The costs for radio stations to go on the new Radioplayer have been announced, with small stations able to be part of it from £90 a year.
Stations wanting to be on the new online console for UK radio will have to pay an annual licence fee to cover operating and set-up costs. The highest cost for bigger stations is £23,000 a year.
The people behind the project – which is a joint effort across both the BBC and commercial radio – have published the rate card as well as style guide that shows how Radioplayer looks and works. Each station will fall into one of five fee bands, ranging from £90 for stations with a weekly reach below 50,000, to £23,040 for stations of over 3.2m. The lowest band enables small Ofcom-regulated independent, community and student stations to join.
A phased rollout of Radioplayer is due to start next month, with a full consumer launch in February. It will offer listeners access to UK radio stations in one simple player. It'll enable them to search across the whole industry for types of music, presenters or even to find a station currently playing a specific song.
Not-for-profit company UK Radioplayer Ltd has been pulling together the shared standards with support from founder partners Global Radio, GMG Radio, Absolute Radio, RadioCentre and the BBC.
Managing Director Michael Hill told RadioToday.co.uk: "One of Radioplayer’s founding principles is fairness – we want to create a level playing field where the UK radio industry can agree on technology, and compete on content. That’s why we’ve published this simple, egalitarian funding model."
Stations wishing to join should read the Terms and Conditions and Style Guide [link=http://www.ukradioplayer.info/]available here[/link], and will be invited to sign up via a simple registration process shortly. There are 3 ways that stations can ‘skin’ their own Radioplayer console:
- Take the common codebase and adapt it using their own developers
Use a third-party console/metadata service, which some firms are offering free
Use the simple player-making tool which will be available through Radioplayer