Yet another one of my clients asked me today about their employee’s using web radio, as I started to answer him it occured to me this was a better venue to respond, so when the next client asks me I can just point to the response.

So here is what I started writing to him.

Hi Larry,

In regards to your question about streaming audio, here is my take.

Other than the obvious loss of productivity while folks search around for what they want to listen to.

1. Streaming Audio (like web radio) uses a portion of the bandwidth we purchase from BellSouth, so the more people listening to different streams the less bandwidth is available for our folks doing real work on the internet, like research, remote connections, timely mail service, ect. We do not have unlimited bandwidth, we purchase a fixed amount and the connection is just like a car with a governor on it. It ain’t gonna go any faster or in this case move anymore data.

2. The more streaming that is going on, on our internal network the more sluggish the response will be for people doing real work. Remember that music is traveling around our network as digital data and competing for resources on the network just like all the other data moving across it.

3. Anything we do on the internet carries some amount of risk, although we run industrial strength antivirus and antispam software, there is always the risk of something coming through. The best way to limit this exposure is to only use it for business related issues. Of course this is no guarantee we won’t pickup something, but short of porn sites, music sites have the worst reputation for being infected

I know my views on this are not popular and I will admit, I loose this battle at some clients, where they are willing to put up with the list above. My job is not to tell you how to run your business, just to point out things you may not have considered. Personally I really don’t internet radio anyways, real radios are really inexpensive nowadays, use no bandwidth and are not targeted by degenerate spammers and script kiddies.

So I hope that answers your questions, and you will see a charge on the next invoice for a Kevlar vest to protect me from your employees :>)