AccuRadio is an independent, multichannel Internet radio property founded in 2000 which offers over 975 curated channels of rock, pop, jazz, country, classical, Christian, world music, and more. Though based in Chicago, it is available internationally and reaches nearly one million listeners per month, averaging in at about 500,000 listening hours per day. Between January 2015 and December 2015, AccuRadio listener traffic grew 80%, making it the fastest-growing personalized music webcaster in the U.S.
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Background
AccuRadio is based in Chicago. Their founder/CEO is Kurt Hanson, a University of Chicago alumnus who founded and continues to publish RAIN: Radio and Internet Newsletter from AccuRadio headquarters in the Loop. Their executive vice president/sales is Michael Damsky. Their COO is John Gehron. The company also works with former broadcast radio personalities like Tommy Edwards, Barbara Prieto and Steve Cochran. In 2015, AccuRadio rebranded itself to better target the 35-to-64 demographic of daytime office workers and saw listener traffic jump nearly 35% in a single month.
Web streaming
Based on monthly reports from Triton Digital's Webcast Metrics service, AccuRadio is usually the eleventh most listened to web streaming service among all U.S. broadcast groups that stream online, with about 15,000 Average Active Sessions. Listeners average about 1.71 hours per listening session, nearly triple the session time of competitors such as Pandora and Spotify. The service offers apps for iOS, Android, Roku, and webOS, all highly-rated at around 4.5 stars on the Apple, Android, WebOS Nation, and Roku app stores. In January 2013, AccuRadio partnered with Aha by HARMAN to makes its content available via Aha apps in an Aha-supported automobile dashboards. The service differs from its competitors in its curated-channel approach to music streaming, with popular channels such as "HitKast" (top radio hits), "Today's New Country", "Classic Hits", and "Smooth Jazz" attracting thousands of listeners each day.
Awards
AccuRadio won the People's Voice award for Best Radio in the 2006 Webby Awards, the AccuTunes interface built by AccuRadio won Best Radio again in 2008, and the AccuRadio IOS Handheld App was named an Honoree for the Best Streaming Audio category in the 2016 cycle.