Today, every Internet user should be able to easily create their own radio station and broadcast free around the World.
This is Radionomy’s Vision. Its reason for being. Its struggle.
A radio station isn’t just a play list that gets broadcast. A radio station is a subtle and well-crafted mix of music, jingles and podcast. There are currently solutions available to create radio stations. Most are only available to professionals and very astute amateurs. However, once the station has been created, its broadcasts and streaming still have to be financed to ensure payment of royalties. These costs can be substantial.
Radionomy’s four musketeers want to provide a tool which is simple to use by making a musical “fund” of 100,000 tracks, jingles and other audio content available to users. To enable every radio station creator to add in their own tracks, jingles and podcast: their sequences, interviews, shows. Radionomy finances broadcasting and artist royalties by adding advertising on a regular basis.
Webradio is a quickly growing field.
A webradio is a radio program broadcast over the Internet, not over the airwaves. In fact, some webradios are simply a FM or AM signal broadcast on the Internet. However, most webradios are exclusively Internet-based. There are several thousand in
Europe already. Webradio can be played on any computer. WIFI receivers are beginning to be sold in the electronics departments of stores and they enable listening without a computer. WiMAX development will eventually enable stations to broadcast as widely as traditional radio technology does.
More than 57 million Americans listen to a webradio every week. 65% of Belgian Internet users have already listened to a webradio at home and 79% have at the office.
Radio: a media standard
Radio accounts for 5.5% of all advertising expenditures in
Europe. This puts it in fourth place. It is also fourth in the
United States, with 7.6% of spending.
Radio is evolving and will not escape the “long tail” phenomena. The FM band has been blocking evolution because of limited bandwidth. The web has removed constraints and allowed for the birth of radio stations which have highly specialized musical programming and content. The era of popular radio calibrated to the preferences of the widest PRA and audiences is over. Tomorrow, everyone will be able to listen to the music they like best and the specialized content that interests them most… Today, everyone must be able to speak freely, with the World as their potential audience…
Radio, the Internet user’s companion of choice
When Internet users are asked about the media they intend to use most in the future radio gets the most votes after the Internet. And radio has been increasing its media share.
At any given time of the day, about 20% of Internet users are listening to the radio. Radio is the ideal media to use with a PC. Radio isn’t distracting. It operates in “parallel”, creates an atmosphere, a mood for activities that are often carried out alone. By giving listeners the impression that they are connected to the outside world, it relieves the feeling of solitude and isolation that Internet users can experience. Radio provides the human touch, a mood and a rhythm to every PC user.
Radionomy: an ambitious project
The Radionomy team is working hard to develop the application everyone will use to create their own radio station. A site dedicated to listeners and producers will round out the set up. A Radionomy player will be available and provide attractive options although any player can be used to listen to the radio stations created with Radionomy. The project scope is European-wide: following a test launch in
Belgium, it will be taken to
France and the
United Kingdom.