LOS ANGELES -- Internet radio has found a niche. Lots of them, in fact.
The Internet offers a staggering variety of music streams, from radio stations' webcasts to playlists customized by advanced software.
More than 100 million listeners have tried Web radio and the number of regular monthly listeners has tripled in the last three years, according to ratings agency Arbitron.
Anyone eager to listen to hometown stations from far away can look for a Web broadcast. It's easy to find stations based on ZIP code, country, format and other criteria. And that is only the beginning.
"What consumers go online to listen to, and what works best, is content they can't listen to through traditional sources," says Bill Rose, general manager of Arbitron Internet Broadcast Services.
Clear Channel Communications, the No. 1 radio operator, had seven of the top 25 stations in the Arbitron March ratings survey. However, some jazz and classical individual radio markets were top-10 stations on the Internet, such as Pacific Lutheran University's public jazz station in Seattle, KPLU.
Part of the appeal of Internet radio, however, is the availability of what is not widely popular, industry executives say. "There is the explosion of niches and different genres that are all acceptable," said Raghav Gupta, chief operating officer of Live365.com, where individual disc jockeys -- and they can come from anywhere in the world -- create their own stations. The curious can pick from thousands of those stations -- or set up their own webcasts.
Live365, which also webcasts a number of terrestrial stations, was the No. 1 network in Arbitron's March ratings, with users listening to 7.6 million hours of programming.
But the thousands of stations provided by Live365, with names like morphsounds, BAGeL Radio and Latin Bass Network, may be too much choice for some.
Launch, the music service of Web portal Yahoo, uses software to create customized playlists. It calls its Web radio Launchcast.
"It is a combination of familiar and discovery," Yahoo's general manager of music, Dave Goldberg, says. Launch says it plays about 13 million hours of music per month to listeners, who average two to four hours each.
Both of the services let listeners buy what they hear. Each offers advertisement-supported and subscription radio services.
In the same way that Web retailer Amazon's software suggests albums and novels by comparing what people with similar tastes are buying, Launch lets users rate songs and then searches out hits from listeners who have the same preferences.
Collectively, Launch has 1 billion ratings from users, so it can find matches, Goldberg says.
Web radio works best on high-speed Internet connections, although the technology is still being perfected. Listeners usually need to sit next to a computer.
"Internet broadcast prime time is the work hours," Arbitron's Rose says, adding that many professionals have found 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. the perfect schedule for sitting back and relaxing.
