Radical.fm Mixes Personalized Online Radio With Talk

    The beta is only available in Sweden, but Radical.fm is an online radio startup that may be worth keeping your eye on. The startup was founded by is attempting to occupying the same space as Spotify or Pandora by offering personalized online radio. Swedish listeners have access to 22 million “label” songs, all of the indy content uploaded, and the RadCasting and TALK features.

    The hook of the service is that you can publish your own playlists and then have your friends listen to them in real time. The TALK features allows you to add voice and video to your RadCast, giving you your own, worldwide broadcasting radio station.

    Rather than building a radio station around certain song or band like Pandora, or just selecting tags like Spotify, with Radical.fm, you control your station by moving sliders on a mixing board that represent each genre, giving you more control than an on/off switch. You can then give more control by blocking songs, or bands, as well as thumbs upping or thumbs downing music.

    In Finland we recently saw Tuubio try to mix talk and music radio together online, but unfortunately the company shut down. Radical.FM will monetize entirely through listener donations, and will not have advertising, while still paying labels for access to songs.

    The service was founded by Thomas McAlevey, the founder of Bandit 105.5 in Stockholm. After he sold the station to RTL, he started Tom’s Radio in 2000, an early online radio station that reached 40,000 listeners.

    “Radical.FM will change the way online radio is used and perceived,” said Christian Landgren, CTO of Radical.FM. “Artists, bands and music enthusiasts alike all get a chance to create a radio station of their very own at no cost. We’ve built an innovative, highly-customizable listening and broadcasting platform that opens up a new social channel and provides new means by which users can express themselves.”