Switzerland’s leading private radio group, Energy, relies on Infomaniak to support its audience growth

Switzerland’s number one private radio group, Energy, broadcasts its programmes every day to more than 719,000 listeners using Infomaniak’s cloud and streaming solutions. The partnership rests on three pillars: radio streaming, cloud hosting for the group’s internal applications and live video streaming of events. Infomaniak’s services underpin the steady growth of the Energy group’s audience, with more than 17 million monthly listens, based on figures certified by the independent institute Mediapulse.

What a digital radio station needs, and how it monetises its audience

The Energy group is a key player in the Swiss media landscape. It brings together three stations, Energy Zürich, Energy Bern and Energy Basel, three themed radio stations (Vintage Radio, Rockit Radio, Schlager Radio) and a network of 50 web radios. Energy was one of the first private groups to stream radio online.

The rise of digital radio and the switch from FM to DAB+ created several needs: ensuring uninterrupted broadcasting and making streams accessible to everyone, on every device. As the group is funded entirely by advertising, it also had to monetise its audience on the basis of reliable listening data, recognised by a specialist institute such as Mediapulse.

To support this shift, Energy had to adapt its infrastructure, secure its data and rely on a partner able to understand its business and evolve with its operational constraints.

Why Energy chose Infomaniak

For Christian Kramer, Head of Production & Digital Project Manager, Energy Group Switzerland, it was essential to find an experienced partner and build a long-term relationship of trust. The Energy group was looking for:

• A sovereign, scalable cloud infrastructure
• Streaming solutions for continuous audio and video broadcasting
• Data hosting exclusively in Switzerland

“Infomaniak lets us run our radio streams and cloud tools with the reliability and availability our business demands.”

Energy also wanted personalised support, including:

• Responsive support
• Close technical collaboration with the developers

“We were hit by a DDoS attack a few days before a major event. Infomaniak’s teams helped us secure the situation in time.”

Infomaniak’s teams work alongside the Energy group to meet specific needs, particularly around audience statistics and reporting, which are essential for monetising the streams through advertising.

The technical challenges of large-scale radio broadcasting

The Energy group’s main technical challenges:

Keeping streams running during audience peaks
Up to 30,000 listeners can be connected at the same time. Every stream has to start instantly and maintain consistent quality, whatever the device or connection quality.

Sending metadata with the audio streams
 Track and artist information has to be delivered in real time alongside the radio streams.

Meeting advertisers’ expectations
Advertisers expect a range of targeting options and detailed reporting capabilities, which means relying on the right technologies.

Handling load peaks on websites and apps
The infrastructure has to absorb occasional spikes without being permanently over-provisioned. A single on-air announcement can bring thousands of visitors to the group’s websites at once (some of which embed a radio stream). At events attracting up to 50,000 people, everyone needs to be able to load their digital ticket at the same moment.

Guaranteeing data security
Data protection has become a major issue. Energy has to keep user information secure and comply with regulatory requirements, in particular by favouring hosting in Switzerland.

How Energy built its radio, web and events infrastructure

The roll-out of the solutions has followed Energy’s evolving needs since 2003. It is also tailored to how the group is organised: more than 120 employees, with an IT team of around ten people responsible for the radio stations, digital platforms and events.

Broadcasting the stations with Infomaniak’s radio streaming platform

Energy uses Infomaniak’s radio streaming platform to broadcast all of its stations. The solution runs on its own infrastructure and scales automatically with usage levels. The Energy team has integrated the AdsWizz system into the platform to enable ad targeting.

Migrating from AWS S3 to Infomaniak’s Public Cloud (Swift Storage)

“We gradually evolved the Energy group’s IT architecture to take advantage of Infomaniak’s new solutions, first Jelastic Cloud, then Infomaniak’s Public Cloud, in order to centralise the storage of the assets used by the group’s websites and tools.”

Aytaç Akyol, Project Manager & Team Lead, Energy Group Switzerland

Energy replaced several AWS services with solutions run by Infomaniak or in-house:

• Asset storage, previously on AWS S3, now runs on Infomaniak’s Public Cloud (Swift Storage) for the group’s websites and tools
• AWS API Gateway was replaced by an in-house implementation
• AWS SQS was replaced by Redis to meet the specific needs of the applications and campaigns

Live concert streaming with Infomaniak’s video streaming

When needed, Energy’s teams use Infomaniak’s video streaming service to broadcast selected concerts live and without interruption, such as Energy Star Night at the Hallenstadion or Energy Air in stadiums like the Wankdorf, the Letzigrund or the Stockhorn Arena.

“Our team deploys the video streaming service as a ready-to-use solution, with no infrastructure to provision and no changes to the existing architecture. During the six-hour Energy Air livestream, the broadcast reached a total of 175,330 views (59,756 unique viewers).”

Aytaç Akyol, Project Manager & Team Lead, Energy Group Switzerland

Backing up data in Switzerland with Swiss Backup

Energy’s critical data is backed up with Swiss Backup, which provides an automatic copy stored in Switzerland.

Domain name management

Energy also registers and manages some of its domain names with Infomaniak, which makes it easier to comply with legal data protection requirements.

The results after migrating to Infomaniak’s infrastructure

Today the Energy group benefits from a reliable infrastructure tailored to its needs, a professional video streaming solution that can be activated on demand, support for technical operations and incident management, and sovereign hosting that complies with local data protection requirements.

“Thanks to Infomaniak, our infrastructure has become a real performance driver. We have gained in reliability and visibility while simplifying the technical management of our streams.”

Christian Kramer, Head of Production & Digital Project Manager, Energy Group Switzerland

Infomaniak’s solutions have strengthened the performance and reliability of Energy’s digital ecosystem. The group’s figures speak for themselves:

• 20,000 simultaneous listeners per day
• 17.5 million monthly sessions, including 7 million active listens (at least 30 seconds)
• 0.5 million unique listeners per month

These figures, certified by Mediapulse, confirm the robustness of the technical set-up and the broadcast quality of the audio streams.