Online radio services including AOL Radio, Pandora, Slacker and Last.fm have become fairly popular recently and are even available on various mobile wireless products such as cell phones. I will take a look at the effect of online radio on conventional radio broadcasters to see if this means the end of local radio stations.

I seems that local radio stations are on their way to become extinct. They are being threatened by the advance of online and satellite radio. These competing services generally offer hundreds of music and entertainment channels. Some of the channels are even commercial-free. Specifically, online radio has turn out to be quite popular by providing a practically infinite amount of radio stations.

Pandora along with other online radio services have become accessible on wireless audio transmitter and portable devices by installing the suitable app. This increases convenience and mobility of online radio. Mobility has thus far been the main benefit of local radio.

AOL Radio provides more than 200 music channels in addition to 150 national CBS radio stations because it employs CBS radio as its platform. The underlying CBS radio platform "play.it" also permits listeners to make their own customized music channels. This is done by entering the names of albums, tracks or artists. The tracks played on each music channels can also be stored on an iPod for later playback by using 3-rd party tool iGetMusic.

Pandora and other online radio providers have equally started to offer customized music. The user can enter music-related information such as artist, track or album name. These channels will then pick tracks which are similar to the information entered. Thus far, however, competing music services have fallen short to offer similarly fully customized radio channels.

Is the end of local radio near? The growth of competition from satellite and online radio has started to take away listeners from local radio stations. Conventional radio appears to have a awkward time to halt this trend. Online radio is particularly useful for niche broadcasters who have been unable to broadcast due to the high expense and licensing of frequency space.

The big number of accessible stations is a big advantage for online radio listeners. On the other hand, this is a difficulty for online broadcasters. This large number of stations is diluting the number of listeners. Therefore streaming radio broadcasters have found it difficult to be profitable. The lower cost of online radio at the same time permits creation of more appealing content than local radio by serving niche markets and inserting fewer commercials.

Local programming such as news and local events, nonetheless, will remain one of the big benefits of local radio. Moreover, local radio is now improving the audio quality by using digital broadcast technologies versus traditional FM broadcasts which has been a big advantage of online radio so far. Content and mobility will be essential in determining the fate of online and local radio. Online radio provides a large number of alternatives while local radio excels by providing local content. Both online and local broadcasts offer great mobility. As a result it is difficult to predict a clear winner in this radio battle.