“It’s always been a challenge to make it simple to access 975 channels across 60 genres,” admitted AccuRadio Chief Technology Officer Michael Schmitt. His team designed the platform for what has now become over 3.2 million listeners from all demographics—listeners with varying amounts of time and attention to invest in choosing music. AccuRadio standing as today’s fastest-growing webcaster* is driven by its easy and intuitive user interface.

To achieve this, AccuRadio tackles the tyranny of choice. You’d think people would want unlimited options to cherry-pick precise preferences, but that can be daunting and time-consuming. Schmitt’s mission is to make it effortless to access the music that satisfies listeners most—not necessarily what they think they want.

Employers, take note: AccuRadio’s core audience is educated professionals 35 to 64. The right music can boost worker productivity, providing an atmospheric shot in the arm. The powerful person selecting an office’s soundtrack wants to uncap the music and let it flow, not fiddle with it. Typing in artists’ names or experimenting with customizable playlists seems like a lot of work—the last thing people want when they’re doing their actual work. AccuRadio takes off the pressure. One idea:  Magic Sunny After Lunch Energy—Adult pop hits to help you power through your afternoon, which plays songs by Adele, Matchbox 20, Natalie Imbruglia, and others.

Selecting pre-built channels spotlights what’s requested yet also invites listeners to browse and parse and discover. AccuRadio’s curators decide which songs are similar enough to bundle together and which ones are lovable enough to broadcast at all. AccuRadio’s homepage first shows about 12 channels to choose from, with 80 or so more when the user scrolls down.  Even if it looks like a long list, compared to a single search box, tests have shown it’s the right number of options for people to see breadth but also hone in on what a group would most likely prefer. Colorful photos denoting channels on a distinctive plum-colored background are explanatory, inviting, and just plain pretty. And AccuRadio delivers with the fewest possible clicks.

Schmitt, who is 27, said that while a lot of music services look super-clean with ample white space, “it turns out aping what they’re doing is not the way to go. If we expect users to start with only a search box, they’ll freeze up or type in only one band name. The result isn’t likely to keep them listening for hours. When we suggest categories, they find channels that make them happier—that please more of the people more of the time.” One result of this “let it ride” model: AccuRadio users’ average time listening in a session is about three times longer than Pandora’s or Spotify’s.  

Schmitt described how subscription or pay-on-demand listening services “have historically attracted mainly hard-core fans seeking tracks by performers they already know,” he said. “People who can rattle off their top 10 favorite albums. But AccuRadio is a free product that appeals to people who just want to appropriate background music that makes them smile.” Over five years of user testing have shown that when asked what they like to hear, the majority say they like something they can work to, or dance to, or jog to—not specific artists.

When a user searches by an artist’s name, AccuRadio delivers a cohesive mix beginning with a track by that artist. For example, entering Elton John yields dozens of applicable channels, including Classic Rocktopia (with “Bennie and the Jets” as the first song, followed by selections from Talking Heads and Supertramp) as well as Magic Sunny Hit Mix (with “Your Song” playing first, followed by hits from the Beatles and Whitney Houston). Searching for Green Day brings up channels including 1990s Alternative (with “Brain Stew” first, then songs by Nirvana and Limp Bizkit) and Running Music: 6-minute Mile (starting with “Brat,” then AC/DC and Los Lonely Boys selections).

If channels almost suit people’s tastes but don’t quite, they can ban artists, delete specific songs, or just use the skip button. And they can mark channels as favorites to return to them quickly.

Although AccuRadio has seen its greatest growth among desktop users, its mobile app works perfectly well. If an app user’s car has an auxiliary jack, she can connect her phone or mediaplayer to her car stereo and use the skip or volume controls on her dashboard or steering wheel. And Schmitt’s team continues to pursue the best balance between displaying simply on the smallest of screens and offering AccuRadio’s virtually bottomless well of great music. The research continues.

*https://www.tritondigital.com/press-releases/triton-digital-releases-january-2015-top-20-ranker

About AccuRadio:

AccuRadio offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months (January-June 2015) of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers in terms of year-over-year growth rate (Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic).  AccuRadio also consistently has the highest Average Time Spent Listening (ATSL) of all personalizable radio brands. Each month, over a million unique listeners (largely in the U.S., Canada, and Japan) tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.

“It’s always been a challenge to make it simple to access 975 channels across 60 genres,” admitted AccuRadio Chief Technology Officer Michael Schmitt. His team designed the platform for what has become over 3.2 million listeners from all demographics—listeners with varying levels of familiarity with the ways of the Internet. AccuRadio standing as today’s fastest-growing webcaster* is driven by its easy and intuitive user interface.

To achieve this, AccuRadio tackles the tyranny of choice. You’d think people would want unlimited options to choose precise preferences, but that can be daunting and confusing. Schmitt’s mission is to make it effortless to access the music that satisfies listeners most—not necessarily what they think they want.

The online listening experience can be just as rich and pleasantly surprising as listening to a great DJ spinning R&B or rock or classical in the heyday of broadcast radio. AccuRadio makes it straight-forward: Selecting pre-built channels spotlights what’s requested yet also invites listeners to browse and parse and discover. AccuRadio’s many curators, passionate about all kinds of music, decide which songs are similar enough to bundle together and which ones are lovable enough to broadcast at all. Colorful photos denoting channels on a distinctive plum-colored background are explanatory, inviting, and just plain pretty. And AccuRadio delivers with the fewest possible clicks.

Schmitt said that while a lot of music services look super-clean with ample white space, “it turns out aping what they’re doing is not the way to go. If we expect users to start with only a search box, they’ll freeze up or type in only one band name. The result isn’t likely to keep them listening for hours. When we suggest categories, they find channels that make them happier, even if they didn’t realize what they wanted.” One result of this “let it ride” model: AccuRadio users’ average time listening in a session is about three times longer than Pandora’s or Spotify’s.

AccuRadio’s core audience is educated professionals over 35—people likely to entertain and travel and multi-task—people not wanting to hover over a device to keep music going. Typing in artists’ names or experimenting with customizable playlists seems like a lot of work to people on the go. Many use music to set the right atmosphere for exercising, driving, relaxing, housework, or hosting. They can shortcut to previous choices or what’s trending today. Considering new channels is easy, thanks to brief descriptions and pics of representative musicians. For example, click on Tim McGraw’s photo over the title Country Chill—a more restrained country soundtrack for productivity or relaxation, and hear McGraw, LeeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, and the like.

Similarly, the powerful person selecting an office’s daily soundtrack wants to uncap the music and let it flow, not fiddle with it. AccuRadio takes of the pressure and helps identify channels that please more coworkers more of the time. One idea: Classical Concentration—Classical compositions conducive to creative cognition.

Schmitt, who is 27, described how subscription or pay-on-demand listening services “tend to attract mainly hard-core fans seeking specific songs by artists they already know—people who can rattle off their top 10 favorite albums. But AccuRadio is a free product appealing to people who just want occasion-appropriate music.” The homepage first shows about 12 channels to choose from, with about 80 more when the user scrolls down.  Even if it looks like a long list, compared to a single search box, tests have shown it’s the right number of options for people to see breadth but also hone in on what they prefer. And they can mark channels as favorites to return to them quickly

For instance, if a free-form search box is a user’s only option, he might enter “light jazz.” But what’s light and jazzy is open to interpretation, and there’s no telling what an algorithm would produce. So, said Schmitt, “we provide enough curated options to let them connect in their minds with the way experts describe genres and present channels called Smooth Jazz Covers or Super-Mellow Instrumental Jazz or Top 50 Jazz Albums of All Time.” 67 more channels are available in the Jazz category, including Third Stream—where classical and jazz meet and Jazz for Concentration—conducive to clear thinking. Most genres, like jazz, also sort songs by decade of release.

When a user searches by an artist’s name, AccuRadio delivers a cohesive mix beginning with a track by that artist. For example, entering Frank Sinatra in the search bar yields dozens of applicable channels—including Memories and Melodies (with “How About You” as the first song, followed by Andrews Sisters and Frankie Lane numbers) and The Johnny Mercer Songbook (starting with “Something’s Gotta Give,” then selections by Tony Bennett and Louis Prima). Searching for Elton John brings up over 40 options including Classic Rocktopia (with “Bennie and the Jets” first, followed by selections from Talking Heads and John Fogerty) as well as Magic Sunny Hit Mix (with “Your Song” playing first, followed by hits from the Beatles and Whitney Houston).

Although AccuRadio has seen its greatest growth among desktop users, its mobile app works perfectly well. If an app user’s car has an auxiliary jack, she can connect her phone or mediaplayer to her car stereo and use the skip or volume controls on her dashboard or steering wheel. And Schmitt’s team continues to pursue the best balance between displaying simply on the smallest of screens and offering AccuRadio’s virtually bottomless well of great music. The research continues.

*https://www.tritondigital.com/press-releases/triton-digital-releases-january-2015-top-20-ranker

About AccuRadio:

AccuRadio offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months (January-June 2015) of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers in terms of year-over-year growth rate (Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic).  AccuRadio also consistently has the highest Average Time Spent Listening (ATSL) of all personalizable radio brands. Each month, over a million unique listeners (largely in the U.S., Canada, and Japan) tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.

If you think Vice Admiral of StarFleet Command Kathryn Janeway is sexier than Princess Leia, you’re probably gearing up for First Contact Day on April 5, the fictitious holiday meaningful to Star Trek fans. AccuRadio has just the listening experience for boldly listening as you’ve never listened before, to music both soaring and brooding, majestic and mysterious, drawn from Star Trek’s five live-action TV series (to date) and its 12 original motion pictures.

For those not familiar with AccuRadio: As Earth’s fastest-growing webcaster ¹, it’s been introducing listeners to new musical frontiers for over 15 years. Its 975 channels are curated not by algorithms or androids, but by humans. Accuradio’s interface is as easy to use as the LCARS interface in the second live-action TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. And the site’s gold-on-plum color scheme brings to mind the uniforms worn in The Next Generation and third series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

For those not familiar with Star Trek’s holiday calendar: First Contact Day, according to an episode in the fourth series, Star Trek: Voyager, commemorates the first official contact between humans and Vulcans on April 5, 2063 in Bozeman, Montana. It marks a defining moment in human history, honoring the warp 1 flight of the Phoenix, and heralding the formation of the United Federation of Planets. (Festivities on board the Intrepid-class USS Voyager included listening to rock music; giving the open-palmed Vulcan salute; wishing one another “Live long and prosper;” and eating pierogis, the Polish dumplings also savored by present-day Chicagoans, including AccuRadio’s staff.)

The most obvious AccuRadio channel to kick off your First Contact Day expedition is Spock On: The Music of Star Trek, with gems like “Spock Walk,” “Beamed to the Farm,” “Battle for the Array.” About half of these tracks are the work of the great Jerry Goldsmith, who composed scores for five of the films, as well as themes for The Next Generation and Voyager.

Star Trek’s influence on AccuRadio runs deep. Founder and CEO Kurt Hanson probably knows more about Trek lore than that Andorian you met online playing Delta Rising. Hanson still remembers the first episode broadcast in 1966: “I was 11 years old, watching on a black and white Magnavox console TV. Then I started persuading my parents to take us to visit my aunt and uncle when Star Trek was on, because they had a color TV, and after the first two pilots the sets and costumes were designed to show off RCA color TVs.”

Just before launching AccuRadio, Hanson fulfilled a lifelong dream by getting a job as a graphic artist on Star Trek: Insurrection, the ninth film. This also gave him the opportunity to roam the sets of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, which were in production on the Paramount lot at the same time. Hanson designed the animations shown on the villainous aliens’ starships’ computer monitors. Then, once the millennium turned, Hanson was back in Chicago inventing AccuRadio.

And AccuRadio’s Chicago headquarters feature Hanson’s impressive collection of genuine memorabilia from Star Trek’s TV and film sets, which he acquired at the famous Christie’s Auction in 2006. Accuradio’s staff meets at an original-series-era conference table (rebuilt for the fifth live-action series, Star Trek: Enterprise), complete with transponder-like intercoms. Nearby are the 10-foot tall Promenade Mall directory and the Cardassian food replicator from the third series, Deep Space Nine. Of the various costumes he acquired, Hanson claims to have worn only two (in public anyway): the suede field jacket worn by Dr. McCoy in the climax of  the first film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the Kirk-era, green, wrap-around  tunic worn by Captain Jonathan Archer on Enterprise. “It’s stressful to wear such a valuable and historic item to a Halloween party where someone could spill onion dip on it,” Hanson explains.

So on April 5, make it your mission to seek out new genres and artists. Just as there’s no better place to find pierogis than Chicago, there’s no better place to find Trekker-friendly tracks than on AccuRadio.

About AccuRadio

AccuRadio (“Better radio for your workday”) offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months (January-June 2015) of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers in terms of year-over-year growth rate (Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic).  AccuRadio also consistently has the highest Average Time Spent Listening (ATSL) of all personalizable radio brands. Each month, over a million unique listeners (largely in the U.S., Canada, and Japan) tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.

[1] Per ratings service Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20”,  AccuRadio‘s AQH listener traffic grew 80% -- a rate of growth that led all webcasters, topping Pandora, iHeartRadio and others.  

Shamrocks and green beer are all well and good, but the real heart of an Irish celebration beats in the music, the way it holds us together through thick and thin.

AccuRadio, the fastest-growing webcaster, knows how to channel the Irish spirit. It also knows partiers don’t want to dig for the perfect reel or ballad. They want to find the heartwarming and authentically raucous with just a few clicks. That’s why the platform provides fourteen Irish- and Celtic-themed channels—and why its curators have distilled the most fun and rowdy selections into its “St. Paddy’s  Party” channel.

While only some of us have roots traceable to these cultures, many Americans feel a striking affinity with Celtic music. "Even people with no connection to Irish, Gaelic, or Scottish cultures are still likely to find these channels easy on the ears," explains AccuRadio Executive Vice President for Programming Paul Maloney.  "Much of American modern music has roots in Irish music,” he notes. “Since Irish people immigrated in great numbers not that long ago, the people and their music have an outsized influence on contemporary American culture.”

The webcaster’s Celtic channels were originally conceived and programmed by Emmy-nominated Irish singer-songwriter Michael Londra, currently on US tour with his wildly popular ensemble, Celtic Fire. This is no exception: AccuRadio relies on human curators, not algorithms, to craft tailor-made listening experiences. Its dozen human curators are expert radio programmers who are superfans of their genres.

Even after the official party is over and hangovers subside, St. Paddy’s Party listeners often dig deeper into the history of Celtic sounds and check out the other channels dedicated to Celtic music. They include Radio Celt, Calling All Pipers, Celtic Legends, Celtic Love Songs, Celtic Men, Celtic Women, Celtic Rock, Easy Celtic Pickin’s, First Fiddle, Progressive Celtic, Songs of the Sea, and Traditional Celtic.

This deep knowledge and broad range of curated channels explains why over a million unique listeners use AccuRadio for free via its website and top-rated mobile apps. Listeners can sample 975 channels covering a vast range of genres, eras, moods, instrumentation, themes, and more. Or they can just click a well-chosen channel, and start enjoying that rocky road to Dublin.

AccuRadio (“Better radio for your workday”) offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months (January-June 2015) of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers in terms of year-over-year growth rate (Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic).  AccuRadio also consistently has the highest Average Time Spent Listening (ATSL) of all personalizable radio brands. Each month, over a million unique listeners (largely in the U.S., Canada, and Japan) tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.

On Friday, Triton just released its “January 2016 Top 20 Ranker” data, illustrating that AccuRadio continues to be the fastest growing "personalized" music webcast.  Between January 2015 and December 2015, AccuRadio‘s AQH listener traffic grew 80% – a rate of growth that led all webcasters in ratings service Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” (U.S., Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m), topping Pandora, iHeartRadio and others.  

AQH (Average Quarter-Hour Persons) 2015 Growth %:
AccuRadio, up 80%
Spotify, up 46%
iHeartMedia, up 25%
Pandora, up 10%
CBS Radio, down 14%

Year-Over-Year growth %, January 2015 - January 2016:
AccuRadio, up 59%
Spotify, up 49%
iHeart, up 21%
Pandora, up 4%

Source: Triton Digital, Mon.-Sun. 6am-12m, Average Active Sessions, U.S.

What’s driving this growth?  For AccuRadio, it’s audiences who listen at work.

AccuRadio attracts educated, at-work audiences ages 35-64 with focused marketing (“Better radio for your workday”), an interface that has been designed with the workday in mind, and an emphasis on music genres appropriate for at-work listening.  No other webcaster focuses more intentionally on this at-work audience than AccuRadio.

As a result, AccuRadio’s hour-by-hour audience profile looks like your average workday: It quickly ramps up in the morning, peaks at midday, then begins to fall in the late afternoon, with a strong Monday through Friday focus.  Furthermore, unlike most online music services, the majority of AccuRadio’s listening is web-based (i.e., on desktop and laptop computers) rather than on mobile devices.   

AccuRadio’s EVP/Music Programming, Paul Maloney explains, “While everyone else is chasing mobile listeners, we’ve had great success and growth from desktop users.”

Knowing their listeners are hard at work, AccuRadio makes conscious programming decisions to complement the rigors of a workday. “Since we’re often tired and sluggish at the beginning of the day or after lunch, upbeat music can be a great motivator. At other times during the day when you want your mind to focus on a task, and genres of music like jazz or classical can help drown out background distractions, both in your environment and in the back of your mind,” reflects Maloney. 

“All of these are moments where music is a great accompaniment, so we crafted lots of channels with these moments in mind,” says Maloney.

Furthermore, because listeners busy at work don't want to be distracted by having to "babysit" an algorithm-driven playlist that veers off-track musically, AccuRadio boasts a team of human programmers who specialize by genre and hand-pick the music for each of AccuRadio’s over 900 channels.

Based on academic studies, AccuRadio has tapped into a huge market for music consumption.  A study by Dr. Teresa Lesiuk in the music therapy program at the University of Miami reveals that employees who listen to music while working completed their tasks more quickly, contributed better ideas, and reported improved moods.  Another study commissioned by a pair of U.K. licensing organizations concluded that 77% of businesses report higher morale when employees listen to music.

Of course, there's nothing new about the radio industry targeting the at-work audience.  Scores of terrestrial radio stations throughout the years made promotional pushes along the lines of "#1 in the Office” or “Your official at-work radio station.”  But while AM/FM terrestrial radio has been doing it for ages, AccuRadio is the only online service that focuses so specifically on the workplace.

AccuRadio (“Better radio for your workday”) offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work P35-64 demographic.  Each month, over a million unique listeners (largely in the U.S., Canada, and Japan) tune into AccuRadio via its website and its highly-rated mobile apps.

AccuRadio, the fastest growing webcaster, knows it’s coming, every year: the telltale spike in listening to the sounds of romance, sharp as Cupid’s arrow. In 2015, the listenership of AccuRadio’s most lovey-dovey channels jumped in early February by more than 50% from the month before, as hopeful lovers tuned in to hear everything from golden oldies and recent romantic hits, to the romance of Beautiful Music or the yearning of a good country love ballad. Comparing five-week periods, Love Songs-related channels saw a 92% increase in listener traffic.

This year will be no exception with AccuRadio’s Valentine’s flagship channel “Love Songs,” and others like “Classic R&B Love Songs,” “Beautiful Music,” “Oldies Love Songs,” and “Listeners' Top 100 Love Songs” which is compiled based on songs rated by listeners.  AccuRadio will also launch new channels for lovers like “R&B Romance,” “Classic Rock Love Songs,” and even “Romantic Aria” featuring romantic opera compositions. 

But that’s only half the story: Many of us, lovestruck or otherwise, might dread the pink hearts and relentless romance, and acknowledge that sometimes love stinks. That’s exactly what AccuRadio programmer Eric Bowden felt, as a post-breakup Valentine’s Day approached in 2013. He decided to turn the music that had been speaking to him and helping him through his tough times into a playlist for the heartbroken.

“I started with the music I had been retreating into over the past couple of months and expanded it to include other classic songs of breakups and love gone wrong,” explains Bowden. “I really enjoyed building a channel that was less focused on genre, and more centered around a unifying theme.The process of putting this particular playlist together, gave me an outlet for all of my heartache, and definitely helped me pick up and move on. Not everyone is always happy at this time of year, and that's why I'm glad I was able to share.”

Bowden started with a Fiona Apple song, “Werewolf,” that moved him, but soon expanded into other sounds. Like a lot of thematic playlists at AccuRadio, genre is less important than creating a unified set that’s great to listen to, much like a well-constructed radio program on a freeform station might be. “The goal was to keep it listenable with a mix of Indie and Alternative rock, with a few dashes of pop and R&B, and anything else that fit the mold,” notes Bowden. “Love is a Bummer” was born.

The channel may not have the passionate positive outlook of AccuRadio’s love song channels, but they all have something in common: human curators who give listeners the right warm fuzzies. “ A channel like Love Songs is a great example of the power of our human curation,” says Paul Maloney, AccuRadio VP for Programming. “Our music programmers know the material, and understand what works to set a romantic mood -- I really don't think algorithm-driven automation can replicate listening experiences like these as effectively."

AccuRadio (“Better radio for your workday”) offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months (January-June 2015) of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers in terms of year-over-year growth rate (Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic).  AccuRadio also consistently has the highest Average Time Spent Listening (ATSL) of all personalizable radio brands. Each month, over a million unique listeners (largely in the U.S., Canada, and Japan) tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.

Whether you tune in to the radio channels of “Old-Fashioned Christmas,” “Reggae Christmas,” “Smooth Hanukkah,” “Blue and White Christmas” (comprised of dozens of versions each of “Blue Christmas” and “White Christmas”) or “Wait, THEY Made a Christmas Album?” (comprised of holiday music from the least likely artists), AccuRadio’s over four dozen holiday-music channels offer a human-curated seasonal groove for fans of any genre.

And if that isn’t enough to get you in the holiday spirit, AccuRadio has built an interactive charitable giving opportunity into their music experience, too: Each weekday until Christmas Eve (except Thanksgiving), AccuRadio listeners can vote for one of three charities (or a write-in of their choice) to receive a $1,000 donation from AccuRadio.

The results will mean some significant holiday cheer for those in need: After thirty days of giving, AccuRadio will have given away $30,000.

And supporting a charity is as easy as tuning into the online broadcaster: Listeners just have to launch a channel of music and then vote for the charity of their choice.

“We’ve always tried to make charity a part of what we do,” says AccuRadio’s EVP/Music Programming, Paul Maloney. “This is about sharing with our community, supporting people who are doing great things for great causes.”

In addition to listener write-ins, AccuRadio has pre-selected charities spanning a range of causes – no-kill animal shelters, Toys-for-Tots, music education programs, the Heifer Foundation, and a children’s literacy program (Chicago-based Sit Stay Read) that motivates kids by incorporating visits from dogs into their tutoring sessions.

Like the highly customizable listening experience offered by AccuRadio’s over 975 channels of music, Maloney and the AccuRadio team want the Season of Giving to reflect listeners’ broad and diverse tastes and passions.

“It fits in with the essence of AccuRadio. It’s about choice and what works for our individual listeners,” says Maloney.  

About AccuRadio:

AccuRadio (“Better radio for your workday”) offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers (year-over-year growth rate, Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic).  Each month, over a million unique listeners in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, when many music fans simply can’t get enough holiday cheer. From Bing Crosby singing about snow to choral anthems, from the loveliest centuries-old carol to the most ridiculous novelty riff on the season, millions of people tune into AccuRadio to keep the yuletide merry. (http://www.accuradio.com/)

AccuRadio employs the best aspects of carefully curated broadcast radio and the diversity of streaming services.

While many webcasters offer a handful of channels, AccuRadio goes for the gusto, creating channels for fans of indie rock and R&B, as well as more ancient hymns or novelty tracks. (There’s a whole channel devoted to Rudolph and his reindeer games.) The holiday channels are tailored to genres like classical, Celtic, or country, as well as to moments like sitting by the tree, watching the snowfall, or partying with your friends or colleagues.

It’s a strategy—balancing a wide variety of options with careful selection of appropriate tracks—that’s led to the webcaster’s double-digit growth in the last year. In the twelve months ending September 2015, AccuRadio streamed more than 4.2 million hours of holiday programming, with a holiday channel being launched 2.5 million times.

There is something for everyone, even the holiday fan sick of the same dozen carols. For the quirkier holiday music lover, there are non-standard channels featuring newly minted Christmas songs, or lesser-known but engaging vintage tracks many fans have never heard.

There’s a channel that’s all “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” in every arrangement and interpretation imaginable. There’s  ‘Wait, They Made a Christmas Album?’” a shifting set of unexpected holiday songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, the Flaming Lips, and Twisted Sister. The lighthearted approach fits perfectly with the jolly side of the season.

“Christmas is when things go through the roof,” says Paul Maloney, VP for Programming at AccuRadio. “That’s our peak audience time. It begins slowly in the summer, and once Halloween hits, people want Christmas music. They crank it up.”

About AccuRadio

AccuRadio (“Better radio for your workday”) offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work, P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers (as measured by year-over-year growth rate, Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic). Each month, over a million unique listeners tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.

Scale is not the only, and perhaps not even the best, way to imagine the future of streaming online music. Infinite choice and instant access to everything, and music services that brag about offering tens of millions of tracks, may prove less attractive to many listeners than simple gateways to music’s pleasures.

AccuRadio, the fastest growing music-based webcaster in America in 2015, knows the niches and the genres that have a limited but passionate following. The service’s growing success demonstrates how these “orphan genres” can find a home and build a sustainable audience.

Merging old-school broadcast radio know-how with the Internet’s ability to add customization and choice, AccuRadio is pioneering a unique form of online radio.  AccuRadio is the product of dozens of human curators –some with extensive terrestrial radio programming experience, some with a deep personal knowledge of the music they queue up for fellow fans, be they obsessed with the outer regions of jazz, with K-Pop, or with novelty Christmas songs.

“We have infinite possibility to tailor our programming to all kinds of tastes and interests,” explains Paul Maloney, AccuRadio’s VP/Programming. “We can create channels for all kinds of listeners and fans.”

For example, when SiriusXM decided to nix its beautiful music channel, AccuRadio set one up, emulating the radio format that was extremely popular in the early days of FM’s success.  AccuRadio’s “Beautiful Music” channels features such artists as Percy Faith, Mantovani, the Ray Conniff Singers, and the Jackie Gleason Orchestra. And while the smooth jazz sounds of Kenny G have virtually disappeared from the FM radio band, AccuRadio makes smooth and contemporary jazz once again accessible to dedicated fans.

AccuRadio, taking cues from the best aspects of the traditional broadcast model, makes it easy for music lovers to find the exact programming they are looking for and start listening in one click.

“This is part of the culture that’s baked into AccuRadio from the top down. We have the mass-appeal genres of pop, rock, and country music one would expect, but we also want to cover things that are far outside of that, that really matter to certain communities of listeners. If our programmers like it, someone else likes it, too, Maloney says. “We scratch our own itch.”

AccuRadio’s human touch scratches the itch of hundreds of thousands of users, people at work who want to listen to something they like, people who loved the way broadcast radio flows and the way radio stations hone in on a genre or style and keep the tunes coming.

Smooth jazz is a powerful example. Once a popular style on the FM airwaves, ownership consolidation and homogenization kicked the contemporary, relaxing jazz sound to the margins. But it’s a style many people love, that fits nicely into their day, and it’s a style championed by programmers like Rick O’Dell, long-time advocate and lover of the music, who programs that genre for AccuRadio.

“I bring all my passion to selecting the music. It comes from the heart. It’s not an algorithm. It’s a true fan presenting the music,” explains O’Dell. “At the same time, I spent 19 years at flagship contemporary jazz stations, including one of most successful stations in the country. I can offer people all that I learned in curating the channels about which artists and which types of tracks work best. I bring my fellow fans the best of the both worlds.”

It’s this kind of dedication on the part of knowledgeable curators that sets AccuRadio apart from other online offerings and makes it a haven for music lovers.

Other “orphan genres” that have largely disappeared from AM/FM radio but have found a new home at AccuRadio include classical music and mainstream jazz (which many public radio stations across the U.S. have dropped in recent years in favor of news and talk programming), pop standards (by artists like Frank Sinatra, Diana Krall, and Michael Bublé), ‘50s and ‘60s oldies (which have largely been abandoned by FM radio in favor of ‘70s and ‘80s “oldies”), and formats which had transient moments of popularity on broadcast radio like disco, ‘80s hair bands, and R&B-based “Jammin’ Oldies.”

“This is why I got into radio,” enthuses Maloney, who worked at commercial stations for more than a decade before joining AccuRadio. “I love being around music, being part of it, and working with people whose musical insight and feeling and passion go into all they do.”

About AccuRadio

AccuRadio (“Better radio for your workday”) offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work, P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers (as measured by year-over-year growth rate, Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic). Each month, over a million unique listeners tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.

The Best of Both: AccuRadio Merges Broadcast-Style Human Curation and Tech Ease to Spark Remarkable 22% Growth, the Fastest Growing Online Music Radio for 2015

At its best, broadcast radio can have an appeal that billion-song catalogs and computer algorithms can’t replace. Powering the airwaves is a real human, choosing songs with just the right feel. There’s no constant fussing by the listener required and never an arbitrary halt to the music.

Independent online radio service AccuRadio (accuradio.com) captures the beauty of broadcast, but with all personal customization that make online listening great. With nearly a thousand channels of human-curated music, unlimited song skips, no irritating timeouts, and an intuitive mobile app, the service offers the best of the terrestrial and digital worlds.

The human-tech balance has made AccuRadio the fastest growing service of its kind.

Spearheaded by Chicago radio veterans, including respected radio executive John Gehron, the online radio’s easy-to-navigate interface lets listeners start listening and stay listening all day long. Many of the curators behind AccuRadio’s channels have decades of on-air and programming experience. They know what listeners like, and they know music.

“We do more curation than anyone,” says Kurt Hanson, Internet radio pioneer and AccuRadio CEO. “The human factor in programming digital services has been talked about a lot lately with Apple Music’s launch, but for more than a decade now it has been a central part of what we do and what our listeners respond to.”

The proof: Unlike other Internet radio services, AccuRadio has an astoundingly low skip rate, a mere 1 to 2 songs per day per listener. People tune in and let the music play, often for their entire workdays. The mix of familiar tunes and new discoveries, the customizable nature of channels and the careful sub-genre breakdowns, forefront the pleasures of radio, be it that late-night “a-ha moment” when you found your new favorite band, or cranking up the volume when a beloved hit comes on.

“When you launch an AccuRadio channel, you know exactly what you’re going to get. You don’t have to do a lot of work up front to get to what you like,” notes Gehron, who was the programming powerhouse behind Chicago’s “Big 89” (WLS-AM) in the ’70s and ’80s and whose past work includes a building with Oprah’s satellite radio channel. “AccuRadio is built for those who like the traditional broadcast radio experience and want that same feel in new format with a lot more options and stations.”

With human-powered music programming, the service takes a selective approach to onboarding music, making for a strong catalog. Along with new names, AccuRadio features music from everyone from Taylor Swift to Prince to Neil Young, artists not always available on on-demand streaming sites. Using a proprietary system to create channels, AccuRadio’s music programmers can see how tracks are faring on their colleague’s playlists, and that in turn can lead to new programming ideas.

The balance of hand-crafted channels and online flexibility has led to double-digit growth in the first half of 2015 (according to Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers, AccuRadio had the highest year-over-year growth rate of any music-based webcaster), at a time when many online services are facing usage plateaus or declines.

“Unlike most other music webcasters, who build their service from a tech standpoint, we are much more about the music, about the programming,” explains Paul Maloney, AccuRadio’s Executive Vice President for Programming. “It’s built by and for people who have an affinity with broadcast radio model. Instead of an algorithm using a song's key signature or tempo creating playlists, we build channels for people who have a favorite style and want to tune in and enjoy it.”

About AccuRadio

AccuRadio (“Better radio for your workday”) offers over 975 expertly-curated channels of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, country, classical, pop standards, Broadway, Christmas music, world music, and more, targeting an upscale, educated, at-work P35-64 demographic.  AccuRadio is America’s fastest-growing music-based webcaster according to the past six months (January-June 2015) of Triton Digital’s “Webcast Metrics Top 20” monthly rankers in terms of year-over-year growth rate (Average Active Sessions, Mon.-Sun. 6a-12m, domestic).  AccuRadio also consistently has the highest Average Time Spent Listening (ATSL) of all personalizable radio brands. Each month, over a million unique listeners (largely in the U.S., Canada, and Japan) tune into AccuRadio via its website (www.accuradio.com) and its top-rated mobile apps.