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of listening on closed systems, such as Internet
radios, wireless speaker systems and connected
car dashboards. They can introduce listeners to
radio stations – either from other regions of their
own countries or from abroad – that they could not
access on FM, AM or DAB+.
On the other hand, independent, third-party
aggregators present challenges for radio stations
in terms of the data they can collect from that
segment of their online audiences, which limits the
opportunity to deliver targeted advertising to it,
among other things.
It is clear from the responses to egta’s survey
that most radio broadcasters would prefer to
have an established and transparent revenue and
data sharing cooperation model with online radio
aggregators, although that is not the case for most
of them yet.
egta has compiled a non-exhaustive list of radio
aggregator services and their basic feature-sets,
which can be accessed at the following link:
http:/
bit.ly/egta_radio_aggregators.
Introduction
The landscape of radio aggregators is diverse,
with a large number of services available in the
desktop and mobile environments and – in some
cases – Internet radio sets and other connected
devices. They range from sophisticated platforms,
using the latest digital technologies and backed by
considerable financial, marketing and programming
resources, to platforms that are very basic, based
on outdated technologies and appearing rather as
ghosts from the early days of the Internet.
Aggregators differ also in terms of the type
of content they make available, the level of
functionality they offer users and the advertising
models they employ. Some aggregators are the
direct result of cooperation between broadcasters,
other operate in partnerships with some of the
radio stations that appear on their interfaces, while
many have no such relationships in place.
There are also some legally questionable practices
that can be identified, and indeed that have been
subject to legal challenges by broadcasters. The
legal environment in which aggregators operate is
complex, with different types of legislation holding
relevance in different circumstances.
What isclear,however, isthatthebasicfunctionality
of radio aggregators, which is to provide hyperlinks
to publicly available radio station audio streams, is
quite acceptable from a legal perspective.
/ / T h e v i e w f r o m t h e
r a d i o i n d u s t r y
To prepare this report, egta conducted a survey
among its radio member companies to understand
the relationships between radio broadcasters and
aggregator services and to identify the challenges
and opportunities they present.
On the one hand, aggregators offer additional
audience reach for radio stations online, and indeed
they may be a necessary intermediary in the case