Customized Internet radio

Today's Internet radio breaks down geographic boundaries and lowers the bar rier for audio broadcasting. The listener now has access to a huge growing number of radio stations. However, there are very few mechanisms in place t hat aid the listener in identifying audio broadcasts of his choice. Further more, 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 o n the Internet. The CLR, by managing the metadata of the broadcast content, provides the listener a dynamically selected and personalized radio progra m. This paper introduces the notion of a CIR Station, an Internet radio sta tion with tools to create and manage program schedules for Internet audio b roadcasts. The framework manages broadcast content originating from both lo cal and remote sources. It allows specific radio stations or genre to be sc heduled in time-slots, and provides alerts and dynamic changes based on the availability of a specified content. CIR, by caching live content, also en ables program time-shifting. The CIR uses the Session Announcement Protocol (SAP) to advertise the station information. These announcements contain in formation used by the client to receive the dynamically changing content. A n implementation example of CIR illustrates the enhanced listener and conte nt manager experience. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All righ ts reserved.