalty agreements which may explain why they are the only major broadcaster that doesn't use geoblocking.
That's unbelievable, especially in the case of Detroit! Are there Windsor stations that block U.S. IP addresses as well?
for the few listeners you might get, the hassle of keeping track of the songs being accessed from outside the USA and having to pay royalties to the correct agencies, writers and performers is way more trouble than it is worth.
I tested with a Detroit IP address using Windscribe VPN. Pure Country 89 and Virgin Radio do not stream. However, CKLW will stream. Maybe Bell doesn't block CKLW because it's a talk station and music royalties are not a concern. I'm not sure if Bell allowed cross-border streaming during the 89X days since most of their audience was US-based. It seems like all of the major Canadian broadcasters (Rogers, Corus, Bell, etc.) geoblock their streams.
This can be easily automated by someone with basic technical skills in less than an hour. I assume there's an app or plug-in that monitors listener IP addresses and song plays and simplifies the reporting to SoundExchange/BMI/ASCAP.
Browsing through station listings on TuneIn, several mom-and-pop stations from small towns do not apply any geoblocking to their streams and they air commercials from their local markets. The commercials that I hear in the stream are the exact same commercials that local listeners hear over-the-air.
Great Eastern Radio's stations in Northern New England are like that, quite unusual for a chain operation, albeit a small one.
I have brought stuff from the US and shipped it to Australia based on spots that I heard on the station stream I was listening to. It is a bit short sighted to think a small business can't think to want a wider audience than their local area.
And geofencing is so easily bypassed with a VPN.
My question about geofencing is... Why would one station in a cluster (CHR) not be geofenced, but their sister station (Alternative) in the same cluster be geofenced?
It's possible that they figure one station might attract significantly more listeners from outside the air-signal's coverage area than the other...
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