Discovr Radio Aims To Turn AM/FM Streaming Into a Launchpad For New Music.

Changes are coming to the podcast and streaming AM/FM radio listening app Faidr as owner Auddia embraces a new business model. While Faidr users currently need to subscribe to enjoy the benefits of the AI technology that automatically identifies ad breaks so they can be removed from the listening experience, Auddia will be making all premium AI features free to consumers. In the process, the changes mean that instead of monetizing consumers, Auddia will be monetizing artists who want to put their music in front of mainstream AM/FM streaming audiences.

“The largest group of potential fans remains on radio, listening to music passively, not searching for new artists, even though they are chomping at the bit to hear new, exciting music based on our surveys and research,” CMO Theo Romeo says. “Our new Discovr Radio platform will deliver this experience.”

Unlike other new music discovery platforms, which allow artists to upload songs in the hopes that new listeners will find them among the other songs available, Auddia says its Discovr Radio delivers guaranteed plays to artists, leveraging AI to place their songs into radio feeds as part of a custom programming experience and as unique content during what would typically be an ad break. This gives artists opportunities to be heard by the many millions of streaming radio listeners worldwide.

The new Discovr Radio platform will consist of a new AI Placement Engine and Artist Portal. The AI Placement Engine will aim to put the right new song in front of the right listener, on the right station, adjacent to the right artist, to optimize music discovery and the connection between artists and fans. The Artist Portal will give artists performance analytics on number of total plays, likes and dislikes, demographic data, and facilitate the connection of artists to their new fans. In addition to streaming songs on live radio streams, the Discovr Radio offering will eventually allow artists and labels to launch campaigns on streaming apps to promote new songs, albums, and tours.

“Since running a pilot of our Discovr Program, where we sourced a handful of new artists and inserted them into radio feeds, we’ve been looking for more ways to connect artists with new fans,” Romeo says. “Radio continues to be the perfect mechanism to break new artists, but radio tends only to play bands or tracks that have already gained the requisite popularity. New music platforms like Bandcamp and SoundCloud are integral tools for artists to connect with new fans and even monetize their content, but those platforms only cater to a subset of the total addressable market for an artist.”

The Auddia team expects to release an MVP version of the Discovr Radio platform before the end of the year or early next year supported by a pilot program of participating labels and distributors. And although Faidr will be the first audio app integrated into the Discovr Radio platform, the company is planning to open the platform to other radio streaming apps in the future.

The shift comes as Auddia is evolving its business model from direct-to-consumer to business-to-business, shifting its focus from individual radio-streaming subscribers to artists and labels. Through a modest monthly subscription, these partners gain guaranteed radio plays — offering a new channel for music promotion.

“We’re able to reach and engage artists and labels with far greater precision,” Romeo says. “Our internal research shows a serviceable addressable market of over 100 million prospects. We see Discovr as an accessible, high-impact tool that complements the broader ecosystem of artist promotion — from social media and digital platforms to traditional industry channels.”

First launched as a way to listen to AM/FM radio without commercials, Faidr began offering ad-free podcasts in January 2024 when it made 50,000 episodes of podcasts available, representing the top 200 most popular shows. It gave subscribers the ability to listen to ad-free episodes, giving users the choice between bundling premium AM/FM with ad-free podcasting or selecting a la carte. The company earlier struck content deals with PodcastOne and the Bleav Podcast Network, among others.