NPR will launch a digital music service next year that will bring together thousands of hours of content from NPR programming and its more than 800 sister stations across the country, company officials announced last week.
“From the start, music in all forms has been a cornerstone of public radio,” said Ken Stern, executive vice president of NPR, in a statement. “NPR, public radio producers and our station colleagues are recognized as important music presenters and curators for the public, wherever they are. The digital music discovery arena is a new and barely-explored one, and a logical place for NPR and the public radio system to take a leadership role.”
The central component of the new service, which is expected to roll out sometime in the first half of 2007, will be a Web site that features music from NPR and its affiliates. NPR features more than 600 music segments on its news programming, 1,000 hours of music programs and 1,400 musical performances each year.
Currently, most of NPR’s music can be found online, but it is difficult to track down because it’s spread across a number of sites, said Andi Sporkin, a spokeswoman for thenational nonprofit radio network.
“This will bring all those pieces together so you don’t have to go wading through the NPR site and all the other independent sites to find content,” she said. For example, WGBH in Boston alone has about 10,000 hours of archived content that can be uploaded to the new site.
The site is still in the planning phases and it is unclear if it will offer music downloads similar to iTunes, Sporkin said.
The music service is an outgrowth of NPR’s current music-related features, including its “All Songs Considered” franchise. “All Songs Considered” includes podcasts of live concerts and music from NPR’s popular “All Things Considered” show. Last fall, NPR also launched five HD radio music channels.
