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Digital
Aussie radio firm launches streaming platform
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 25 March 2013
A new streaming music service called Songl properly launched in Australia last week after a soft-launch earlier in the month, and a beta testing period before that.
It is perhaps most interesting because of its owners, Aussie radio firm Southern Cross Austereo. As the internet reaches the kitchen, bathroom and car dashboard, the rapidly growing but still niche streaming music platforms will start to compete head on with more traditional radio services, making any attempt by traditional radio firms to launch into the on-demand streaming music market interesting. The most notable players in this space to date, of course, have been Clear Channel in the US with their service iHeartRadio.
Southern Cross Austereo has partnered with both Universal Music and Sony Music to launch its proprietary streaming service. The new venture, which will have a subscription offer and a limited free-to-use try-before-you-buy option, hopes to distinguish itself in an already crowded market place by including curated playlists from DJs from its sister radio stations.
Songl boss Mark Shaw told theMusic.com.au, when asked about entering an already crowded market place: “Our position is that, despite the hype, revenues for subscription service are very, very small. There was a report that came out of ARIA that said 0.5% of all music revenue was attributable to streaming, that’s $2 million. That’s not a very large number. So we are coming to the market with a desire to educate the market about streaming, and we can do that because we’ve got media support with SCA and their various assets that we can utilise”.
Aside from all the other competing streaming platforms in the Australian market, Songl will also have to deal with vocal criticism from some key indie labels, after independent music digital rights body Merlin announced it hadn’t been able to do a deal with the new platform. Merlin boss Charles Caldas told Billboard: “Merlin tried to have a discussion with the major label proprietors of Songl to license our music, but they simply haven’t bothered to do so”.
