RADIO.COM is a free broadcast and Internet radioplatform owned by Entercom. RADIO.COM functions as a music recommender system and is the national umbrella brand for Entercom's radio network aggregating its over 235 local Entercom radio stations across the United States. In addition, the service includes thousands of podcasts. It was originally created by CBS Radio and was acquired by Entercom as part of the company's takeover of CBS Radio. The service's main competitors are rival station group iHeartMedia's iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. RADIO.COM is available online, via mobile devices, and devices such as Chromecast.
History
The RADIO.COM domain was formerly owned by CNET Networks, which purchased it and tv.com from the nonprofit Internet Multicasting Service for $30,000 in 1996. CNET, and in turn the radio.com domain, was acquired by CBS Corporation in 2008. RADIO.COM launched on July 16, 2010 under CBS Radio. It was originally launched as a central website to stream all of CBS's then 130 radio stations, Last.fm and other CBS properties. Among the original features were currently playing information, song history, station and genre searches, presets, blogs, newsfeeds, and social media tools. Later that year the service launched its first app for iOS. In addition the service added custom channels and music from AOL Radio and Yahoo Music. In 2015, the service added a music video streaming option. These deals eventually ended quietly, especially after AOL and Yahoo's mergers into Oath. Entercom acquired CBS Radio, including RADIO.COM, on November 17, 2017. Throughout early and mid-2018, disparate individual mobile apps and sites for Entercom's legacy stations were withdrawn from the iTunes Store and Google Play, uniting all of Entercom's web and mobile efforts for their properties solely under the RADIO.COM app and website. The CBS Radio stations, which were part of "CBS Local" sites with their former sister television stations, also saw their main web presences moved to sub-domains of RADIO.COM. On June 25, 2018, Entercom announced that RADIO.COM would become the exclusive streaming provider for all of its stations, ending its relationship with the third-party service TuneIn. Stations previously owned by Entercom pre-merger were removed July 6, and former CBS Radio stations were removed on August 1. At that time, Entercom's stations would also begin promoting the service, in particular suffixing "a RADIO.COM station" after their legal station identifications at the top of each hour. Smart speaker integration of the service was launched within the same period. On February 7, 2019, Entercom launched stations for CNN, CNN International, HLN, Bloomberg Radio and Bloomberg Television on Radio.com along with podcasts from Turner Podcast Network via deals with Bloomberg L.P. and Turner Broadcasting. Two weeks later, Radio.com reached deals to add Bonneville International and Cox Media Group stations and podcasts to the platform. On September 25, 2019, Salem Media Group and Alpha Media joined the RADIO.COM platform. In October 2019, the app debuted a feature called "Rewind", where a number of Entercom's spoken word content stations maintain a 24-hour on-demand buffer of programming that can be accessed through rewind, fast-forward and skip back/forward controls. On November 25, 2019, Disney Channels Worldwide agreed to terms to feature Radio Disney and Radio Disney Country's streams on RADIO.COM.
Availability and supported devices
In addition to traditional desktop availability, the service is available via iOS/WatchOS and Android mobile and tablet devices, along with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant-compatible smart speakers and other devices. Holding to CBS Radio's longtime policy, streaming of RADIO.COM content is geo-restricted to the United States. In addition, local advertising from the advertisers of the nearest Entercom cluster of stations to a listener is substituted over a station's own advertising, along with traditional national advertising, public service announcements, and RADIO.COM features such as music news, trivia, and other minutia.
