Radio Waves

Imbee is aiming to be the Pandora for kids as well as the Facebook alternative for kids 8-14. Kids definitely need an alternative to Facebook, and imbee might be the answer.

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Fordham University’s WFUV 90.7 FM, a noncommercial radio station in New York, is in the tank — the WFUV Issues Tank, which encourages citizens in communities within its news territory to post about issues that concern them on the WFUV Issues Tank Facebook page.

WFUV Issues Tank student journalists Sara Kugel and Kate McGee — who report on problems including overcrowding in the school system, teen pregnancy in the Bronx, and male victims of domestic abuse for the radio station — will expand upon those topics and subjects mentioned on the Facebook page, with expanded coverage on the WFUV News site.

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Who needs Hallmark? If your Valentine is a fan of NPR, the public radio network is offering eight NPR-themed Valentines. If your Valentine is not a fan of NPR, however, they might get a little creeped out after receiving the message, “I want you like I want Carl Kasell‘s voice on my home answering machine.”

The on-demand social music service Rdio has raised $17.5 million from Mangrove Capital Partners and existing investors Rdio co-founder, Janus Friis, through his investment entities, as well as Atomico and Skype.

Rdio has been on our radar since they worked with the Recording Academy on a mobile app for the GRAMMY Awards. To strengthen its ties to the music industry, the company has now added to its board Warner Bros. Records chairman Rob Cavallo, a Grammy-nominated producer who has worked with artists like Green Day, Dave Matthews Band and Alanis Morissette. Existing board members include Europlay Capital Advisors CEO Mark Dyne, Atomico co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, and Rdio CEO Drew Larner.

With this recent round of funding, Rdio plans to take the service to new platforms and new regions throughout the year. Most recently, the company partnered with Sonos to bring music to home speakers. “The convergence of many factors, including the pervasiveness of smartphones, network robustness, and consumers accustomed to on-demand content make it an exciting time to lead a company like Rdio,” said Drew Larner, Rdio CEO in a statement. “It says a lot that notable investors share our vision.”

The 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards will air on February 13th at 8PM ET/PT on CBS, with or without Kanye West. As part of the “Music is Life is Music” ad campaign, The Recording Academy has partnered with on-demand social music service Rdio on MusicMapper, a location-based application for iPhone and Android.

Users can pick a location, tag a song and write a note to create an audio autobiography that’s pinpointed on a searchable map. Rdio supplies the album art and 30-second song excerpts, as well as powering the music search functionality.

“The Recording Academy is proud to provide music fans with content from Rdio’s vast catalogue through our MusicMapper application and Music Is Life Is Music microsite,” said Evan Greene, CMO, The Recording Academy in a statement. “Rdio proved to be a great partner in this year’s GRAMMY campaign given their like-minded emphasis on the social and mobile music experience, and we’re grateful for their partnership and collaboration.”

Drew Larner, CEO of Rdio added, “it’s extremely validating to have a prestigious organization like The Recording Academy ask Rdio to partner with them on powering the content in their social music discovery application. We have always believed that music is about sharing experiences and we’re glad that industry leaders recognize Rdio as a leader in social music discovery.”

Maria Marín, host of radio show Tu Vida Es Mi Vida, will share 31 personal transformation tips on the show’s newly enhanced Web site, which was created by global digital media company Terra USA and will be promoted on-air by Citadel Media en Español.

The new site also includes videos, columns, exclusive interviews, photos, discussion boards, and other interactive elements.

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What Def Jam did for Hip Hop, entrepreneur Anjula Acharia-Bath hopes to do for South Asian pop music. Today on the Morning Media Menu, mbStartups and GalleyCat editor Jason Boog asked the founder and CEO of Desi Hits! how she turned her company from a podcast of Indian-infused dance music into an online entertainment hub with 1.3 million unique visitors per month and a reach of 20 million listeners worldwide across multiple platforms.

Growing up in Buckinghamshire, England in the Seventies, Acharia-Bath all but ignored her Indian heritage until Desi, or South Asian, culture made its way into British dance music. Unlike the Beatles, who infused Indian classical sounds into popular songs like “Norwegian Wood,” these artists blended pop music from both cultures – a sound that hadn’t yet caught on in America.

In 2007 Acharia-Bath founded a podcast to bring the music of South Asia to the United States, from Bollywood to Hollywood, with surprising results. Today Desi music has hit the U.S. mainstream through artists like Britney Spears, Madonna, Jay-Z and Timbaland, while in India and other countries throughout the world, mobile devices are delivering music to a whole new market. Backed by Interscope Geffen A&M Records chief Jimmy Iovine, the hedge fund D. E. Shaw, and investor Vivi Nevo, Desi Hits! has offices in NYC, London, and Mumbai and recently partnered with Universal Music Group to create a bi-cultural label to promote global stars. Acharia-Bath also made Vanity Fair’s The Next Establishment List for 2010.

In the interview Acharia-Bath gave us a crash course on the global record industry and some excellent advice for startups. Press play below to listen.

WEEI.com reached a milestone in October, as the Web site for Boston sports-radio station WEEI-AM topped 1 million unique visitors, setting its all-time high.

According to OneStat.com, WEEI.com reached the million mark after expanding its online efforts in May 2008, when it tallied 201,059 unique visitors.

Total page views for the site were 5.6 million in October, and its mobile apps and sites drew 95,000 unique visitors for the month.

When compared with May 2008, referral visits from search engines and links rose to 710,000 from 167,500; time-shifted audio-on-demand plays to 572,348 from 80,548; and online audio streaming to 121, 322 from 39,742.

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Internet radio outlet WomensRadio announced the launch of WR Music Channel, a 24/7 all-women’s, all-music channel available as a free widget for embedding on any Web site or blog.

WR Music Channel will feature six separate shows, each lasting four hours, showcasing independent female artists from the United States and the rest of the world.

The six shows are: RocketFuel (pop), Harmonium (singer-songwriters), The Flipside (alternative), Axeplosion (rock), GlobalVision (world sounds), and Afterhours (electronic).

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Northern California public broadcaster KQED has followed NPR’s lead and created a destination news site online, KQEDnews.org.

From the press release:

KQEDnews.org will be frequently updated throughout the day and will feature additional professionally-written stories about issues facing Northern Californians, a news blog “News Fix”, up-to-the-minute traffic and weather, commentary and analysis, and streamed audio of the latest newscasts.

KQED, which includes both radio and television, is also stepping up its radio-borne local news coverage. It has recently added eight staffers, including six reporters, and is expanding the number of its daily radio newscasts from six to sixteen.

“KQED is stepping up to help fill the news coverage void created by cutbacks at other journalistic organizations,” said KQED president and CEO John Boland. Boland came to KQED earlier this year from PBS, where he was the network’s first “chief content officer.”