The Beautiful Niche: AccuRadio Offers the Perfect Online Home for Beloved Orphan Genres

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.