Por Charlie Thompson
Jhon Mario Castro is one of the most promising Latino online radio entrepreneurs in the United States. His station icolorradio.live started is an Uber and Lift favorite in the American Union and is now ready to reach a larger audience in homes and private cars
Jhon Mario Castro, has always had contact with the radio. His parents were always accomplished music lovers who even had their own radio show in the 1970s. At school and while accompanying his parents on their continuous trips to the city of Cali, Colombia, Castro listened to the stations that at that time they played rock and pop that came from the United States and Europe.
This is how he fell in love with music in English and electronic sounds. After studying graphic design and marketing at the Politecnico Grancolombiano in Bogotá, he returned to Cali where he built “Mr Mercury”, a Pop / Rock restaurant bar that was very successful due to its innovative concept. But his passion was the radio
Castro then joined the staff of the Pop/Dance Radio Planeta 96.9FM station at the beginning of the 2000s as a graphic designer and was in charge of carrying out all the campaigns for the concerts and electronic events that the station presented with some of the most famous DJs. famous globally.
With Radio Planeta he has his first professional experience with the electronic music business and the radio industry.
He becomes a DJ focusing on house, techno and tribal and hones his career as a graphic designer.
In 2017 he traveled to the United States where he settled in the city of Atlanta with the dream of continuing to explore radio. Initially, he was linked as an Uber driver and that is where the idea of an Online station for users was born.
Castro realizes that the musical background in the Uber that he provides to his clients during the trip should be a satisfying experience. He investigates but cannot find a radio station that combines exactly what he wants to broadcast and share.
Always with the idea of radio, he took his first step and created iColor Media Group, a graphic design, digital marketing and large format printing company.
With the days he included his dream to the equation: A station. He was born iColor Radio Live, a station that has been growing in audience, initially focused on the community of Uber and Lyft drivers and incredibly is now breaking boundaries in the market. Castro successfully maintains his niche on the platforms, but he expands meteorically. A team of producers, curators, programmers, voice overs, announcers and marketing and sales executives are part of the station’s current staff. The sky is the limit.
iColor Radio is more than a station, it is a sensory experience that accompanies and encourages during the tours. Its format is Dance/Electronic with all the classic and current genres. It is the result of a lifetime of combining a passion for music and an assertive form of person-to-person marketing, a digital experience that is increasing in all its dimensions.
credits/photos: icolorradio live
