Lucent Technologies Inc. is licensing to ClickRadio a technology called ePac, which includes encryption to make it harder to copy songs, as well as data compression with better sound quality than many alternatives on the Internet. ClickRadio's chief executive, Hank Williams, is a former music-industry consultant who helped organize some of the biggest live Webcasts that used streaming technology. Another problem with streaming, he noted, is the fact that users have to be connected to the Internet at the time they are listening. The service, set to begin operating on May 11, will include advertising that users hear. Listeners will also have the ability to call up song lyrics and information about artists and advertisers.
Consumers also can help shape what songs they hear.
There are drawbacks. ClickRadio's software and programming starts with 300 songs that take up a whopping 600 megabytes of hard-disk space. While some consumers with fast Internet connections may want to download that large a file, the company will have to distribute disks to reach many consumers. Additional tracks will be downloaded periodically when the user connects to the Internet. Many music enthusiasts, moreover, already have hard disks full of entire albums, much of it distributed in unauthorized files in the format known as MP3.