AOL Radio
AOL Radio powered by Slacker (formerly AOL Radio powered by CBS Radio, and prior AOL Radio featuring XM) is an online radio service available in the United States only. It has over 200 free internet radio stations.
AOL Radio can trace its roots to two companies it acquired on June 1, 1999, for $400 million: Spinner.com and Nullsoft. Spinner.com was formerly known as TheDJ.com. Nullsoft was the maker of the popular Winamp and SHOUTcast products. Both new organizations operated out of the same office in San Francisco. The Spinner.com brand was retired in July 2003, but exists today as an AOL Music blog and a series of channels on AOL Radio.
AOL Radio launched as Radio@AOL, essentially a rebranded Spinner.com, using technology from RealNetworks on October 16, 2001 as part of the AOL 7.0 software announced that same day.
In its first month of operation, AOL reported that 2.2 million members accessed Radio@AOL, making it one of AOL's most popular features.
Initially, Radio@AOL was available only to AOL members. On May 22, 2002, AOL released the free Radio@Netscape for non-members as part of the new Netscape 7.0 browser. On August 22, 2002, AOL released Radio@Netscape Plus. Beginning in 2004, AOL started metering Radio@Netscape to allow only two hours of usage per day. AOL did this to avoid paying copyright royalties and to encourage users to become AOL members.
On November 28, 2007, AOL announced that they might shut down their web radio services after a 38 percent increase in royalties to air music. Yahoo! and AOL discontinued directing users to their radio sites after SoundExchange, the non-profit performance rights organization that collects royalties on the behalf of sound recording copyright owners (SRCOs) and featured artists for non-interactive digital transmissions, began collecting the higher fees in July.
On April 30, 2008, XM and AOL Radio ended their partnership due to the change in Internet royalty rates. On June 10, 2008, a new AOL Radio player debuted with 150 streaming CBS Radio stations.
On February 4, 2010, AOL Radio banned users outside the U.S. from streaming online radio. An error message points to Last FM. "We're sorry, this station is unavailable from your current location. Instead, enjoy listening to...."
In October 2011, AOL ended its partnership with CBS Radio and became partners with Slacker. They now offer a subscription plan. This new format allows songs to be favorited or banned (rather than using an out-of-five rating system) and allows artists to be banned altogether.
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