Brighton-based Festival Productions' plan to bring the widest variety of music to people's desktops is paying off as global audiences tune to its web radio shows.

The company's dedicated web radio site was launched last year and broadcasts music ranging from altindie, leftfield electronica and hip-hop to lo-fi, Latin, jazz, country and African.

Managing director Daniel Nathan said the number of listeners had grown steadily and had soared after last November.

He said: "The number of regular listeners is more important than the number of hits on the site and each week we get several thousand genuine listeners around the world."

The keys to the site's growth were developing a market niche and a devoted following.

Mr Nathan said: "We have never thought web radio would supplant or replace conventional broadcasts. But there is a real opportunity to provide the specialist music missing from our FM dials."

He said streaming technology was more robust now. This was important because the site, Totallyradio, was broadcasting to the developing world as well as industrialised countries.

Mr Nathan said: "We have made no attempt to market the site aggressively but we have enthusiastic listeners helping to grow global awareness of it by word of mouth."

Most of the site's programmes are pre-recorded and the company adds up to 20 hours of new material each week. Its archive contains hundreds of hours of past programmes.

Totallyradio can also broadcast live events. The site has a relationship with the Concorde 2 venue in Brighton and broadcast last month's Stereolab concert live. Despite the breadth of coverage, it has only one full-time member of staff and, according to Mr Nathan, most of the DJs "make their contributions out of a love of the music."

He said: "Although infrastructure costs are relatively small and we're growing reasonably fast, there is not much money to be made out of web radio at the present."

www.festivalradio.com
www.totallyradio.com