Walk into a car dealership, a physiotherapy waiting room or a small showroom on a quiet Tuesday morning and you will often notice the same thing: a screen doing its job on the wall, and silence everywhere else. Sometimes there is a small radio behind the counter, tuned by whoever opened up that morning, or a phone connected to a Bluetooth speaker with someone's personal playlist on shuffle.
Radio is still the easiest way to fill that gap. Nielsen's Audio Today 2026 report puts radio's monthly reach at 93% of U.S. adults, close to 242 million people, ahead of smartphones at 89%, TV-connected devices at 85% and live television at 84%. Even among 18 to 34 year olds it reaches 89%. In the UK, RAJAR recorded a record 51.1 million weekly listeners in the second quarter of 2026, which is 87% of everyone aged 15 and over, listening for around 20 hours a week. People have not stopped listening to radio. They have simply moved where they listen, and one of those places is the room your customers are standing in.
Until now, sound in that room was usually someone else's problem: a separate device, a separate subscription, a separate person to blame when it stops working. The Radio app in Castit moves it into the system you already use to manage your displays.
Why radio belongs on your digital signage screens
A room with no sound feels unfinished, and people leave it sooner. That is the short version of decades of research into how atmosphere affects behavior, and it is the reason almost every shop, cafe and gym plays something in the background. What matters most is simply that something suitable is playing, and that it does not stop when a staff member's phone rings.
Radio handles the part that puts most businesses off in-store music: the content itself. There is nothing to curate and nothing to keep fresh. A station produces new material all day, from music to local news, weather, and traffic, and it changes on its own. For a waiting area or a workshop, that local feel usually suits the room better than a generic playlist. And since your digital signage screens are already mounted, connected, and managed from a browser, and already have speakers, running the audio through the same digital signage platform means one login and no extra box under the counter.
The Radio app in Castit
The Radio app is available in the Castit app library and can be used in two ways: as a full-screen experience, or as a widget placed on top of your existing content. Both are set up in the same cloud-based digital signage system you use for the rest of your content, so nothing new needs to be installed on the digital signage player.
Choosing what plays
You pick your source when you add the app. You can select a station from the list built into Castit, or paste your own stream link if you have one. That second option matters more than it sounds. It covers a corporate audio stream, a station that is not in the list, a regional broadcaster, or your own internal radio if your organization runs one.
Full-screen radio
Adding the Radio app full screen gives the station the whole display. You choose which screen it runs on, so a canteen display can carry radio while your showroom screens keep running promotions, all from the same account.
Three templates are available for the full-screen version:
- Basic for a plain, uncluttered look
- Vinyl for a record-player visual
- Aura for a softer, more atmospheric background
The choice is purely about the room. A staff canteen and a hotel lobby rarely want the same thing on the wall.
Radio as a widget
If you do not want to give up the whole display, add the Radio app as a widget instead. It sits on top of your running content, so your promotions, menus or dashboards keep playing while the station plays underneath.
The widget has two templates, Vinyl and Now playing, and a set of controls so it fits your design rather than fighting it:
- Backdrop color and text color
- The option to play over the screen's background instead of its own backdrop
- Audio only, which takes the widget off the screen entirely and leaves just the sound
- Backdrop opacity, from solid to barely visible
- Corner rounding
You can also drag the widget anywhere on the screen and resize it. In practice, most people park it small in a corner, turn the opacity down, and let it sit quietly next to everything else.
One thing worth being direct about: Castit connects your screen to the broadcaster's public stream and nothing more. Playing radio or music in a business is a separate matter from the technology used to play it, and it requires your own music licenses. In the Netherlands that means Buma/Sena; in Serbia, SOKOJ and OFPS. Other countries have their own equivalents. If you are not sure what your venue already holds, check with your local collecting societies before you switch it on.
What you get out of it
One system instead of two
Audio stops being a separate purchase with its own hardware, its own login and its own point of failure. With music and digital signage in one platform, the person who schedules content also controls the sound, from wherever they happen to be working that day.
The same sound in every location
If you run ten branches, radio no longer depends on ten staff members and ten different preferences. You set it centrally on the screens that need it, and every location sounds the way you intended. For franchises and dealer networks, where the visual side of the brand is checked but the audio side rarely is, that closes a real gap.
A room that works better
Waiting feels shorter, conversations at the counter are less exposed, and the space stops feeling empty during quiet hours. Together with what is already on your digital signage displays, the room communicates on two channels instead of one.
Content that costs nothing to produce
Unlike video or campaign material, radio takes no design time and no approval round. It is the cheapest content on your screens, and the only recurring commitment is the music license you should already have.
Radio is one app away
If you already run Castit, the Radio app is in your app library now. Add it to a screen, pick a station or paste your stream link, and you are done in a couple of minutes.
If you are still deciding on a digital signage solution, this is a good example of what we mean by one platform: screens, apps, scheduling, audio, and wireless e-paper managed from the same account, across one location or a few hundred.
Contact us with your setup and what you want the room to sound like, and we will tell you exactly what it takes. Questions about licensing, hardware or stream compatibility are welcome too, and if you work with one of our certified partners, they can put it in place with you.