A few months back TMV staff writer Laura G Thorne examined digital content entrepreneur Michael Robinson’s DAR.fm. Here at TMV we’ve recently read all the hype regarding the recent launch of Turntable.fm – Well, DAR.fm is officially being launched today and TMV believe it will deliver new and more dynamic listener experiences when compared to traditional radio.
The alpha version which TMV tried included a free cloud service for recording radio and at that time access to 500 stations and 1500 radio shows was available. Whilst a good recording service it was not very useful in terms of music discovery. With the launch of DAR.fm 1.0 users will now have access to over 5000 radio stations and 16,000 radio shows.
However, the critical element in this launch is the fact that users of the service will be able to browse the database of radio content, where every show is rated by popularity. The popularity ratings are generated from the measurement of more than 1 million minutes of daily recording users are currently using within the system. Yes, this is very similar to MP3.com, Michael Robinson’s download store and he states “the same strategy can be used to help people discover radio content they would like”.
Michael goes on to state to TMV that DAR.fm “is trying to be the IMDB + Tivo for radio”. Visitors can also use DAR.fm to see what’s popular in their local community since they rank shows/stations by popularity within a region as well. It’s interesting to view the differences between the coasts like NY and LA. http://dar.fm/top_listings.php
DAR.fm claims that more ore than a million minutes of radio are recorded every day. They use these statistics to generate the show and regional charts. These calculations are made once a day. So, rankings within the service are entirely based on user activity.
In the radio universe content is a lot more diverse than TMV realized, with shows focusing on almost every, and any topic imaginable and now for the first time it’s easily discoverable and recordable. Once recordable it can be played back at the user’s convenience including rewinding and fast forwarding to the material that interests them the most. In TMV’s view this really is bringing 19th century radio into the 21st century.
DAR.fm kindly provided TMV with a link to the entire list of 16,000 shows grouped by category as well as ranked by popularity (http://www.dar.fm/topshows). Happy discovering and using radio as you choose TMV readers!
