Nick Swanson wants to give you an earful. When the Australian former disc jockey turned commercial airline pilot landed in Hong Kong three years ago, one of the first things he did was turn on the radio. He was disappointed with what he heard: 'There was no music, just a lot of talk,' he says. So Swanson swung into action. Last July he opened HKGFM, the city's first internet radio station to stream three nonstop channels of western rock: Today's Mix (of contemporary Top 40 hits), Awesome 80s and Classics Rewind. Today the site claims it has a quarter of a million visitors who've tuned in from 156 countries and casual listeners in local bars and restaurants. The station's set-up took a 'long time and a lot of work', says Swanson, who worked for 12 years at Australian stations such as Sun FM and 3GG. He spent more than two years putting together playlists, contacting record companies and working out royalty programmes with the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong. Swanson also recruited an internet server in Sheung Wan, a programmer in India and a graphic artist and recording engineer in Australia to make the station look and sound presentable. He says HKGFM doesn't need a licence from the Broadcast Authority as its content is streamed over the internet rather than broadcast. Swanson says he works on HKGFM between flights, choosing and uploading all songs from his Central apartment to the server. If there are problems with the stream, he can phone his programmer 24 hours a day, he says. Now he's planning HKGFM's expansion with the launch next month of Asia Hitz, a new station playing Cantonese, Putonghua, Japanese and Korean Top 40 sounds. Such internet start-ups are the future of radio, says Asia Hitz producer Andy Leung Lai-bon, a 10-year veteran of MTV and Channel V in Hong Kong. 'I don't see a lot of young people sitting down to watch TV any more,' he says. 'When they're home they spend time online. It's a medium that has been hyped for several years now and it's a good way to take Asian music to an international audience.' In a few months the station also plans to start The Underground, a collaborative effort between HKGFM and the local independent music co-operative after which it is named. Even so, HKGFM's western channels seem to have tapped into music niches in Hong Kong with playlists augmented by online cross-promotions with local restaurants, a contest offering prizes of trips to Los Angeles, record-purchase links and gig news. 'I discovered them at a school fair, where they had a booth,' says Symone Corby, a pole-dance instructor at Pole Divas. Although she listens to her own CDs while teaching, she says she tunes into Today's Mix at work and at home. 'Hong Kong absolutely needs a radio station for western music,' she says. The station is also streamed into pubs such as The Keg, The Dublin Jack and The Pickled Pelican. 'We had it on one night and the customers were asking, 'What's this? Is this a local radio station?' says The Keg manager Warren McInnes. 'I told them it was the internet. We've had it on ever since.' Swanson attributes his station's survival to 'old contacts and tricks of the trade' and says he edits his playlist based on a listeners' 'bad', 'good' and 'best' rating system. 'I have people at Sony BMG in Hong Kong calling me up asking how I got something of theirs that even they don't have yet.' However, the record label isn't complaining. '[HKGFM] gets its songs from its own service in Australia, so we're not giving them songs the way we do with radio stations. It's easier for us,' says SonyBMG assistant product manager Nora Wong Suk-wan. 'We have one [traditional] English radio station in Hong Kong, but it's not non-stop music; they have other programmes. Because [HKGFM] is only music, listeners have more exposure to our artists. It's been very effective for promoting [our artists].' And self-funded projects such as HKGFM can pay off, according to market research firm eTForecasts. By 2010 internet radio stations will have an estimated 187 million listeners, a figure that will grow in line with Wi-fi penetration in urban areas, it says. Swanson says new technology also gives internet radio stations a big future. Hong Kong already has devices such as SoundBridge and Squeezebox, which allow internet audio streams such as HKGFM's to be played over a home stereo system, without a computer. Hi-fi manufacturers, too, have cottoned on to streaming audio and begun outfitting their products with similar hardware. The next big jump, Swanson says, will be streams to car audio. He says he learned of a company working on a car aerial antenna capable of receiving streaming audio. 'They said they were about 12 months away from doing any testing,' he says. 'That was about 18 months ago. But I don't think it's too far away. In a place like Hong Kong, where you have [Wi-fi] everywhere, all you need is an aerial that picks up streaming audio and away you go.' When he's asked why he didn't apply for an FM licence, Swanson says Hong Kong's FM spectrum is already full. He also says getting good FM reception in Hong Kong is impaired by the city's rough terrain as FM signals need a straight line of sight. The creation of a traditional radio station also seemed like too much trouble, he says, as Virgin Airlines entrepreneur Richard Branson discovered in talks over a proposed set-up in Hong Kong in 2001. 'If Richard Branson couldn't make it happen, I wasn't even going to try,' he says. HKGFM can be found online at hkgfm.net