Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS – 19th of September, 2014

Unified Streaming a leading provider of cross-platform streaming technologies, today announced that RTL France is using Unified Radio for delivery of radio over HTTP. RTL Radio France is part of the RTL Group and with 3 National Radio Stations, RTL, Fun Radio and RTL2, RTL Radio France has more than 11,5 million listeners every day. This represents a market share of 17,8%* which makes RTL Radio France the leading private radio group in France. (* Source: Médiametrie 126,000 — 13+, Season 2013 – 2014, Monday-Friday 5h-24h)

As more and more listeners tune in to radio via connected devices, from smartphones to computers, RTL Radio France Group is convinced that radio over IP will become massive and the favorite way to distribute radio. Current streaming radio technologies, such as Shoutcast and Flash, need a state-full connection, which prevents large-scale deployment. In fact, until now, streaming radio technologies have seen no real innovations for over a decade. It is time streaming radio benefits from the recent developments in digital video delivery. Today radio can be delivered over HTTP to all sorts of devices and in all formats — be it HDS, Smooth, HLS or DASH — while adding protection when needed.

“As we are committed to offer the best possible service, especially in cases of limited bandwidth, RTL has re-engineered its streaming infrastructure to deliver its contents in Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP,” says Charles Emmanuel Bön Executive VP and CTO of RTL Radio France Group. ​“This will allow listener’s devices to automatically adjust to the best available bandwidth without any interruption in their program. As radio is the media of mobility, we believe that this will greatly enhance the experience of our listeners when listening to radio over 3G and 4G networks.”

“We are very pleased that RTL Radio France Group selected Unified Radio, it shows again the power and flexibility of adaptive bitrate streaming in the context of radio streaming while providing the broadest feature set and device support. We are looking forward to work with RTL Radio France team adding more features in the future”, said Simon Westbroek VP Global Sales Unified Streaming.

The new service will be made available for RTL, Fun Radio and RTL2 on all platforms as well as on Direct Radio, the new radio aggregator to be launched in October 2014 in France.