Streaming Radio Stations On the Rise – Jelli Attracts $2 Million In Funding
Internet radio has had a couple of boosts recently, first the deals that Pandora struck with Ford and Pioneer to get their service into thousands of car dashboards, and now web radio/streaming service Jelli getting funding from a group of tech savvy investors including Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, Zappos.com COO Alfred Lin and Apollo Group founder Peter Sperling. Jelli streams music online through its own ‘stations’ 24/7, and already has content deals in place with a large number of FM and AM stations, mostly through a partnership with Triton Digital, whose air-transmitted station affiliations leading into 2010 now exceed 5,000 – up 50 percent from a year ago. Jelli’s system allows users to upvote or downvote songs on a particular channel, the most popular of which get onto the playlist and go out in real time. This has been proven to work on the web, and now Jelli are taking over slots on air stations, such as San Francisco’s 105.3 fm. Users do have to be logged in to vote on tracks though, so if you’re in the car listening you need to have someone to put your votes in using your iPhone…