What is it

A specific frequency in FM band is allocated to a radio station. Suppose, a radio station is broadcasting at 100 Mhz. That radio station can offer a paid service to subscribers, that will require authentication too, and allows them to play their selected songs.

Take this example: The user registers for account and using the web-based control panel, he creates a playlist of his favorite songs. When he’s driving, he can tune to that particular broadcaster using a special digital audio tuner (or a radio). He gets connected to the broadcaster’s server and he can then play his selected songs, shuffle them or select songs from his created playlist to be played in his car.

Why is it needed

Just like we have Video-on-demand through mediums of cable, fibre optics or satellite, I think there must be a way to offer Audio-on-demand on FM frequency. We can compare it with VOD offers by a DTH service. Satellite signal in DTH will be replaces by FM frequency and the digital receiver/decoder will be replaced by the digital tuner/radio.

When we are limited to our music selection on a few CD’s or IPod when traveling on car, using this idea we will have access to even tens of thousands of songs. The good things is that all the songs will be on server and only play lists will be saved in each user account. So, no extra storage for each user will be needed except to save the play list.

It will be just like a virtual IPod connected in car with no storage limit.

Where is the money

About the revenue, it will be from two of the sources:

1. Subscribers, who will be paying to avail this service.

2. Advertisers, whose ads can be inserted automatically in the playlist of the users).

The attractive thing for the advertisers is that the users can be targeted according to their demographics (just like web surfers or cell phone users).