Canada’s youth now have one more thing to do online instead of studying. They can check out FatPipeRadio.com, an Internet radio service offering 11 channels of music and entertainment aimed at the 18-to-24 crowd, launched in time for back-to-school. Toronto-based Iceberg Media, the folks behind the new service, point to results of a recent Statscan survey on radio (which found the younger Net-obsessed demos were getting their musical fix online more and listening to the radio less), as a reason this new national vehicle should be a boon to advertisers. Molson Canada seems to agree with this logic, as it’s a charter sponsor and the exclusive beer sponsor, a deal done through Mediaedge:cia.
Iceberg Media president/GM Ted Boyd says they were only looking for five anchor sponsors – ‘we know this is a demo that doesn’t want to be put upon’ – and has GM and others interested in the remaining spots. Sound Source Networks is handling media and sponsorship opps. Commercial time is limited to four minutes an hour, which Boyd encourges advertisers to use in longer formats than 30s, like 90s or two-minute ads. The site takes registration, requiring some classifiers such as date of birth, gender, etc., and when a player launches FatPipe can control what audio and video the listener sees, coinciding content with the buffering time.
Boyd says they could reach a secondary demo of 25 to 30, but as to skewing younger, he thinks not, given the post secondary-targeted marketing efforts and musical mix, saying that they would ‘probably be developing a product down the road addressing the younger demographic.’
Boyd says they looked at the IcebergRadio.com database and saw what 18- to 24-year-olds were listening to, which informed the musical genre picks behind the channels: Fat Rock (alt rock), Pop, Clubber, Chill (lounge), Sirens, Metal Asylum, Double Latte (adult album alternative), Whammy Bar (classic rock), Under the Radar (Canadian indie), F-Beats (unedited hip hop) and the Mix Tape (mixed format). The service will also have Webcast concerts and events, interactive channels for posting, swag and contests. And columns. One is by Tony Clement (former Ontario Health Minister and MPP), who’s a friend of Boyd from university, and according to Boyd, very knowledgeable on music, while another is by Jeff Stone, an indie Toronto musician doing a biweekly piece. Boyd promises a lot more indie content will be developed.
The sale of music downloads via a hookup with PureTracks is another planned addition.
Not entirely under the musical umbrella, FatPipeRadio.com is also home to a dating service for post-secondary students, the backend of which is helmed by People2People.com.
To get the word out, there’s a guerrilla marketing campaign of wild postings and street teams targeting students across Canada, and info in campus orientation kits, handled by Grassroots Advertising. They’re hyping a contest for two to fly to Toronto to see Brit rockers The Music, and the site has interviews with those artists, which will become part of an archive of video interviews being compiled. Iceberg, which operates the broader portal IcebergRadio.com as well as various private -abel streamed music entities, is a division of Standard Radio.
