CBS Pulls Web Audio Content Together with Radio.Com

Jul 21, 2010 10:00 AM, By Mark Krieger

CBS has launched its latest effort at merging its terrestrial and online audio content outlets into a single online platform that promises more than 600 stations along with content-related blogs and other media under an integrated player environment sporting the URL of radio.com, a Web address that other audio media executives can only dream about.

A joint product of the CBS Radio and CBS Interactive Music groups, radio.com represents the culmination of efforts to join the family of CBS music, information and sports on-air radio formats, including some HD Radio multicast content with interactive online music services including industry giant Last FM.

Included in the feature set are deep links to Web content from all CBS stations, including blogs, news feeds, and video and audio. Likewise, artist information, biographies, photo galleries, touring status and a list of references to similar artists are available via Last FM.

A quick tour of radio.com reveals that CBS has aggressively engineered the site to maximize and leverage ad integration at every level. Not surprisingly, social media services including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace are also included in the mix.

Among the more interesting interactive applications is a free download of Scrobble, which allows users to build a complete profile of all artists listened to for later reference and applications such as ranking. The application will also make recommendations and create personalized radio stations based on the dynamic user profile. CBS is also aggregating Scrobble data, using it to build rank reports and trend databases that serve as a foundation for additional blog content.