MONTREAL – Featuring made-in-Quebec technology music fans can be their own DJ with Radiolibre.ca.
Astral Media said today that “the new year is getting off to a rousing start for music enthusiasts who… have an incomparable freedom of choice in music listening and access to a mega play list with the arrival of www.radiolibre.ca – a new personalized service of musical discovery on the Internet, in both French and English.” 
(Standard Radio part-owns a similar type of service: www.icebergradio.com.)
Radiolibre.ca is designed to give users the opportunity to listen to – or create their own – musical profiles tailored to their tastes. “They become the DJ of their own programming, and can share their favourite music with other users, thereby enabling music buffs to swap songs and discover previously unheralded local and international talent,” continues the press release.
"We wanted to create an entirely new concept that features interactivity, allowing users to share their passion and musical knowledge with fans of the same genre of music and with the collaborators and guest-artists whose musical selections will be geared to the discovery of new talent," said Denis Rozon, the vice-president general manager of radiolibre.ca, a division of Astral Media Radio.
Radiolibre.ca is based on “highly advanced technology developed in Quebec as part of the CIRANO (Centre universitaire de recherche en analyse des organisations) project. This technological know-how is the result of breakthrough research by professors at McGill University and l’Université de Montréal, in collaboration with Double V3, a leading developer of applications for the music and media industries,” adds the release.
In its first month of operation, radiolibre.ca will offer close to 400,000 songs – including more than 100,000 Quebec songs. Comprising such genres as techno, rock, jazz, blues, hip-hop, classic, country and punk, radiolibre.ca is able to tailor its content to each listener.
Radiolibre.ca users will have access to a profiling engine as well as “comprehensive editorial content that is updated on a regular basis, with artists’ biographies and discographies, articles on the origin and history of the various music genres and news about upcoming concerts, regionally and nationally,” says the company.
One of the key differentiators, says Astral is that Radiolibre.ca is committed to providing a showcase for home-grown groups “who need exposure to be better known but are unable to do so because of the more rigid structure of commercial radio,” says the release.
“Radiolibre.ca also hopes that it becomes a meeting place for people that live outside the major centres so they are able to discuss their music selections with a wide audience.”
There are two types of user access – a general access to all that is free of charge and one for subscribers that offers higher quality audio, the opportunity to download and edit as many music profiles they want as well as listen to archived programs and exclusive pod castings.
Pricing details were not released and the site was actually up and down this evening when cartt.ca tried to check it out.
