The current state of Web radio -- like the Web generally-- is largely busy reproducing the history of broadcast radio, linking the Web as social technology to marketing, and marketing to the "penetration" of new spaces and new consumers. But while radio developed in different ways across the world, the Web is developing around a distinctively American model. That is, in Europe radio broadcasting was was at the start more state regulated and organized according to notions of 'public service', while in North America radio systems were market oriented from the beginning, with content influenced more by the interests of commercial sponsors than ideas about 'serving the nation' (Scannell and Cardiff, 1191; Lewis and Booth, 1989).

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