Customized Internet radio

Abstract

Today's Internet radio breaks down geographic boundaries and lowers the barrier for audio broadcasting. The listener now has access to a huge growing number of radio stations. However, there are very few mechanisms in place that aid the listener in identifying audio broadcasts of his choice. Furthermore, unlike the traditional FM radio, radios on the network should exploit the Internet and provide features based on information about the content, the content providers and the listener. The Customized Internet Radio (CIR) proposes a framework for managing and customizing audio broadcast content on the Internet. The CIR, by managing the metadata of the broadcast content, provides the listener a dynamically selected and personalized radio program. This paper introduces the notion of a CIR Station, an Internet radio station with tools to create and manage program schedules for Internet audio broadcasts. The framework manages broadcast content originating from both local and remote sources. It allows specific radio stations or genre to be scheduled in time-slots, and provides alerts and dynamic changes based on the availability of a specified content. CIR, by caching live content, also enables program time-shifting. The CIR uses the Session Announcement Protocol (SAP) to advertise the station information. These announcements contain information used by the client to receive the dynamically changing content. An implementation example of CIR illustrates the enhanced listener and content manager experience.