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Radioteca – A Free and Open Home for Audio

Categories: Audio, Feature

Finding the right online home for your audio content can be a difficult challenge with the wide range of choices and features available. However, finding a place where your content can be freely shared and used by a regional network of radio stations to reach a wider audience might be an appealing option to many audio content producers.

For the past six years, the audio portal Radioteca [1] has opened its doors for everyone, including local radio stations, amateur podcasters, and community organizations to upload their content for free. Radioteca also holds the distinction of facilitating a community built on the principles of the sharing and exchange of knowledge and information.

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A core requirement for participation in the community is that all material must be made available under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported [2] Creative Commons license, which means that community members and visitors can use the uploaded content as long as there is attribution and the material is shared in the same manner.

Currently, there are approximately 6,300 registered users, who have already uploaded more than 20,000 pieces of audio to the platform. On the site, one can find content organized by categories including human rights [3], gender and sexuality [4], health [5], and culture [6], among others. This content ranges from short public service announcements to full episodes of radio programs. Community members can upload a single audio clip up to 80MB in size, but there is no limit the number of contributed audio clips. In addition, the platform hosts audio resources related to training [7] for radio production and broadcasting, technologies used for radio, and other research-related topics.

The variety of topics are not limited to the categories listed. However, Radioteca strives to ensure that all content uploaded respects human rights and cultural diversity, and does not accept audio that promotes discrimination, racism, sexism or homophobia. Audio that is political propaganda or religious proselytism is also not allowed.

Once users have registered, they have access to their profile page that displays all of the audio uploaded and that can also be embedded on third-party sites. Radioteca also provides an optional paid streaming service [8] and support for online radio stations for those members that want additional functionality beyond what free services can provide.

The site is administered by the Quito, Ecuador-based organization Radialistas – Apasionadas y Apasionado [9] and Código Sur [10]. While the site is primarily in Spanish, and most of the users are based in Latin America and Spain, the site is open to all regions of the world.