The concept of “call to listen” seems to be growing. This started on ethnic stations and apparently is widely used in Asia. Rather than needing a smart phone with a data plan, if you have any phone with unlimited long distance, you just dial an ordinary phone number and the radio station audio server answers.
For instance, if you call 202-380-9977, you will start hearing All News WTOP in Washington DC.
The motivation for radio stations isn’t very clear. They probably can insert targeted ads. I don’t know (yet) if calling the number then allows the radio station to call or text you back. AudioNow Seems to be the folks behind much of this.
Any opinions? Guesses?
It would not take a lot to add the numbers to the directory (other than finding the numbers)
Many of their research initiatives involve breaking into the programming to ask listeners to complete surveys specific to the country they are listening to. The app and call to listen allow them to reach (and with other databases categorize and find) immigrants from particular countries. Judging by the verbiage on the website and the bios, this can have both commercial and political implications. Organizing for immigration reform is one of the achievements listed on one of the principals bios.
Okay, that begins to explain things. It’s pretty inexpensive technology and if they break in to the programming to solicit information, they could build up a useful profile to pitch stuff to…
It is interesting how business adapt to take advantage of price structures, in this case between digital calls and digital data.
A decade or two ago, it was the reverse – use VOIP so that people could make phone calls on their cell phones via WIFI without using their “minutes” of calls included in their monthly plans.
Today, most stuff is via the internet protocol. Even my HD TV on Verizon uses it to send me video streams when I request them by changing the channel on my cable box.
Just a little benchmark of how far we’ve come – in the early days of FindanISP (1999ish), for web hosting, the going rate for bandwidth (peering and transit) was about $1.00 per Gigabyte. This server is in a well connected top of the line data center in Dallas Texas – the $20 monthly fee includes 3,000 Gigabytes a month. I’m pretty sure that is fully burstable, meaning it will go whatever speed it needs to satisfy the demand, up to 100 MB per second.
I saw a Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow in 1995 documenting something similar – the price of computing power over the last 20 years (1975 – 1995). In 1995 it cost $1 to get the computing power that would have cost $1 M in 1975.
Another 20 years has passed and I could not imagine living with Windows 95 on a Pentium with 8 MB RAM and dial up AOL.