Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Open Source Radio

KYOU Radio (broadcast as 1550 AM [KYCY] out of San Francisco and streamed online at kyouradio.com) bills itself as the world's first "open source radio station," obtaining all its content from podcasts. It will be interesting to see who else picks up on the concept, and whether it could prove to be an antidote to the current slump in the radio industry.

The station is an underperforming asset owned by Infinity Broadcasting. In this news story, the new format is described as "experimental."

UPDATE: A slightly different take from an article in Business 2.0, which, while speaking highly of podcasting, says that MP3s, and not radio (online radio especially) are the wave of the future:

[D]igital music is the first big market that allows mass customization. With an iPod/iTunes or Creative Zen/Napster combination, I can create my own radio stations, sans ads. It doesn't even cost much. Companies like Napster will rent you as much music as you want for $15 a month.

UPDATE 2: Not to be outdone, Sirius satellite radio announced its own podcast show, to be hosted by former MTV personality Adam Curry. The show will debut May 13.

No comments:

Post a Comment