Supply Side is a series of occasional interviews with industry manufacturers and service providers.
Software development company Netmix builds professional-grade WordPress tools for the radio, music and news industries. Its flagship product, Radio Station, is a WordPress plugin that allows broadcasters to build and manage their show schedule on their WordPress website(s).
The company also offers a Station Directory on its own website, which pulls and aggregates live schedules from WordPress-powered radio stations around the world.
For this installment in our Supply Side series, we asked Netmix CEO Tony Zeoli about the history of the company, the services it offers broadcasters and what users can get out of the newly-upgraded plugin Radio Station Pro. He answered our queries via email.
Radio World: For those unfamiliar, what is Netmix?
Tony Zeoli: Netmix LLC is the holding company operating Netmix.com and our WordPress plugins Radio Station (free) and Radio Station Pro. Stations using our WordPress plugins can opt-in to list themselves in Netmix Station Directory, which pulls their show schedule and related metadata via API from their station website into the directory. It’s the first and only directory of radio station websites on WordPress.
The key benefit for stations developing a cohesive digital strategy is, when they use the free or Pro versions of Radio Station, they get a high-quality backlink to help their station website rank higher with search engines.
Netmix.com is still in its infancy while we focus our efforts on growing our plugin user base, which is the primary focus of the company at this time, but we see it playing a major role in our developing ecosystem.
RW: What’s your mission? What need(s) does Netmix fill that may have previously gone unmet in the broadcasting world?
Zeoli: There are thousands of radio stations using WordPress as their preferred website platform. Automattic, the company behind WordPress, is now valued at around $6B and the CMS powers over 43% of the world’s top 10M websites.
It’s the most powerful content management system because of its flexibility and the ability for companies like Netmix to build on open source but pursue a “freemium” model where you release a limited free version and then an enhanced Pro version with additional features and functionality, as well as provide priority support. We want to be here for any radio station or streaming station using WordPress that needs the tools to showcase their schedule, playlists, and team, and stream uninterrupted with a modern, SEO-optimized mobile responsive experience.
Radio networks like iHeart or NPR can afford to develop sophisticated scheduling systems for their websites so listeners can learn about programs, view playlists and check out the broadcast team. Smaller stations — especially LPFMS, small streamers and universities —cannot afford custom web development and turn to WordPress and its suite of freemium theme and plugin offerings to build out their websites.
You can find anything from SEO plugins to form generators and event calendars to audio players but no one had really focused on developing a WordPress plugin with the tools that radio stations really need, which creates a deeper integration with their website.
RW: Who started the company (and when), and who owns it now?
Zeoli: Netmix.com is a domain I originally registered in 1995. It was attached to the website of my first startup, which was the world’s first website to broadcast DJ mixes I’d curated from the world’s most sought DJs. (See Billboard from March 1, 1997). I started Netmix in Boston where I was DJing five nights a week and working in sales and A&R operations for a local record label. I moved the company to NYC in 1996 to have a go in the New York City tech music startup economy.
I persisted for four years growing Netmix to over 1 million unique visitors per year. After being pursued by a few companies eager to bridge into youth culture, I sold Netmix in June of 2000 but got the name back in the ashes of the dotcom 1.0 crash that transpired over the summer of that year.
I went to work for a few companies, startups and agencies in digital and sat on the name until 2019 when I repurposed it as a companion to the free and Pro versions of the Radio Station plugin.
When I took over the plugin in 2019 from Niki Blight, it’s the creator and former developer, I didn’t have much of a plan. In Asheville, where I live, I launched the Asheville House Music Society on a local LPFM, AshevilleFM. Before I knew about Radio Station, AshevilleFM were actually using the plugin, which I’d discovered after I took it over.
RW: What sets Netmix and its Radio Station plugins apart?
Zeoli: There are the established software as a service companies Live365, Mixlr, Radio.co and Radio King. All these services are fantastic with Live365 really the only one who helps you license content, at least in the United States. However, many streaming stations don’t want to be boxed into the layouts that these services offer for the website pages they generate.
[Related: “Radio.co Wants to Host Your Station Online“]
You can do so much more with WordPress in terms of blogging, podcasting, and streaming with a single solution that you own and operate. There’s no fear of one of these services going under and you’re left wondering whether you can stream tomorrow. When you use WordPress with Radio Station free or Pro along with other plugins and stream with Shoutcast or Icecast, you’re in full control of your content.
RW: Last we heard, you mentioned the launch of Radio Station Pro – What makes this different from Radio Station? What are some of the most important features?
Zeoli: When the open-source world of WordPress started over 20 years ago all themes and plugins were mainly free, you were canceled if you even hinted at selling a theme or plugin. Back then it was very purist.
WordPress has since evolved into a multibillion-dollar web services ecosystem. Theme and plugin developers now release a free version with a limited feature set to onboard users and then upsell them into the Pro version experience, which enables more functionality of core features.
For example, in our free version of Radio Station, we have audio player widgets that can be used on a page or a sidebar but if you navigate to a different page on the site, the stream stops and the listener has to restart. In our Pro version, we have a fixed audio player bar that persists across the site similar to what you see on SoundCloud, Spotify, or MixCloud. We will soon release a feature that supports streaming Live365s audio feed along with song data.
Another example is our scheduling system. For free, you can only add Shows by logging into the WordPress admin section for Shows to enter them there and set their dates and times. In our Pro plugin, we have a “visual schedule editor,” so when you’re logged in, you can select the edit icon for any show on the front end of the website schedule page to pop up an admin screen to change or update that shows information.
One other one worth mentioning is the time zone switcher. A website visitor can switch to see the schedule in their preferred time zone so they don’t have to do mental gymnastics to determine when the show is going to air in their part of the world.
We recently lowered our prices after receiving feedback to $10 a month or $99 annually to achieve parity with pricing expectations of WordPress users who think themes and plugins should be priced at less than $100 year.
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RW: What feedback/response have you gotten from broadcasters?
Zeoli: We’ve received tremendous feedback from our free and Pro users who would have had to spend thousands of dollars in custom web development to get just half the tools Radio Station and Radio Station Pro provide.
We work closely with stations like KISS(FM) in Melbourne, Australia, HCR104FM in Hundington, UK and WCOM(FM) serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC who use some or all of the features of the plugin to deliver information to listeners.
RW: Anything else we should know?
Zeoli: We’re working on releasing an updated version of Pro with support for Elementor and Beaver Builder, two extremely popular WordPress page builder plugins, which help non-developers create sophisticated designs and layouts for their WordPress websites.
We’re also talking to a developer about integrating Alexa skills for stations that want that level of integration with smart speakers. We’re looking to evolve Netmix into an app experience. And, we think there’s a case to integrate live streaming with video into the plugin, which will surely differentiate us from other services.
Lastly, Netmix and Radio Station are self-funded. We did not raise venture capital. Both Tony Hayes and I are WordPress consultants and we generate our incomes through our consulting work while we build Radio Station free and Pro into a sustainable, bootstrapped business. It’s a hard slog but we’re both committed to this for the long term because we want to provide all stations using WordPress with the best tools to run their stations online. Of course, Netmix Radio may be in the future, as well!
