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A new way to fund radio broadcasting - MP3 downloads

18 February 2005 3:29 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 1 comment

German radio station MotorFM is determined to transform radio in Germany by using MP3 downloads and streaming music to cell phones. On Feb 1st the station abandoned on-air advertisements and hopes to get its funding from MP3 downloads and targeted sponsoring of its programming. Now they hope next to stream audio directly to 3G cell phones and let listeners purchase music MP3 downloads using a simple text message. MotorFM came from the Motor record label which introduced Germany to Eminem and the world to Rammstein.

The station focuses mainly on hip alternative rock music and electronic music. It was originally founded by three former music executives. Tim Renner and Markus Kuehn worked with Universal Music and Mona R�benstein founded MTV Germany. "We left because Universal and MTV don't support any good music anymore. They're boring," said Kuehn, "In the short term, we don't think that the downloads will be able to finance the station, maybe in two or three years, but that's why we have sponsors,"

Currently the number of songs that can be offered is quite small and includes mainly unsigned and independent artists. They hope to be able to offer much more music soon. Media analyst Tim Crook at the University of London said MotorFM's proposal is "an interesting and alternative way to fund radio broadcasting, the internet streaming could fund the analog music output, but this is only feasible if the music with an anticipated demand is only available on a pay-to-listen basis."

Source:
Wired

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daemonzx6 (Senior Member) 18 February 2005 8:31
That's an interesting idea, although I suppose it will also use DRM. Motor records is cool though, Rammstein is one of the best bands I've heard in a while. They would classify as altrock/electronic, apparently Motor's specialty. I'm intersted in seeing how this works out for them. [ + quote]