Boutique Group Chat for Internet Radio Station

Internet radio is booming!
Since 2008, the number of people listens to Internet radio is growing significantly. A year before, in 2007, traditional AM/FM radio audience was declining, based on Arbitron research company, who becomes Nielsen Audio today. Another research by Triton Digital shows that last year, in 2014, almost half of 124 million people in America listen to Internet radio, to be exact the number is 47%.

With the growing number of audiences, here comes the question, how can we create a better experience for our audiences?
Based on the data from two most respective research companies: Triton and Nielsen Audio, we really have to consider Internet radio station as a serious digital media to convey message.  The power of Internet radio is in its casual listening experience, that enable people listen to online radio while they doing other activities. We have discussed how radio chat room is able to create a better experience for radio station. Availability of chat for Internet radio station will create a very interactive way of old-fashioned phone and conversation between radio DJ and audience.

Chat for Internet Radio Station and Its Audience

The staggering number of Internet radio audience is really something to be taken seriously by radio station operated on the Internet. Within 4 years, from 2010 to 2014, the number of online radio audience has increased 20% and most of them are listening the radio in their smart phone or desktop computer/laptop. Surprisingly, majority of Internet radio audiences come from 12-24 years age group, the age group whose preferences can change within second and they can easily switch channel. For this age group, radio station must be able to catch their attention to make them keep listening to the station without switching channel.

It is important for radio station to engage audiences more actively, one of which is to invite them in giving their feedback or create an online conversation. We have seen in the previous article  of what RumbleTalk chat for internet radio is capable of in energizing a live event.  Actually, html chat platform provides the most convenient way for both radio station and audience to communicate and interact.
Why?

Stylish look - A Chat for internet radio
Stylish look – A Chat for internet radio

Synced Chat for Internet Radio Station

The number one reason is its easy installation. A chat room should not need a complicated setup in your Internet radio station website. Our infrastructure provide the best of Internet chat platform available today. With an HTML5 technology, we have the most powerful chat technology, you can embed chat in any where you want and it will fit right to the space you allocated.

The most time consuming activity to register to a new service is the registration process. Users will just left the service when they found out the service requires a complicated registration. That will not happen when chat platform has social media integration . Users can login to your chat using their existing Facebook or Twitter account. With more than a billion of users, Facebook is just like an Internet ID for everyone. So, when chat platform is installed in your website or Facebook page, your audiences can join the chat using their Facebook account.
Very simple and easy…

The other important thing is multiplicity.
One distinctive feature of html web chat platform is synced (synchronized) chat room.  Chat for Internet radio can put the same chat room in both web page and Facebook page, and messages posted in different place synced automatically across all chat rooms. This gives wider audience opportunity to chat in a multi channel. With this synced feature, people who go in web page chat room will be able to communicate with those who enter Facebook page chat room, as if they are in the same chat room.

What is Better for Internet Radio Station?

We have to admit there is none better than online dialogue solution for Internet radio station. It is the best way to engage audience in the 12-24 age group than opening multiple channel.  We already know the type of anxiety disorder affecting this age group called FoMO (Fear of Missing Out).

People who struggle with FoMO are wrestling to balance the peer pressure with their self-actualization.  Helping them by giving choice so they can chose something based on their personal preferences is the least radio station can do to help them to chose something on their own, not based on peer-pressure.

With our synced chat, people only see the other people sending chat in the conversation. They will not be able to know whether the other parties are sending message from Facebook page chat or from another website. They can only see that there are other parties participating in the chat room.

This synced chat is also providing great benefit for radio station. They can install the same chat room in multiple places:  Facebook pages, their websites and also their partner website with ease, because knowing all the chat room will be treated as one chat room with html chat platform.

Find out more on our Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Create your own group chat for live event >>

Compare between Chat Service and Chat Software for radio shows?

You spend time and money in building your online radio show website. You have a great player software to play your audio and music. But you wish to have a way to engage those listeners that like what you have to offer. The best way is using a chat-room next to your live audio stream. This will allow you to easily talk to your listeners, get their remarks, feedbacks and change the playlist if needed.

Chat rooms are a great way to create a live vibrant community.
It becomes very easy this days to add one to a website. There are many options in the market. Now, in essence, you will need to choose between 2 type of chats and once decided this will make pinpointing your preferred vendor  easier.

  1. Type 1 : Install a chat room software on your server .
  2. Type 2 : Add a hosted chat room where you do not need to install anything on your servers.

Chat software

The pros and cons of each choice are detailed below.

Chat Room Service 

With chat service, you add a small piece of code to your HTML page (snippet).
And you are done. All is being taken care of.

PROS

  • Easy to add
  • Create several chats with a click.
  • No upgrades are needed, all is being done by the chat room service providers.
  • No servers to maintain.
  • No extra man power is needed.
  • No performance issues when the server is loaded with users.
  • Create many chats as you like with a click.
  • You can design your own chat room style.

CONS

  • Monthly subscription to cover maintenance costs and the servers and bandwidth costs.

Installed Chat Room Software

A software is something you buy and install on your shared server or on your dedicated server.

PROS

  • One time payment normally for one chat.

CONS

  • Require installation. Not always easy.
  • If installed on the same server as your web-server, it might cause slowness to the whole site in case the chat is loaded.
  • If you use a shared hosting, you probably will not be able to install a chat as hosting companies avoid this kind of potential server load.
  • You will need to upgrade your server when a new chat/feature will be released.
  • You should keep your server maintained.
  • Make sure you have the extra man power to deal/test it.
  • Might cause performance issues on your server that might result in the upgrade to your server.
  • You may create only one chat room.

To sum it up, the logical choice would be to install a hosted chat room (meaning using a chat service) and not install a software as the world find the cloud hosted services as the future and in the long term it saves a lot of money (and frustrations).

3 reasons to use chat room on your radio station website

Online Radio station website owners are often using chat rooms to engage their audience websites. Since radio stations are now doing their streams online, we were curious how they transitioned from offline to online. Not many are successful in their endeavors, but we chose from our customers who loved using chat rooms on their radio station website.

We asked Radio station Owners (online radios and traditional radios) customers what is the reason they choose to add chat to their online radio station website. Here’s what they shared with us.


We group those into 3 main reasons.

Engage
Engaging with audience gives immediate feedback to the radio host. This help tune up the message / music to the the people.

Response
The radio host is always in need to respond to his audience. In live shows, where questions and answers are the basic of the show, the host gets additional perceptive on the issue from his audiences and some can also talk among them self and advice each other.

Community
Creating a community around a topic or a live show is a powerful thing. People have additional reasons to return and listen to the show.

In addition to these three core reasons, there are some customers that like the fact that you can design your own chat room style.

Want to create a your own radio chat room? Sign up for RumbleTalk.