Once a highly popular entertainment medium, especially among Japanese youth, radio is battling to remain relevant as stations lose more and more listeners.
According to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association, shipments of radios slid from 2.89 million units in 1998 to an estimated 1.87 million units over the course of 10 years.
To turn around the situation, 13 private radio broadcasters from the greater Tokyo metropolitan area and the Kansai region centering on Osaka got together and began streaming their programming over the Internet on a trial basis.