A radio station transmits its broadcast audio content, including audible advertisements, to listeners over the Internet via an Internet Hosting Service that provides listener access to radio station content. A computing system at the radio station digitizes the audio, and supplies marking information that identifies the beginning and duration of commercials. The digital marking information is supplied with the radio station's audio to the Internet Hosting Service. The Internet Hosting Service maintains a repository of replacement audio commercials along with information about the commercials including duration. Upon receiving the digital marker indicating the presence of a commercial, the Internet Hosting Service selects a replacement commercial of comparable duration from its repository.

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Internet streaming from broadcast radio or television stations is described wherein triggers for dynamic content from internal or external systems cause an encoder system to generate command messages, and to synchronize those command messages with any delays associated with the triggering events. Command messages are delivered through a streaming media distribution system to client media players which obtain or present the dynamic content, in association with any desired configuration changes to the appearance of the media player or the method or manner in which the dynamic content is presented.

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Internet streaming from broadcast radio or television stations is described wherein triggers for dynamic content originated from a system having a TCP Channel to a TCP Distribution Service are received by an encoder system also having a TCP Channel, and cause the encoder system to generate command messages, and optionally to synchronize those command messages with any delays associated with the triggering events. Command messages are delivered through a streaming media distribution system to client media players which obtain or present the dynamic content, in association with any desired configuration changes to the appearance of the media player or the method or manner in which the dynamic content is presented. >

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Internet streaming from broadcast radio or television stations is described wherein triggers for dynamic content from internal or external systems cause an encoder system to generate command messages, and optionally to synchronize those command messages with any delays associated with the triggering events. Command messages are delivered through a streaming media distribution system to client media players which obtain or present the dynamic content, in association with any desired configuration changes to the appearance of the media player or the method or manner in which the dynamic content is presented.

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Internet streaming from broadcast radio or television stations is described wherein triggers for dynamic content from internal or external systems cause an encoder system to generate command messages, and to optionally synchronize those command messages with any delays associated with the triggering events. Command messages are delivered through a streaming media distribution system to client media players which obtain or present the dynamic content, in association with any desired configuration changes to the appearance of the media player or the method or manner in which the dynamic content is presented.

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Internet streaming from broadcast radio or television stations is described wherein triggers for dynamic content from internal or external systems cause an encoder system to generate command messages, and optionally to synchronize those command messages with any delays associated with the triggering events. Command messages are delivered through a streaming media distribution system to client media players which obtain or present the dynamic content, in association with any desired configuration changes to the appearance of the media player or the method or manner in which the dynamic content is presented.

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Radio stations broadcasting syndicated content for which the broadcast automation system is not provided with the artist and title of songs has a software application in an associated computer that receives and analyzes the audio stream to detect songs, and creates a digital fingerprint of the songs. Fingerprints are compared against an acoustic fingerprinting song database to obtain the artist and title of the song. When a match is discovered, the song artist and title are provided to encoding software that inserts the artist and title into the radio station's digital broadcast for receipt and display by compatible radio receivers, and are transmitted on the Internet to simulcast media players of listeners for presentation of the artist and title of songs as they are playing.

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Methods and apparatus for a radio station to communicate station identification and song metadata and audio for songs as they are played to an acoustic analysis system for song recognition to users of the acoustic analysis system.

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An Enhanced Radio Data System for commercial radio broadcasters comprises a subcarrier modulated for transmitting data impressed on the broadcaster's main carrier frequency. The subcarrier data protocol constitutes an enhancement over existing protocols constructed for this purpose by providing the capability for broadcasters to identify themselves both by their program format as well as by the announcements they carry, and by providing the capability for broadcasters to convey more detailed information in a process with greater inherent intelligence. Such intelligence enables: data typing without separately transmitting the definition of the data types; data compression specific to each type of data; and data formatting and presentation based on the specific characteristics of the data types without the need to separately transmit data formatting and presentation instructions.

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An enhanced radio graphic data system comprises an FM receiver, RDS demodulator and decoder, display, microprocessor and memory. The system incorporates a protocol enhancement of RDS involving the redefinition of several bits within the B-block. An accompanying arrangement utilizes data in the C- and D-Blocks to create message streams containing the text data to be presented along with associated formatting instructions.

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