Internet radio is becoming more popular in the consumer market but it doesn’t translate completely, as yet, into commercial environments because of the challenges of providing a 100% reliable quality if service.

No streaming music service or Internet radio will offer 100% end to end availability because they don’t have control of the end to end solution.

These service providers can provide a level of service depending on their own centralised infrastructure however in most cases the real challenges begin once the stream enters the local telecoms network and the local area network.

Broadband providers offer services based on a contention ratio that means in busy times you will be competing for the same bandwidth as your neighbours. In most cases telecoms providers seem to have this well managed although the challenge is constantly increasing as more services become network connected.

Within the local area network things get even more busy. For example a coffee shop needs to offer wi fi for free to compete now. Added to this your own business traffic using that same broadband connection. And lastly, if you are using a wi fi connected device such as a phone or tablet to receive the Internet radio stream, you will probably be then sending the audio output back out onto the wi fi network to Air Play or DLNA wi fi connected devices thus doubling up the actual stream of the original radio.

The result of this is a music stream that suddenly cuts out and you have no idea when it will start playing again or indeed if it will be interrupted again.

Melody Pods’ music services are different in that we offer our services for downloading our music to devices. From these devices you can stream via wi fi.

But also you can consider a local connection to a Bluetooth sound system and avoid wi fi all together. Bluetooth, in our opinion is the best solution for small businesses and it’s our recommendation for businesses using simple sound system solutions.

Even simpler is to connect via a quarter inch earphone jack into the back of a sound system.

These options can make a huge difference to a busy commercial environment. Removing services from broad band and wi fi enables you to realise a highly available and uninterrupted music service to compliment you business ambience, leaving the rest of your business and your customers to maximise the usage of your broadband and wifi services.