ABSTRACT
With a population of 58 million people, Italy has a relatively complex and lively media industry. The television and press industry are well established and mature, while the Italian radio world is living a third age of youth. “Free radios” are a phenomenon which is part of European culture and history of the 1970s. First there were pirate radios broadcasting from ships anchored in international waters, then free radios were born in France. But it is in Italy that the phenomenon encountered the most fertile ground to grow on. The numbers of Italian web radios have not followed the exponential growth of free radio stations or the number of American radio stations. Active web radios have always been far fewer than one thousand. Commercial web radios are radios which “activated by whatever entity, generate revenues through a website created for the diffusion, presentation, promotion and offer of music”.
