BRS Media, the minder of the .FM domain, has released its list of 2013 top 100 sites for the domain that concentrates on audio and radio content.
What was the most trafficked site? A Chinese music streamer called douban.fm led the way. The second most trafficked is likely to be more familiar — last.fm. Number three is qingting.fm, a mobile app feeder that is apparently popular in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. Other popular music portals in the top 10 include 1.fm, 181.fm and deti.fm, a Russian children’s station.
It has to be said that the list is heavily weighted with foreign names with Chinese, Russian and Polish sites dominating.
Oddities abound such as lankasri.fm, a London-based Tamil music station; webinar.fm, a Moscow-based webinar station; styl.fm, a Polish “online mews, fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazine;” setlist.fm, “a wiki-like service to collect and share setlists;” Palco MP3, a Brazillian “music-based site for over 67,000 truly independent artists;” and coca-cola.fm, a “branded online radio station targeting young consumers in Latin America.”
Numerous music and talk/news services, music and social communities and niche formats take advantage of .fm. In fact, many of the sites do much more than merely stream music but act more as community of similar-minded music fans and artists.
It should be noted that a large number of clearly unmusical channels also call .fm home, with BlackFriday.fm perhaps characterizing them best, “Black Friday deals online — listed in Mashable’s ‘Top 10 Best Resources for Black Friday.’”
Few American broadcast stations look to have taken advantage of the .fm domain, or at least are highly rated, Pittsburgh’s WESA being the sole representative, squeaking in at 100. Toronto’s jazz station CJRT(FM) accounts for itself well at 32.
Going by the gross listenership numbers between this year and last, it also looks like .fm is increasing listenership at a strong rate.
