Business News Digital Media

DIY radio app that pulls music from Spotify or Apple adds on-demand programmes

By | Published on Tuesday 24 September 2019

Stationhead

An app that allows people to make online radio shows where the music is pulled from each listener’s Spotify or Apple Music account has added on-demand functionality.

Stationhead has enabled live radio shows since its launch last November, but now users can record shows and store them, so that other people can tune in and listen at any time. Stationhead DJs chat away through the app while also picking tracks from the Spotify or Apple Music catalogues (whichever they subscribe to). When people listen back to their shows, those tracks will be played via the listener’s Spotify or Apple Music account.

That’s obviously important from a licensing perspective, in that the music is streamed under Spotify and Apple’s licences. And plays are counted by the streaming services, so that royalties are paid to labels, publishers, artists and songwriters as if the music had been directly played within the Spotify or Apple app. Which means the bedroom DJ doesn’t need to worry about licensing and the music industry earns more than it would under an online radio licence administered by a collecting society.

From a licensing perspective, tapping into Spotify and Apple in this way isn’t quite as easy as it might first seem. But Stationhead seems to have official partnerships with the two streaming firms, and counts a bunch of music companies and music industry execs among its financial backers to date.

The company’s founder, Ryan Star, who is also an artist, says that he hopes that Stationhead will allow music fans to introduce artists and tracks to their friends and social network followers, helping said artists and tracks get more listeners, and more streaming royalties.

“As an artist, I know first-hand the value of these music streaming platforms”, he explains. “That’s why Stationhead was designed to get more people streaming and more people connecting around streaming”.

While confirming the new on-demand functionality, the start-up’s COO Murray Levison adds: “Stationhead is the YouTube of audio, and our current growth rate is matching and sometimes exceeding YouTube’s early numbers. In the midst of an audio revolution driven by podcasting, music streaming, and smart speakers, Stationhead is the only social platform built for it all”.



READ MORE ABOUT: | |