Musicians’ Services Review: Spreaker
SSpreaker is an online application for creating and sharing live audio content across the Internet. It offers fast radio broadcast services on the web. Within seconds of validating my account I was recording my first live online radio broadcast (Alexa rates Spreaker’s loading times as faster than 61 per cent of other websites), but how does the rest of this Silicon Valley-based service measure up.
In 2007, online radio revenues stood at a reported $500 million. Such figures surely convinced Spreaker’s co-founder and CEO — Francesco Baschieri — that there is a demand for the live broadcast of user-generated live radio streams before they are stored as downloadable podcasts.
Spreaker Logo
According to Baschieri he was “driving while listening to this great podcast,” before thinking, “wouldn’t it be nice if these guys were able to broadcast this live.” His love of user generated content saw the conception of Spreaker.
The website’s rising popularity is evidenced by the increase of 170 per cent in the number of internet users who have visited Spreaker.com over the past three months. Spreaker plays host to several live broadcasts at once, and if the live broadcasts aren’t to one’s taste, there are countless podcasts stored on Spreaker, covering topics as diverse as Finance, Music, and Sport.
In spite of Spreaker’s strengths, some users have expressed concerns regarding the songs that are available via the website’s own database, with one user telling Dotted Music that, “it [Spreaker] doesn’t have any pre-loaded well known songs”. The user was also disappointed with upload speeds, but Dotted Music had no trouble uploading songs.
Spreaker would arguably benefit from some sort of access to Spotify’s song database, but whether the website can negotiate some agreement with Spotify remains to be seen. Another cumbersome aspect of the service is the thirty-second advertisement that preludes the broadcasts – thirty seconds seems a long time for a thirty-minute radio show, while the fact that the advertisement (spoken in a voice eerily reminiscent of Spotify) is usually, if not always, the same.
Similarly to Spotify, Spreaker offers the options of a basic or premium account. At the moment the premium account doesn’t seem to offer enough to encourage the user to sign up, but perhaps offering a greater music database or more front-page coverage to premium account holders will change that.
Spreaker DJ Console
Spreaker use of social media to boost its profile is also a vital factor to its growth since its inception in Bologna, Italy in 2009. With a quick connection to facebook, podcasts can be immediately shared with facebook friends online. Spreaker’s iPhone application also ensures its services can be accessed anywhere at any time.
The website also scores highly in terms of its functional design, and its video tutorials make the whole process an easy one. Spreaker’s development over the coming months will be exciting to watch.
I tip the Italian-American project to shine in the coming months, even if there are concerns over how Spreaker regulates the upload of illegally accessed content for use in one’s radio broadcast. How Spreaker will be affected by the increasingly stringent laws regarding the distribution of digital content remains to be seen, but in Spreaker we have perhaps one of the most promising amalgamations of social networking and music media the web has yet played host to.
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