Source: Inside the CBC

CBC Radio 3 launched a redesigned web site this morning. The revamp has been in the works for over a year, and it includes updates to the music player, the introduction of four new streams, a playlist editor and a bunch of social media tools.

In the video below, Steve Pratt, the director of Radio 3, provides a quick tour of some of the new features, focusing mostly on the new radio streams.

As Pratt says in the video above "there used to be just one web radio station, now there's five." In addition to the main Radio 3 stream, there's also streams for pop, rock, hiphop and electronic music.

Additionally the new site includes many social media features, many of which are unique to Radio 3, like creating personal playlists, the ability to forward tracks to friends, and the ability to sign in and create user profiles on the site. Thankfully the site is also larger and exposes more of the blog posts and content, including concert calenders.

"The goal was to showcase more of what CBC Radio 3 has to offer than just our blog and the streaming radio service. We found with our old design, many people didn't know that all the music played on CBC Radio 3 has been uploaded by musicians and that there are over 18,000 artists and over 80,000 songs on the website to browse through, discover, and share with others," Pratt said on the site this morning.

Another feature of the new site is the thumbs up or thumbs down feature which allows users to rate the songs and according to Pratt "will let us improve the music programming on CBC Radio 3 by understanding which songs have stronger (or weaker) reaction from listeners."

Overall the reaction to the new site is generally positive, although some users have reported bugs on a few features while others are having problems with the streams.

A guide to the new Radio 3 site is available here, there are also a bunch of tutorial videos on YouTube here. If you spot a bug or something wacky with the site you can send it to the developers here.

What do you think of the new site?

© Inside the CBC