In a national hookup across all its stations dmg Radio CEO Cathy O’Connor has this morning announced a future focused business initiative that positions the company strongly as part of the digital future.
dmg has entered into a joint venture with Rdio (www.rdio.com), the digital music service started by the creators of Skype. This partnership expands the musical footprint of each company, bringing a richer experience to dmg Radio’s audience while providing Rdio with a strong platform for growth in the Australian market.
As a natural extension of broadcast radio, Rdio’s on-demand features enable dmg Radio listeners to explore more music by the artists they discover through the network’s curated listening experiences.
Rdio, which entered Australia in January of 2012, is an on-demand digital music service with over 15 million songs that fans can discover, play and share across the web and mobile devices, even offline. Rdio’s rich social discovery features allow fans to find new music through friends, people with similar taste, critics, radio personalities, and even the artists themselves.
“This ground breaking partnership demonstrates the changing face of dmg Radio as the media landscape evolves,” Cathy O’Connor told staff in the national meeting.
“35% of our listeners use streaming music services and we’re committed to evolving to meet their changing behaviours, be that via broadcast, digital and mobile platforms. Rdio brings a strong global track record in developing leading edge technology to the partnership and we were particularly impressed with the social elements of the service, around the discovery and sharing of music.”
As radioinfo has often noted, radio needs to engage with online music and online retail services to ensure its evolution into the future. Today’s world first announcement by dmg is an example of a future facing alliance that embraces online music services as partners not as competitors.
Drew Larner, CEO of Rdio says: “We’re very excited to join forces with dmg Radio to jointly grow Rdio in Australia. dmg Radio has a strong history of innovation in an increasingly fluid broadcast environment and is passionate about delivering quality music programming to their listeners. We believe this is a perfect union of broadcast and technology co-existing to create a better experience for everyone in the ecosystem.”
Further uniting the offerings of both companies, dmg Radio brings extensive curation, cross-promotion and strength in customer acquisition to the partnership.
High profile radio personalities will be able to reach their fans in a whole new, social way and share their musical favourites with their followers beyond the airwaves to Rdio. Working with dmg Radio will help Rdio reach even more of Australia’s vast community of avid music enthusiasts, proving there is strength in diversity.
Launched in August 2010, Rdio is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded by Janus Friis, one of the creators of Skype.