Radical.FM (http://radical.fm/) is a new music-streaming service. Launched by a Swedish start-up, it’s a personal broadcasting service (TALK and RadCasting for deejays and talk show hosts) with curated radio (like Pandora), on-demand playlists (like Spotify) and a distribution channel for indie artists.
It offers free, unlimited on-demand streaming with music from all major recording labels and independent artists — at least to all users in Sweden. But don’t worry; more global support is rolling out. Radical.FM’s song and genre selection is compiled of a unique 25 million song catalogue including online rarities like The Beatles, AC/DC, and Bob Seger.
What’s more, Radical.FM offers artists the ability to upload and broadcast their own independently created material worldwide, to access each other’s live streams, and to complement their transmissions with their own live voice and video feed. Less active users can tune in to these transmissions, or simply create their own playlists and/or personal stations.
These independent radio transmissions are known as RadCasts, with Radical.FM providing every user with a complete broadcast radio station including unlimited legal content. This feature set addresses the most significant limitation of the current online radio market, catapults “old-fashioned” radio into the digital age, and makes Radical.FM the most important new player in the online music industry, according to Christian Landgren, chief technical officer of Radical.FM.
“Despite the choices currently available with online music services, until Radical no one has ever challenged the human commentary or musical curation offered by terrestrial radio stations,” adds Thomas McAlevey, CEO and founder of Radical.FM and a pioneer of online radio. “Radical.FM combines the best of today’s cutting edge digital services with the advantages of traditional broadcast radio, including a local connection and personality driven programming. We’re finally bringing terrestrial-type radio into the digital age, providing a platform for professionals and amateurs alike to create their very own radio stations and broadcast them to an unlimited audience.”
Radical.FM reflect users’ musical tastes with a mixer-board style interface to set their preference in multiple music genres. Modifiable, users can create personalized playlists by mixing genres and assigning them individual values. A BLOCK (Artists/Songs) feature allows users to prevent specific songs or entire artists’ catalogs from reappearing on their stations. Users can also Thumbs Up tracks to increase their play, and add tracks to Playlists with Radical’s “+” feature.
The Play-On-Demand function lets subscribers create personal playlists choosing from a music library with over 20 million popular songs. Playlists automatically become available as genres for use on My Stations. Radical.FM will provide all services completely free of charge, and completely free of advertising, relying solely on user support.