If you’re on the lookout for an alternative to Radiojar, then you’re in the right place! Radiojar and Radio Cult are both great providers. They each streamline the technical aspects of running an online radio station, leaving you with one less thing to worry about. Meaning you, as stations, can focus on what’s really important: broadcasting and music and other audio content you and your community of listeners want to hear.
What's the difference between Radiojar and Radio Cult?
Short answer: Radio Cult is specifically built for independent and community radio, with a key focus on stations who mainly broadcast mixes.
Radio Cult and Radiojar are similar in some regards, but each has clearly been designed for different use cases. Radiojar was first released over 10 years ago, when online radio stations primarily broadcast playlists. Radio Cult is a modern platform, with ongoing development, that is built specifically for the current state of online radio.
Many radio stations play a range of content - from pre-records, to playlists, to live sets and everything in between. You need a tool that is fit for purpose.
So if you’re a modern station looking for a tool that is a delight to use, has dedicated mix support, integrations with Soundcloud & Mixcloud and provides your listeners with a mobile home then you’re in the right place.
Six reasons why stations use Radio Cult over Radiojar
We’ve assembled six points of difference between Radio Cult and Radiojar, which we are convinced (and hopefully you will be to) that make Radio Cult a better alternative to Radiojar for your station.
Reasons to choose Radio Cult over Radiojar
1. Free trials
For an online radio station, you’re streaming provider is probably the most important piece of software needed to operate your station. You want a streaming provider that is the best fit for your station. And ideally you want the first provider you choose to be the only provider you ever select, as switching streaming platforms can take a lot of time and effort.
Radio Cult appreciates this reality, which is why we offer a 10 day free trial on all of our plans. If you cancel prior to the trial period elapsing, you won’t be charged a thing. This allows you to fully appraise our platform before making any financial commitment. Radiojar offers no free trials and immediately charges your payment method upon sign up.
2. A mix-focussed platform
As listeners' habits change, so must stations. It’s becoming more and more common for online stations to broadcast live sets and pre-recorded mixes, rather than just streaming playlists.
Radio Cult has been designed with this in mind. We offer a modern UI to easily upload, schedule and ultimately archive mixes. With us there’s no need to create a playlist when it will only store a single audio file for the mix you want to play. Radiojar has clearly been designed to primarily broadcast playlists and you do need to create a playlist to play any sort of mix. So scheduling a mix is more cumbersome than it ought to be. However, by having a different focus than us, Radiojar does offer greater playlist functionality, such as their pilot feature, where playlists can be automatically generated based on specific rules you have defined.
3. Integrations
Web radio is a live experience. As a listener, once a mix has been played it’s not the easiest thing to hear it again whenever you want. Uploading past mixes to Soundcloud and Mixcloud - the most popular archival tools in the industry - solves this problem entirely.
Radio Cult integrates with both Soundcloud and Mixcloud. Radiojar neither integrates with Soundcloud nor Mixcloud. So no matter your listeners' archival platform of choice, Radio Cult has got you covered.
Our integrations can save you a lot of time. You should be able to focus on the important things - not uploading media to different tools.
4. Mobile
Gone are the days where web radio could only listened on computers. Most listeners now have the means to enjoy web radio using the device in their back pockets. We know it's important to you as stations to allow your listeners to lock in through as many mediums as possible, especially through their mobile phones.
Radio Cult offers our aggregator mobile app (which is available on both iOS and Android) on all of our plans at no additional cost. Radiojar has no such app, nor does it provide a dedicated app like some other providers.
5. Stream quality
Many independent and community radio stations originally start broadcasting because they have a ‘selector’ mentality. They love the music they play and believe their selection of songs is better than anything that is automatically generated. So when broadcasting you want to be able to select a stream quality where your listeners can properly appreciate your music.
Radio Cult provides stream qualities starting from 96kbps all the way to 320kbps (our default bitrate is 160kbps). Further you can easily update your stream quality whenever you want through our web interface. Radiojar’s default stream quality is 128kbps and can only be changed to another quality upon request. Ultimately you can configure your stream quality to the bitrate you want, but it does require more effort than it ought to.
6. Station management
Running an online station is time consuming and resource intensive. We know that managing all your artists and residents can be a lot. So you need processes in place to ensure that when a show goes live, everything is in place so it goes off without a hitch.
Radio Cult offers dedicated station management functionality, allowing you to store all of your artists and presenters data in one place. A central repository to track everything about your artists and make sure you have everything from them to make certain your station runs seamlessly.
You can even use this data to power your own site, so your listeners know everything they need to about your artists. And when you need to update an artist’s information, you only need to update it in one location. Radiojar provides no comparable station management functionality.
Please note: If Radiojar gets an update and this article becomes outdated, please email us and we will update it.