"Our aim has always been to have as much communication and become a real online community of music lovers," says Interface's Eezee-E. Interface are far from alone in using net radio this way - audience Interactivity is one of its great strengths.

Virgin's James Cridland explains: "There is a lot of scope for giving people more information about what they are listening to, which we've certainly found a very useful part . In terms of interaction, an example is our evening phone-in show - we tried a web chat with them last week, where essentially all the listeners could listen online and comment on what they were hearing . That was certainly a real success, both from the point of our listeners talking to other listeners and feeling much more involved, but also we know from the research that night that people actually tuned in longer as a result. People were telling their friends about it as well. I see the interaction bringing together a community spirit - it works so well with other websites on all areas of life, and there's certainly no reason why it shouldn't work on Internet Radio as well."

RAIN's Editor Paul Maloney notes: "People recognise and appreciate quality - that's a huge part, but I think European radio stations have a much more proactive approach to the Internet than a lot of stations here in the US have. Virgin's website is great - it's so much more than just 'slap up the stream'."

"A webcam, instant messaging, a chatroom - at the end of the day it's communicating with your listeners, and that's what the Internet lets you do, and it allows us to be reactive to them," agrees Alex Stanley of Bristol Music Project.

Others want to take things a stage further: "The audience are also being encouraged to send things in for broadcast - there's a lot of good people who've got the skills to put good media together and this is an outlet for them," says Bristol Broadband Collective's Tony Gosling.

His fellow BBC member Pru Fowler adds: "The beauty of broadcasting over the web is that you don't have to have people listening to it at the time its live, its on a loop or they can go back at a later date where its archived - so there's more than one way in which people can access it 24/7, and I think that's very important."