Playdio Launches New Era For Internet Radio

Kudos Records have today launched the Beta version of their new Playdio service. The world’s first fully interactive, on-demand radio service, Playdio (Playlist Radio) allow listeners to enjoy music shows exactly as they were intended - with full-length tracks - and at a time and place of their choosing.Till now licensing rules have meant that broadcasters have been unable to legally deliver podcasts containing full-length tracks from established artists. To sidestep this Playdio will initially use Spotify to deliver fully licensed and interactive, on-demand radio shows.Meanwhile talks are ongoing with other streaming platforms and Kudos is keen to ultimately make Playdio platform independent.The first presenters to produce Playdio shows include Phill Jupitus and Phil Wilding, whose Perfect Ten podcast has racked up over a hundred thousand subscribers – and that’s despite being unable play a single track.Other inaugural Playdio shows come from the likes of BBC presenters Peter Curran and Mark Webster, Record label Wah Wah 45’s boss Dom Servini, and popular internet broadcasters Jon Verry and Barry Guffy with their The Carriage Clock show.These initial Playdio shows are Spotify playlists, which combines the spoken word ‘tracks’ recorded by the presenters with the selected music the producer wishes to play in their show. Accessing a Playdio show is as simple as clicking on a link, which opens the playlist Spotify.As with all Spotify playlists Premium users will be able to cache shows to listen to offline or on the move. And thanks to Spotify’s new social media integrations their shows can be easily distributed through the likes of Twitter and Facebook.Playdio stands to benefit everyone. Show producers are finally free to create (and get paid for) the shows that they want, unencumbered by the tyranny of the playlist. Producers are paid per stream for their spoken word tracks in exactly the same way as the music’s rights holders.Rights holders stand to gain from the monetisation of a new revenue stream, and like Spotify itself they will benefit from anything that encourages Spotify users to upgrade to premium accounts.Finally and most importantly, consumers get the benefit of shows produced by true music lovers which, for the first time, are truly interactive allowing them to skip back and forth across tracks and with one click find out more about the artists whose music is being played.Welcome to 21st Century music radio.Said Danny Ryan, Managing Director, Kudos Records “We are delighted to declare Playdio open for business and very proud to be able offer such a fine selection of opening shows from the likes of Phill Jupitas and Phil Wilding, Mark Webster., Dom Servini,and Peter Curran.On demand, interactive radio seems like such a natural idea. As much as people have embraced services like Spotify it’s also clear that in a world of unlimited musical choices we still need people with passion, knowledge and experience to help us pick our way through the music maze.”http://www.playdio.com/