TORONTO – The country’s largest radio operator, Astral Media, will launch a brand new online music on demand and music streaming service on November 1st, one of its executives said on Thursday.
Speaking at the Ontario Association of Broadcasters’ annual gathering Thursday morning, executive vice-president of Astral Radio Charles Benoit said the new offering from his company will be the first of its kind in North America.
It’s not clear yet whether the service will have its own name or not as Benoit said it will be made available via the company’s popular Virgin and NRJ Radio station brands. Benoit appeared somewhat surprised to find a reporter in the room and referred our queries elsewhere up the Astral chain of command (we’re waiting on a call-back), but he did confirm that the company has signed deals with the big four record labels – EMI, Universal, Warner and Sony – so there will be lots of music, and music videos, available.
He did not say whether or not it would be a paid, or a free ad-supported service, but we're figuring the latter. The company confirmed in a press release on Monday what Benoit had announced and that: "listeners will be able to stream music and video content online and on mobile devices. The service launches this fall across all Virgin Radio stations (Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver) and the NRJ network across the province of Quebec, and various Astral Top 40 formatted stations."
Online music is not a new thing for Astral. Back in January 2006, before it purchased Standard Radio to become the largest radio company in Canada and Astral’s stations were concentrated in Quebec-and-eastward, the company launched the French-language Radiolibre.ca. That service promised to give users the opportunity to listen to – or create their own – musical profiles tailored to their tastes.
Based on technology developed in Quebec, in its first month of operation, radiolibre.ca offered close to 400,000 songs – including more than 100,000 Quebec songs from such genres as techno, rock, jazz, blues, hip-hop, classical, country and punk. It was also meant to be interactive and feature guest artists but it was shuttered amid losses in 2007 as it just didn’t find an audience.
One could say it launched a bit before its time since Astral CEO Ian Greenberg said then he didn’t see radio streaming as a big part of the company’s future and did not buy Standard’s interactive unit (which included the much-ballyhooed Icebergradio.com) when he bought that company’s radio stations.
However, with the development of the online music business, not to mention the growth of social media in the five years since, the timing of this new on demand, streaming venture (no downloads, said Benoit), depending on what it looks and feels like, could be interesting.
"Astral Radio has a strong relationship with the Canadian music industry and this new offering will give music fans new platforms to discover and consume new music and new artists," said Rob Farina, executive vice-president, content, at Astral Radio, in the release.
"Giving precedence to emerging artists, Astral Radio's new service provides the Canadian music industry with a choice platform across the country in both official languages. As well, the service will offer weekly releases, exclusive content, a music video library, customizable playlist functions, and multiple niche format channels," continues the release. "The service was created to fully integrate the possibilities offered by social media, enabling music fans to share their latest finds and favourites."
