A dozen new Internet radio stations blessed with a blanket copyright agreement - that's the ambitious plan of music industry stalwart Chris Murphy.
The owner of radio station 2SM, founder of record label Roo Art and former manager of rock group INXS, is planning to launch an online music empire to rival stations recently launched by the Austero network and Web company Spike.
A compilation CD will help market Murphy's upcoming Radio Groove. The station is set to be the first of six genre-specific music channels to be launched by year-end, with another six to follow by mid 2000.
Murphy said he was close to securing "blanket agreements" for copyright issues involved in Internet broadcasting of recorded music.
He declined, however, to specify the total investment behind the stations, saying it may have been anything up to $3 million dollars but, in irreverent style, commented that he didn't really know.
"We will not make the mistake of some who just launched recently... (who were more concerned about) their prospectus and forgot about this thing called the public."
While a compilation CD release is a part of the planned marketing campaign for Radio Groove, it will not be a major source of revenue.
"We don't know what the primary source will be," said Murphy, during a video conference link-up at the Com Tech forum in Coolum. Murphy said his company was working off "guessimations" and that the stations would not use conventional advertising, but use sponsorship instead.
"Radio groove will work in with a product but no such thing as 30-second radio ads that drive everyone nuts. Our radio stations are designed to be seemless."
"We've been working on digital delivery systems for four years. Investigating how broadcasting and music industries will work together in the digital age."
Radio Groove will be followed by other genre-specific stations including classical and possibly reggae, as well as a sports and news channel. A "news flash button" may also activate within the player software as a user is listening to music, to alert them of breaking items.
Com Tech has been enlisted to handle the technology for the radio stations, but as yet no format or player product has been finalised.
"We're still looking at the technology, but it would be multi-rate streaming, with high bandwidth for cable," Murphy said.
