Santa Monica College's KCRW, which has already attracted a relatively large online following for its webcasts, doubled down on its digital strategy with a new web-based streaming application that lets users choose mix and match radio segments into their own customized stream.
The service has a slick, easy-to-use, multipane interface with components that slide out of your way as needed. Segments and mixes can be embedded on blogs and social networks, which should help KCRW's reach grow significantly.
The service, still in beta,
"isn't another media player that offers listeners all these features inone place," according to Anil Dewan, KCRW’s Director of New Media.
"The goal was to create a player that offers listeners the ability tolisten to our streams or watch video while also encouraging them toexplore – and bookmark – the station's deep on-demand archive."
I've been testing this out on-and-off for a couple of days now, andhave been pretty impressed. Yesterday, the audio would shut off whenI tabbed to another window, but today it still streams when I'm lookingat something else – a crucial feature, if you want to keep their shows running while you do other stuff. The social networking integration seems to be working well too; I added a segment to my Facebook profile without encountering any problems.
Still, the player is still in beta, and apparently some bugs remain. A KCRW representative said the new player will roll out to the general public at some point within the next couple of weeks.
