From yesterday's Wall Street Journal: "With all the talk about satellite radio services Sirius and XM, it's easy to forget a much bigger competitor to regular radio: the Internet.

"While just 3.4 million Americans subscribe to satellite radio, about 19 million listen to Internet radio each week, according to research firms Arbitron Inc. and Edison Media Research. That's still tiny compared with the 277 million who listen to regular radio each week, but the number of Internet listeners has grown fast. Just three years ago, only 11 million listened to Internet radio each week.

"That growth has caught the attention of the big radio broadcasting companies, both for the threat it implies and the promise it offers...

"Perhaps the clearest signal yet of how serious broadcast companies are getting about Internet radio came in the middle of last month. Clear Channel Communications Inc. -- the nation's biggest radio broadcaster, with 1,200 stations -- hired Evan Harrison [pictured right] away from his position as general manager of the Internet's top-ranked AOL Radio Network, to lead Clear Channel's online radio efforts.

"Also last month, Radio One Inc. of Lanham, Md., the largest owner of radio stations directed toward African-Americans, paid $56.1 million for a majority stake in Reach Media Inc., in part because Reach has a Web site with some 700,000 members...

"The distinctions between Internet-only radio and broadcasters' online offerings may soon blur... For example, after Clear Channel hired Mr. Harrison away from AOL, the broadcaster said it might consider consolidating some of its online offerings and making them generic. That means, for example, that instead of simulcasting several different country-music stations online it might offer just one Internet country-music station that isn't tied to any particular broadcast station. In other words, it might move toward the model of Internet-only radio...

"Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Radio is trying to lure broadcast listeners to its site by offering programming that mimics that of popular broadcast stations. 'Music played on your favorite local stations,' the site boasts, 'but with fewer ads, no DJ chatter, and less repetition.' Listeners can pick from choices that sound like more than 1,000 stations around the country, identified by name and call number...

"The MSN stations have a total of about 260,000 listeners per week, compared with 1.7 million for AOL's radio service and 1.6 million for Yahoo's LaunchCast, according to research and consulting firm comScore Networks Inc., of Reston, Va., and New York-based Arbitron. No independent service measures the online versions of broadcast stations, but the top ones are estimated to have thousands of listeners each.

"For now, most people listen to regular radio in the car, while most Internet radio listeners, according to Arbitron, tune in at the office. But that could change -- and the competition for online listeners could really heat up -- as home networking systems become more popular and especially as wireless Internet access expands...

"The real boom in Internet radio should unfold over the next few years with the development of technology that would allow Internet users to travel around large areas and keep their connections, much like cellphone users can. Various companies are working on different versions of such technology. Widespread mobile Internet access eventually could even allow consumers to get online right from their moving cars. Internet radio receivers could wind up on the dashboard right alongside regular radio tuners, much as satellite radio receivers are becoming standard in-car options today."

This entire article, from the Wall Street Journal, is available to subscribers online here.