Michael Robertson, founder and CEO of MP3tunes, is unveiling a beta version of RadioSearchEngine.com—what he says is the world’s first radio search engine. “There are other directories of A-Z lists of radio stations, but this is the first search engine where any song or artist can be located on stations playing from anywhere in the world. A universal web player for the first time connects to and plays nearly every station offering immediate audio satisfaction and unprecedented user control.”
Uses and examples:
–radiosearchengine.com – Play local stations, locate trending songs and popular shows
–radiosearchengine.com/search/metallica – Get a list every Metallica song playing on radio to listen to
–radiosearchengine.com/search/roar – List all stations playing Katy Perry’s Roar
–radiosearchengine.com/search/beatles – Listen to any Beatles song being broadcast
–radiosearchengine.com/search/chill – Find a list of songs playing on top chill stations
–radiosearchengine.com/search/country – Find a list of songs playing on top country stations
Here’s how it works: Tens of thousands of stations are scanned every 3-5 seconds to get the currently playing song. This index is used to construct a real-time library of ever changing music on the radio all of which searchable. Users can search for songs, artists, station names, genres, talk shows or podcasts.
Listeners are presented with an array of listening options that invite users to move smoothly between a no effort radio experience or a near demand experience. When a song is played additional tunes playing on radio by that artist are listed and playable. A recommendation engine identifies 20 similar songs likely of interest. A chart ranks other popular songs in that genre. A traditional skip button advances to a new related song.
A beta version of www.RadioSearchEngine.com is available immediately to all users.
RBR-TVBR observation: We tried a few songs that it didn’t find. However, it did find mainstream songs quite quickly and suggested alternatives to what it couldn’t find. For songs that weren’t playing at the time, but are on current playlists, it gave a list of stations that would likely play it soon. It was great at finding stations when a format was suggested as well. Very interesting tool for online listening and for finding talk show hosts.
