In 2013, a New York cab driver named Boubacar Sanogo had a way to make a long shift more bearable. He listened to radio from Mali, along with French news, through ZenoRadio. NPR’s Margot Adler reported that he could spend about five hours a day listening. The remarkable part was the route: Zeno attached a US telephone number to an internet radio stream. A listener could dial home, in a manner of speaking, without making an international call.
Another listener, Ahmad Mohammed, described how hearing Egyptian music made him feel back at home. That observation explains the company rather better than a diagram of its servers. The content already mattered. Zeno made it reachable.
- It supplies the machinery: streaming, station tools, podcasts, apps, and advertising.
- It serves scattered communities: local broadcasters with listeners beyond their transmitter’s reach.
- Listeners tune in free; broadcasters now pay for their plans.
- The useful lesson: solve the journey between a program and its audience.
“I feel as if I’m living home, I’m back home.”AHMAD MOHAMMED / ZENORADIO LISTENER, 2013
A familiar voice, one phone call away
Zeno Media, whose founders are listed as Baruch Herzfeld and Ney Frota, now works in a considerably broader audio market. Its customers range from independent creators and faith stations to established radio groups. Zeno.FM supplies a listening destination; Zeno Tools supplies the broadcaster’s workspace. Behind both sits the business of moving audio, measuring listening, and making some of that attention available to advertisers.
The telephone survives. Call-to-listen remains part of the offering, an alternative when mobile data is scarce or inconvenient. A clever product occasionally looks old-fashioned because the customer’s circumstances demand it. The calling plan still matters; a dial-in number does not abolish the telephone bill.
The audience moved. The station stayed.
A local station earns loyalty through accents, presenters, news, and music its audience recognizes. Migration does not automatically erase those preferences. It does, however, take people outside the reach of a terrestrial signal. Zeno’s position in the market follows that gap: preserve the programming, widen the distribution, then give the broadcaster tools to operate across the distance.
The partnerships make this less abstract. In June 2024, Lazer Media selected Zeno as its exclusive streaming and adtech provider. Lazer then operated 47 stations across 20 US Hispanic markets. The agreement covered live and archived audio, distribution through Zeno’s properties, and advertising insertion. In June 2026, Norsan Media chose Zeno’s streaming infrastructure for its own Hispanic radio portfolio, described as more than 50 signals.
The company’s current broadcaster page advertises more than 50,000 broadcasters and 70 million monthly listeners. Those are company-reported figures. Its 2026 announcements describe partners in more than 100 countries. The interesting number for an individual station remains smaller: how many people return for the next show?
Free listening has a paid backstage
There is a practical correction to make before anyone budgets a launch. Zeno discontinued free broadcasting plans in January 2025. Listening remains free, but a new broadcaster gets a seven-day Starter trial and then needs a subscription. The published US monthly rates are $35 for Starter, $60 for Prime, and $280 for Premier; annual billing and localized prices differ.
Monthly US rates. Annual billing and regional prices differ. Prices checked October 2026.
A branded mobile app is another purchase: $59 a month plus a $500 development fee. Twelve months therefore come to $1,208 before station subscriptions or other expenses. The help center lists connected-car development as a further $1,000 option. Paying for transport is a different calculation from paying for programming, equipment, or music rights.
Advertising offers a way to offset costs. Zeno shares revenue from audio ads on eligible paid streams; listener donations and qualifying direct campaigns provide other routes. Its MAZ technology is described as real-time ad replacement that works without metadata and across languages. Zeno reports its use on more than 2,000 stations. That addresses a particular broadcasting nuisance: a stream may travel internationally while the original advertising remains stubbornly local.
Revenue takes patience. The help center describes payouts 90 days after the earning month ends, with a $100 first-payment threshold. It recommends at least three months of advertising to assess earnings. An audience can be devoted without producing enough paid impressions to cover every bill. The sensible budget leaves room for that distinction.
One show, two useful lives
The newer products tackle another distance: the time between a live broadcast and a listener’s free hour. Podcast Bot captures a show, processes its audio, and prepares episode details. Broadcasters review the result before publishing. Interview detection and archive search can make old conversations easier to find and reuse. The attraction for a small team is less repetitive production work after airtime.
Distribution keeps expanding too. Zeno added HLS support, reported in November 2025, and announced Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility for its ZenoRadio app in May 2026. CEO Morris Berger put the latter plainly: “Audio doesn’t stop when people get in the car.” The old dial-in service and the dashboard app answer the same question in different circumstances.
Choose the route your listeners can use
This is a crowded business. Radio.co offers production, scheduling, and branded apps. Live365 combines distribution with music licensing coverage in the US, Canada, and Mexico. SoundStack supplies enterprise delivery, monetization, and measurement. Zeno’s distinctive combination is its multicultural listening network, phone access, broadcaster tools, and advertising services. Individual features have alternatives; the combination deserves the comparison.
For a broadcaster, the copyable lesson is to begin with a specific audience and its habits. Choose a distribution route, test the listening experience, then study return visits and earnings. Zeno explicitly says it does not provide blanket music licensing, so a station needing bundled rights should weigh that requirement carefully. Software can carry a familiar voice remarkably far. Giving people a reason to listen again remains the broadcaster’s job.