Metropol

I thought this was interesting:

Premium Subscription Services set to launch across Scala Radio, Jazz FM, Planet Rock and Kerrang! Radio, offering live radio with no ad-breaks 24/7

In a pioneering move leading European commercial radio broadcaster, Bauer Media Audio is reinventing radio for music-lovers. Radio stations Scala Radio, Jazz FM, Planet Rock and Kerrang! Radio are enriching and extending the live radio experience by launching premium subscription online radio services.

Subscribers will gain access to 20 exclusive online radio stations across genres and music moods, more than 30 on-demand shows, documentaries, artist interview content and special programming.

These benefits are offered in a 24/7 ‘no ad-breaks’, uninterrupted listening environment offering greater choice, control and flexibility, allowing listeners to skip up to 6 tracks per hour via app and web listening, even on live radio.

https://www.bauermedia.co.uk/newsroom/p ... ting-radio

I can't quite imagine how this will work on a technical level (or even from the user's point of view). My reading of this is that it will be the normal, regular stations plus some additional online-only ones. But how will one be able to skip tracks? I'm guessing everything will have to be tightly timed to keep everything 'synchronised'.

Or am I misunderstanding?

There's more on this on the Radio Today podcast. The live track "skipping" works by replacing whatever is playing with another streamed track, then re-joining the (slightly delayed) live feed at the point the "skipped" track ends. Quite a clever solution!

I suppose this is similar to the technology that Absolute Radio use, but on a bigger and more individual scale? Absolute 60s, 70s etc all take a few of the same shows as the main Absolute Radio (such as Breakfast) but still retain their own playlists, which throws up some challenges as obviously they're not going to be able to find songs of identical durations for each decade all the time.

There's an interesting blog post about how they do it for Absolute here here - the main schedule is used by the automation to schedule the sister stations, which includes the potential for the automation to schedule two songs on a Decades station to fill a longer song duration from the main station.

They all use the same playout system as was designed for Absolute Radio to provide split playlists for each of their stations which is used during breakfast and drive.

Presumably the four stations chosen have had RCS installed, so the other stations will need it as well before they have Premium as well.

Yes, seeing it as an extension of the split playlisting on the themed stations makes much more sense. It feels a little limiting to me though, having to match songs by duration over most other factors!

Metropol

Bauer 'premium' stations – no ads, skip tracks

Bauer 'premium' stations – no ads, skip tracks

Re: Bauer 'premium' stations – no ads, skip tracks

Re: Bauer 'premium' stations – no ads, skip tracks

Re: Bauer 'premium' stations – no ads, skip tracks

Re: Bauer 'premium' stations – no ads, skip tracks