 RAIN 1/8: Songza launches personalizable radio service, looks awfully familiar ·Jan 8, 11:12 AM SONGZA ALSO DEBUTS CURATED 12-SONG RADIO-LIKE PLAYLISTSOn-demand music service Songza recently launched Songza Radio, a personalizable streaming service that resembles Pandora, Last.fm, Slacker and other sites that build a station around a suggested artist. As VentureBeat points out, however, “the problem is that it looks a lot like Pandora,” from both a design stand-point and the available features (for example, there are “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons to rate songs).
VentureBeat prefers the second of Songza’s new offerings: Songza Sets, a series of 12-song playlists that are delivered like an online radio station. That is, users can skip tracks, but not go backwards. Though the playlists are only 12 tracks long, they center on interesting themes (“2009 Breakups,” for example) and provide details on why each song was chosen. Songza is promoting the Sets service as an alternative to the “lack of high-quality music programming” found among Internet radio stations, as the company’s Peter Asbill stated. Each playlist is created by Songza’s “expert team of music curators.” Find out more about Songza’s offerings from VentureBeat here. NEW YORK’S WCBS IS RADIOTOWER.COM’S BEST ONLINE RADIO STATION OF THE DECADEOnline radio search engine and aggregator RadioTower.com has published its Top 10 Online Radio Stations of the Decade, as well as the Top Searches for Online Radio Stations in 2009. The 10 best online radio stations were picked based on “newsworthiness, playing ground-breaking music or offering major innovation to the market,” RadioTower.com stated. New York’s WCBS-AM topped the list, with Arabic station Radio-Tunis following in second and the University of Vermont’s WRUV-FM in third. The full list can be found here.
RadioTower.com’s top searches for 2009 include queries for individual stations, genres/formats and locations. The top search of 2009 was for BBC, followed by “Christmas Music,” “New Age” and “House.” “Chicago” came in at fifth. The full list can be found here. SLACKER UPDATES ANDROID APP TO INCLUDE STATION CACHING, ADDS ABC RADIO CHANNELSlacker Radio has updated its Android mobile app to version 2.0, which includes the ability to cache streams for listening when an Internet connection is not available. Stations can be cached with or without a Wi-Fi connection and though the feature is meant for Slacker’s Radio Plus subscribers, non-subscribers can cache stations for up to 14 days as well. AndroidGuys.com has more on the story here.
Meanwhile, Slacker also debuted an ABC Radio channel, which lets listeners skip news segments from programs like Good Morning America and Nightline as they would music. Find more from Radio Ink here. OXENFORD LISTS 2010 PREDICTIONS FOR RADIO AND WASHINGTON2010 promises to be “a most interesting, and potentially frightening, year” for broadcasters, industry attorney David Oxenford writes. He predicts the biggest issue for radio in the new year will be the proposed broadcast performance royalty. Such a cost enforced upon broadcasters would be a “severe blow” in the face of decreasing revenues.Other issues to expect from 2010 are the growth of LPFM stations, the continued digital transition, as well as the the effects of broadband roll-out, network neutrality and the regulation of wireless and wired carriers. You can find Oxenford’s full discussion of what to expect from the new year at his Broadcast Law Blog here. share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
CommentCommenting is closed for this article.  Other stories RAIN has upgraded (and moved)! RAIN 9/13: RAIN Summit Chicago takes place today! RAIN 9/12: First Summit in RAIN's hometown takes place tomorrow RAIN 9/9: Summer holidays, "doldrums" impact July Webcast Metrics, but audience up over last year RAIN 9/8: Clear Channel launches new customizable iHeartRadio beta; RAIN goes hands-on RAIN 9/7: Meet more speakers you'll hear at RAIN Summit Chicago in less than a week RAIN 9/6: Clear Channel taps The Echo Nest to take on Pandora RAIN 9/2: RAIN reviews Spotify's radio-like product Artist Radio RAIN 9/1: UK online radio aggregator Radioplayer campaigns b'dcasters to create "all radio" ratings RAIN 8/31: Execs from Merlin, Triton Digital, jacAPPS and more to appear at RAIN Summit Chicago |
