Looking forward to meeting you in person in a couple of weeks!

Duke

But, and I hate to say it, the delivery has a bad case of the hiccups. Sometimes they're so small there isn't an audible break but the rhythm of the music becomes disjointed. Actual drop outs are frequent enough that after an hour I had to retreat to my iTunes over wireless network Audio Note and Red Wine Audio office system. I listen to music and streaming talk radio over the 'net all day, so I don't think it's my connection . . .

How do you deal with copyright issues and the like? The reason I ask is because I'm doing a community choir web site and we want to put up at least pieces of their concerts for people to listen to and we're worried about rights issues biting us. It's still in development and doesn't have any sound yet, but for the curious, I've included a link below.

• Concert Choir of Northeastern CT

One thing though, we cannot control the quality of downfeed from a user's internet service provider. Dial-ups won't work well, and if the user's DSL line has a hiccup, the audio stream will suffer. As an example, I've been working out of town and noticed that some wireless connections in hotels are better than others. Sometimes, my audio stream is perfect for several hours straight. But sometimes, the connection is so bad that the station is silent for several seconds at a time. So if you hear several skips or pauses, it might be that the connection to your ISP isn't working well.

About copyrights and royalties, the way our licensing agreement is written, extra moneys are provided for record companies licensing and royalties in addition to those paid for streaming audio service. Anything that isn't owned by record companies is up to us. For example, if we setup a station that played nothing but indie music and/or recorded material that we own, the we would not have to pay the licensed royalties to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC (via Live365). We could sign a waiver and not pay the licensing fees, and instead just pay for the streaming audio server.

Internet radio is an expensive service, which is probably why you don't see streaming audio on any of the other audio sites. It is also becoming more expensive - starting May 15, royaly rates will jump 300% to 1200%. My guess is that broadcasting radio stations must have lobbied to kill internet radio.

• New royalty rates for internet radio