Mobile app Stationhead is bringing more music into its platform. The service lets users try their hand at DJing, turning playlists into a radio-like broadcast on the app. It started using just Spotify’s API, but has now added access to Apple Music.
Users need a subscription to one of those services to host a broadcast, but listeners don’t need to be in the same ecosystem as the DJ to tune in. And that live listening angle is critical to the founders’ vision. “Music is the social glue that gets them to talk,” founder Ryan Star told TechCrunch. The host can share whatever thoughts or details they want during the show. Listeners can interact by adding tracks to their own stations or by reaching out to the host. “Because we’re agnostic, we go cross platform, there’s no barrier to be transmitting out to everybody now,” Star said.
Stationhead is currently available for iOS, with Android to come in the future.
As you at RAIN know, RadicalIndie has been allowing full broadcasting across platforms on Chrome, iOS, and Android for a year, so nothing new here except the label music via licensed services.
But you wrote that “users need a subscription to one of those services to host a broadcast, but listeners don’t need to be in the same ecosystem as the DJ to tune in”. Then how are artists etc getting paid?
If I have a hundred listeners who don’t have paid subscriptions then they are listening to my major label music for free, and commercial-free presumably, meaning no monetisation of all those listeners.
What am I missing?
Thanks Tom. Are they getting paid by Spotify and Apple Music?
As far as I can tell from the TechCrunch article, yes. Not in set penny-rates, but by being counted as a ‘listen’ by any paid subscriber, meaning the artist/label gets their pro-rata portion of the total subscription pot. This limits the usage to paid subscribers, even as ‘followers’, but does compensate creators.
But this ‘agnostic’ approach will only work with mainstream music. As soon as a hosting Deejay plays anything not on all umbrellaed services, listeners tuned in via paid subscriptions to any service lacking that track will get dead air. Would you wait around for three minutes to hear if the next song is in your service’s library?
Got it, paid subscribers only.
“that means you’ll need a subscription to one of those services in order to listen”