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Music Streaming Service Supplies Upbeat Playlists For The Fitness Freak

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Music serves as motivation at the gym.  In 2013, you would be hard-pressed to find an individual working out without a phone (or other music-playing device) pumping out beats and earphones crammed inside his/her ear.

Gym rats have two options: downloaded tracks onto their devices or stream music through one of many available platforms.  The latter option is quickly gaining traction among listeners, with Pandora amassing over 200 million registered users and Spotify collecting more than 24 million active users on its service.  Each of the aforementioned offerings has its unique attributes, but neither is directly focused on the macho man, cardio freak consumer.  A company called FIT Radio hopes to capture that specific demographic and already has roughly 500,000 users without paying a single dollar to market its product.

But what really differentiates FIT Radio from Pandora's workout station or a Spotify playlist crafted per the user's preference?  It is all in maintaining a consistent BPM (beat per minute) to keep the music's energy level up, which translates to great workout music.  After multiple uses, I can guarantee that FIT Radio's app accomplishes the goal it sets to achieve.

FIT Radio was created by Russell Greene, who has a background in exercise physiology and has been a part of the nightclub industry for eleven years either running security or managing nightclub operations.  "The idea for FIT Radio came about from the hundreds of people who asked me, 'how do we get the music you're playing in the nightclub so we can work out to it?'" explained Greene in an interview with FORBES.  He then realized that those nightclub tracks were quickly becoming more popular in gyms across the United States.  "Our mindset to change workouts was to give a rotation of content, controlled in house but uploaded by third party DJs, that DJs approve so people can push play, go, and have some of the hottest music in the country on their mobile devices."

The content is constantly updated with new mixes spread across multiple genres, including Top 40, Hip Hop, Country and a variety of popular Electronic stations.  The app even features a special range of playlists for Memorial Day titled, "Memorial Day Party," with a wide BPM range of 70-130 and open format mixes from the hottest DJs around the world.  Users have access to a list of the tracks contained in each mix and can seek through mix songs or completely shift to a new mix at their leisure.  FIT Radio also presents users with the option to choose mixes based on featured nightclubs, popular workouts and DJ.  Have a liking for DJ Vice?  There are over a dozen of his mixes to choose from on the service.  Do you enjoy Zumba workouts?  FIT Radio has high energy Latin-based mixes waiting to fuel your next session.

Unlike Pandora, where one has very little choice over what songs are in the rotation, and separate from Spotify, which provides little help in the creation of particular types of mixes, FIT Radio proffers power to the people who know what they want to listen to, but do not want to spend the time to create their own playlists.  It takes time to download, find artists, sync songs and make a playlist before a workout.  FIT Radio solves that problem.

But will it be able to survive an extremely competitive music streaming scene where Pandora and Spotify are already established players?  The landscape is only going to become more aggressive now that Google is in the game with its Play Music All Access app and with Apple close to announcing a streaming service of its own.

FIT Radio launched its first apps in August 2011 and already has a very large user base.  The loyalty of that user base may be what allows the company to remain relevant despite the new streaming entrants.  "Our latest statistics indicates a 96% user retention rate," said Greene.  "When our users go to workout, they don't want to hear ads, don't want the music to stop and don't want to spend time switching through music."

The next question is will it be able to effectively monetize its service.  FIT Radio is free to download on the Android platform and iOS; however, users only get 16 hours of free use from the time of download.  Thereafter, one must pay a fee of $2.99 per month to continue with full access to the application.  The alternative to paying the subscription fee is that the app is stripped down to one basic genre.  Greene informed FORBES that his company began its subscription platform at the beginning of 2013 and is just now generating revenue for the first time.  Since launching the subscription based model on February 1, FIT Radio has earned in excess of $100,000 in sales, and sales are growing at around 27% per month.  "The real internet audio advertising CPM just doesn't make sense in terms of being a good business model for services," said Greene.  "Pandora is focused on adding in more advertisements and doing video ads with a higher CPM.  We want to focus on being a niche product.  If you workout and use this you will subscribe."

There is currently no outside investment in FIT Radio, although Greene did indicate that he is speaking to others about funding as a route to gain attention for his growing brand.

Darren Heitner is a Partner at Wolfe Law Miami, P.A. in Miami, Florida, Founder of Sports Agent Blog, and Professor of Sport Agency Management at Indiana University.  Learn more about him at http://www.darrenheitner.com.