Public Radio Exchange

The Public Radio Exchange (PRX) is a nonprofit web-based platform for digital distribution, review, and licensing of radio programs. The organization claims to be the largest on-demand catalog of public radio programs available for broadcast and Internet use.

According to PRX's site, its mission "is to build a fair market for creative audio content and an online community of increasing gains; to create more opportunities for diverse programming of exceptional quality, interest, and importance to reach more listeners."

The company enables terrestrial radio stations to audition pieces and download broadcast-quality audio to share with their listeners over the air or online. PRX catalogs thousands of pieces and allows users to search by topic, length, format, tone and time of the year.

The site also provides a community space open to public radio listeners, producers and stations, where users can discover, rate and review pieces. In addition to providing feedback, the rating system brings work to the attention of stations, who are able to sort pieces by their rating. When a piece is licensed by a station PRX provides the producer with a royalty.

PRX provides stations and producers with tools to manage and monitor transactions, rights, usage statistics and payments within their individual and group accounts.

The PRX site and services launched in September 2003 after a two-year planning, research, and development phase supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ford Foundation. Since then PRX has received additional support from the NTIA Technology Opportunities Program, the MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Surdna Foundation, and Google Grants. PRX offices are located in Cambridge, MA.

On February 28, 2007 PRX and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced the Public Radio Talent Quest. This competition is an open search for new public radio talent, and gives producers the chance to produce a pilot show for public radio. Finalists will be chosen after a five-round competition voted on by fans, public radio professionals and celebrity judges.

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