Radionomy was an online platform that provided tools for operating online radio stations. It was part of Radionomy Group, a company which later acquired the online streaming platform SHOUTcast from

Nullsoft Nullsoft, Inc. was an American software house founded in Sedona, Arizona, in 1997 by Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. In later years, their open source installer ...

, and eventually consolidated Radionomy into its SHOUTcast service.

Concept

The name of Radionomy is a contraction of two words: radio + ''autonomy''. Radionomy allows users to create their own online radio or listen to online radio, all created and programmed by users. Through a platform called ''RMO'', they can choose music, chronic and radio jingles or they wish to broadcast their radio. They can add their own audio content including own musical pieces, jingles. Moreover, it is possible to make live broadcasts. Radionomy acquires copyright license for its music content through

SABAM SABAM is one of the Belgian associations of authors, composers and publishers. The bilingual acronym stands for "Société d'Auteurs Belge – Belgische Auteurs Maatschappij". Their headquarters is located at 75–77 rue d'Arlon in Brussels. S ...

. It generates revenue to pay royalties and other operating costs by broadcasting up to four minutes per hour of advertising.

History

Radionomy was founded in September 2007 by four Belgian entrepreneurs: Alexandre Saboundjian Gilles Bindels, Cedric van Kan and Yves Baudechon.

2008

*17 January - Radionomy held a press conference at the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, and announced the public launch of the planned business April 17, 2008. *Late February - the alpha version of the Radio Manager is broadcast from a community of beta testers selected based on their radio project. This is the beginning of the beta test. *17 April - the Radionomy site opens to the Belgian and French public, allowing visitors to listen to Internet radio stations created on the platform. *17 June - Radionomy has released its beta.

2010

*Unknown - after several beta waves, live function is incorporated into all web radios, whatever the creation date and the number of radio listeners.

2011

*February 15 - opening of the feature "Play the radio" allowing all producers radios can have a website pre-designed. *March - the launch of the advertising Adionomy that allows advertisers to broadcast their advertising on the web radios targeting listeners. *30 May - Radionomy invests in Hotmixradio.

2012

*June 28 - Radionomy announces the signing of an agreement with the US digital advertising platform Targetspot. *August 29 - Adionomy board was launched, new governance in the world of digital radio in France. *5 September - Radionomy announces the opening of its US headquarters in San Francisco. *18 September -Radionomy launched G2, the new version of the platform. This includes updates to the site radionomy.com, and the release of the Radio Manager Online online platform which replaced the older Radio Manager desktop application. Facebook, iPhone, and iPad applications were also released. *late October - Alexander Saboundjian, CEO of Radionomy, became manager of Hotmixradio, instead of its founder Olivier Riou.

2013

*18 September - Radionomy won the award "International Excellence in Online Audio" awarded at the RAIN Summit in Orlando, Florida. *December 16 - Radionomy acquired U.S.-based advertising Targetspot.

2014

*17 January - Radionomy formalizes the acquisition of

Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Since ve ...

and SHOUTcast from

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

. However,

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Goi ...

has reported that the sale of Winamp and Shoutcast is worth between $5 and $10

million One million (1,000,000), or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian ''millione'' (''milione'' in modern Italian), from ''mille'', "thousand", plus the a ...

, with AOL taking a 12% stake (a financial, not strategic, investment) in Radionomy in the process.

2015

On 17 December 2015,

Vivendi Vivendi SE is a French mass media holding company headquartered in Paris. Widely known as the owner of Gameloft, Groupe Canal+, Havas, Editis, Prisma Media, Vivendi Village and Dailymotion, the company has activities in television, film, video ...

acquired a 64.4% majority stake in Radionomy. Its shareholders including its employees and U.S.-based investment company

Union Square Ventures Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, Flur ...

, retained its stake in the company.

2016

*26 February - In a lawsuit filed at a California federal court, a group of

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

brands – including

Arista Records Arista Records () is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was previously handled by BMG Entertain ...

LaFace Records LaFace Records was an American record label based in Atlanta, Georgia, that operated as a unit of Sony Music Entertainment from 2008 to 2011 and was historically a part of Bertelsmann Music Group from 1989 to 2004. It was most active and achiev ...

and

Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainmen ...

– accused Radionomy of copyright infringement. The case was settled out of court shortly thereafter.

2017

* AudioValley acquired a majority stake in Radionomy.

"In August 2017, AudioValley acquired the 64.4% stake held by Vivendi in Radionomy Group BV. AudioValley now owns 98.53% of the company's capital."

2020

* On 1 January, Radionomy shut down its streaming service and migrated towards the Shoutcast platform. This move was part of the group's wish to offer all digital radio producers new professional-quality tools to better meet their needs.

2022

* 5 July - AudioValley renames itself to Targetspot, with its focus shifting to its digital audio monetisation business.

List of properties owned by Radionomy

In addition to its own online radio aggregation service, Radionomy owns audio and radio-related digital properties: *Hotmixradio * SHOUTcast *Targetspot *

References

External links

* {{Music digital distribution platforms Belgian companies established in 2008 Internet radio