Nick Piggott said at May 5th, 2007 at 11:03am

Can I just briefly agree 100% with all of that. (I think I have a similar email in my inbox). That’s as verbose as I can be (or want to be at the momentfrom) my Nokia, on a rather nice North Devon beach, in the sunshine.

Thomas said at May 5th, 2007 at 2:48pm

Assuming that the figures provided are correct (perhaps that doesn’t matter, depending on how you read this) - what’s important is what defines ‘regularly’, also important is the context in which they listen to the radio, is it in the line waiting for lunch, or in the car?

I don’t believe giving radio a visible image (through the likes of colour screens) is going to help, content has to be king. Music Radio needs to become more music focused, less talk and hopefully less ads at the same time.

Stations need to move away from playing from short playlists, often based on the top selling music of the time and start to experiment. Small playlists (which many stations have for various reasons) eventuate into predictable radio (im sure that there are stations out there that pre-determine playlists well in advance and often substitute songs from artists library in an effort to ’spice it up’). Hiding new and experimental content in rairly listened too parts of the day is wasteful.

I often wonder how people of the iPod Generation (which I see myself as being a member of considering I’m constantly tethered to one of mine) experience new music. iTunes doesnt give the worlds best recommendations and im not going to waste money on cherry picking iTunes content to give new bands/artists a go. I try and use radio for that and here in Australia, we are pretty lucky that we have stations like Triple J - Government funded (so no ads) where music and not personalities are the key. What I hear on the radio ultimately drives my musical purchases on iTunes.

Not long ago, you nearly couldnt buy an gadget that didnt include an FM radio, now its slipping the other way - ok, maybe in the UK you might want to encourage DAB - but where is the PDA/iPod/Mobile Phone etc that comes with DAB capabilities? In fact is there such a beast?

Tony Hirst said at May 5th, 2007 at 6:12pm

Widgetising the radio would give users a new take on the idea of a portable radio, methinks? (e.g. here’s a BBC listen again widget for the os/x dashboard. Okay - so this is listen again, which is ok for talk but maybe not so hot for tunes. http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/radio_podcasts/bbclistenagain.html )

Hmm - seems the web has moved on since I last searched, like with this Virgin tuner widget: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=37250

Widgets can have embedded ’screens’ too, of course… and I’ve always thought their form factor makes them naturals for mobile screens?

Peter Childs said at May 7th, 2007 at 11:25pm

Encouraging manufactures to include radio in their devices has become more of a problem now that there are a multitude of standards worldwide (FM, DAB, HD etc). Addressing this is something that the industry should resolve by agreeing on a common platform. From what I’ve seen DAB is the way to go.

That makes the economics easier but in the end manufactures are going to be driven by consumer demand – or listeners. On that you’ve hit most of the key areas (more experimentation, metadata, on air talent).

Another easy win is to use the conversational breaks between songs to recognize online user content – ideally from on the stations site – but potentially from what listeners submit. Recognition builds community (by recognizing its members to each other) and brings word of mouth – because people talk about being linked to and spoken about on air. (Get the listeners you have to advertise for you to their networks)

It brings mass recognition to the individual (and their online content) – and in so doing creates a powerful connects between station and the community – for that listener – and others who want the same recognition.