Emerging Trends of Internet Radio with special reference to Education

Radio is the technology of using radio waves to carry information, such as sound, by systematically modulating the properties of electromagnetic energy waves transmitted through space, such as amplitude, frequency, phase, or pulse width. Radio communication touches the sky day by day. Today the concept of communication has totally changed because of the advancement of internet technology. Internet radio is a baby of this millennium holding the hands of an older technology. Internet radio touches all the possible perspectives of media convergence. Internet radio is also called web radio, net radio, streaming radio, and online radio. It is a digital audio service transmitted via the internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted broadly through wireless.

It can either be used as a standalone device running through the internet, or as software running through a single computer system. A podcast is an episodic series of digital audio or video files which a user can download and listen to. It is often available for subscription, so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web syndication to the user's own computer or mobile phone. On the other hand live streaming refers to online streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast real time. The context of the present thesis is about how the idea of internet radio/audio has taken root in the field of education, entertainment and information.

The internet radio, was in its infancy at the beginning of this millennium, when it was adopted only by people in the developed nations. Of late, it has become affordable in the developing nations like India and other Countries as well. The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed the power of radio broadcasting in the field of development of communication India's Green Revolution in the 60's and 70's, owe a lot to Radio.