Glenn Beck... Don Imus... Rush Limbaugh... Laura Schlessinger... Ryan Seacrest... Howard Stern...... Ronny Kerr? Anyone who’s ever held at least half an opinion has dreamed of getting on the radio to broadcast their mind and voice over the airwaves. While social media services like Facebook and Twitter have made it simple to broadcast your voice over small text updates, no one has yet gone big with radio-style transmissions.
Spreaker, a service that lets you create a live Internet radio show for free, announced Thursday that it has closed a $1.1 million angel round led by a European group of investors, including Zernike Meta Ventures and Italian Angels for Growth.
With Spreaker, anyone can start broadcasting to the Web in a matter of minutes. When you start, you’ll see that the platform looks like this:
It’s elegant and intuitive, even if you’ve never been near a studio in your life.
Any broadcast can be transmitted live or recorded as an audio podcast for later playback. If you choose to broadcast live, it’s a good idea to say you’re doing so on your favorite social network so that people know to listen in. Spreaker also offers an embeddable widget for websites and blogs to further advertise the show being broadcasted.
“Clearly, there was a need in the market for a consumer-focused, superior audio platform that would make it super easy and fun to update your life in audio bursts through social media the same way we keep in touch with one another through Google+, Twitter or Facebook status updates,” said Francesco Baschieri, CEO and founder of Spreaker.
While Spreaker provides easily accessible pre-added sound effects and songs, users can also upload songs from their computer in a minute or so, depending on the size of the file. That said, Spreaker says music isn't its focus:
"Our focus is not on music, but rather an audio platform for people to utilize social media to more easily share their audio content."
The new funding will be used to increase sales and marketing efforts in the US where Spreaker recently opened an office.
