New York — AOL, on Tuesday unveiled a revamped version of its popular online AOL Radio Service, http://radio.aol.com, which touts an upgraded online player with additional functions and expand the service’s reach with a wealth of new radio stations, including 150 local CBS RADIO stations and custom channels plus more than 200 AOL Radio channels.
“The new AOL Radio lays emphasis on AOL’s ongoing commitment to provide users with the best all encompassing radio experience available,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President, AOL. “With over 350 streams, 150 of them from CBS RADIO, AOL Radio is unmatched in breadth of streaming audio content available online.”
AOL Radio users, for the first time would have the chance to access an extensive collection of popular CBS RADIO programming, including WFAN-AM and 1010 WINS in New York, KLSX and KROQ in Los Angeles, WXRT in Chicago, and WVEE in Atlanta. In addition, AOL Radio’s 200-plus stations span 25 musical genres, including Awesome 80’s, Fresh 100, and Classic Rock.
When a music enthusiast tunes into an AOL Radio station, an “album view” image is shown in the main window, offering more information on the artist, song, and album on AOL Music. Certain tracks have “Buy” icons that link to download shops such as iTunes for purchase.
Browsers having support for Adobe Flash v.9 can access AOL Radio with no sign-up necessary and users of AIM 6.0 and higher can listen to AOL Radio through the mini-player in their buddy list. Integration with AIM is included in the browser-based player through the “share this” tab, allowing users to share stations they are listening to with their buddies.
Though sadly enough, if you are using a multi-platform chat client, the share via AIM function does not work, and prompts you to download AOL Instant Messenger.
The new player, powered by CBS Radio, allows users skip songs, access the last 30 songs they listened to, add unlimited preset stations, share streams with AOL Instant Messenger users. AOL Radio is part of AOL’s comprehensive music offering which includes AOL Music, http://music.aol.com, and the Web’s most trafficked music site.
However, much is at risk for AOL, which is looking for new ways to increase revenues from online music streaming since a year ago a panel of copyright judges aggressively increased the royalties that online radio providers pay to record labels and artists.
The deal is aimed at increasing revenue for AOL as well as to increase the online audience for CBS. Under the deal, CBS Radio will also sell ads across AOL’s radio service.
“AOL’s deal with CBS Radio was earlier announced in March, replaces a previous deal AOL had with XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.”
Lisa Namerow, the general manager of AOL’ online radio unit, said the company’ music streaming business was still unprofitable, even though recent figures from Arbitron Inc. show AOL has the largest average weekly online audience.
“We really needed to figure out a new business strategy in order for us to stay in business,” Namerow said. “We needed to monetize radio better.”
AOL had been marketing national advertising on its radio service but had scarcely splintered the market for local ads, which traditionally make up the vast majority of radio advertising spending.
The deal with AOL also begins CBS Radio’s campaigns to build up online audiences. David Goodman, the head of digital media and integrated marketing at CBS Radio, said the deal could double the total amount of people listening to streams from CBS stations during peak periods. Today, that figure can be as high as 125,000, he said.
Goodman says he expects online business to be a “huge growth area” for CBS stations following their integration into the AOL radio player, though he declined to give specific forecasts.
The distinct natures of Internet and broadcast radio manage to interconnect well in the new AOL Radio player, now prominently powered by CBS Radio. Since the traditional radio stations have huge blocks of commercials, the user can easily switch over to Internet radio and skip around with much less interruption.
In addition to the new player, AOL hopes to release downloadable versions of AOL Radio for Winamp and the Mac in the near future, and it is working on widgets that will let users access their favorite stations directly from other AOL and third-party applications.