Radio is one of the few mass media technologies that has not been widely explored by start-ups. While many companies build services around music and news, few combine both in smart ways. Tuubio, a start-up from Helsinki that has been in stealth mode for the last 5 months, has just launched their service - a personalized radio app. For the moment it is available only on Android phones or tablets with a browser-based client and an iOS app coming up soon.

When you open the app, you can choose what kind of news content (politics, technology etc.) and music styles (rap, classic, indie etc.) you'd like to listen to. You can also determine the ratio of music/news content you prefer. Once the settings are done, you can start enjoying your very own radio channel. The cool part is that you can skip through items you find boring or bookmark interesting news items to come back to them later. News stories are accompanied by a picture that with one tap can take you to an in-depth article related to what you've just heard. Since Finland is Tuubio's test market, all content is currently in Finnish.

How can Tuubio pull this off? By working as an actual radio station. The company's team expanded from 4 to 10 people over the summer to include more engineers and a full-on radio team, who work as radio hosts. Thus, Tuubio's music comes from a licensed archive and their news are originally produced in-house. 'Apart from being a music service we have a human touch to it', says Jens Sørensen, founder and CEO. 'People are used to listening to the radio - it's the only thing you can do while multitasking. With Tuubio we are building a personalized radio that creates a two-way connection between the listener and the radio station'.

In fact, in Tuubio's model radio channels in a traditional, predetermined sense, does not exist. Every user effectively creates a different radio channel through the customized settings. You like rap music, reggae and are interested in politics? You can combine all of those in Tuubio's app.

'Everything we can optimize - we will', comments Jens. Since the application is free, it is supported by ads that are also geared to match user's music and news preferences. Advertisements would also rely on other attributes in the future like location to deliver most relevant content.

Even though there only few services around radio, Tuubio is entering a tough market. Vast majority of users are busy listening to on-demand music services like Spotify, Grooveshark, Rdio, Pandora or Last.fm. As Jens puts it: 'Everything that uses people's time is a competitor'. Though Tuubio definitely has an edge: it does not require manually compiling playlists and it combines news with music that can match any preference. If successful, Tuubio has a chance to revolutionize radio, an industry that has stayed the same over the last hundred years.