Thankfully, the radio industry sorted this out a while back: every radio station has a nice slogan. I’d just like to read you some station slogans, and tell me which you might want to tune in to:

London’s No 1 Hit Music Station
The music we all love
Bristol’s better music mix
More variety - and today’s best music
London’s best conversation
In new music we trust
More real music
We play what we want

That’s how radio stations talk about themselves. Partly, that’s how we’re supposed to choose between stations on the dial.

But the number of radio stations has doubled on DAB, quadrupled on Sky, and on the internet, who knows how much.

I want a way to find a station that’s right for me.

- Which station is Johnny Vaughan on?
- Which station covers Swindown Town football matches?
- Which station plays more Arctic Monkeys than anyone else?
- Who’ll be covering Gordon Brown’s visit to Buckingham Palace today?
- What are the four local radio stations that cover Sheffield?
- Who’s playing The Beatles right now?
- Is there a phonein about Tony Blair’s ten years I can take part in?
- Given my last.fm profile, what BBC station is right for me?

Currently, there are no standards to enable people to find the station they want.

There’s an electronic programme guide which helps with some of this - but mostly that data isn’t online or at the end of any API. And the data in the EPG for many stations is poor. (Virgin’s schedule notes for Russ Williams’s show, once it’s been through BDS, reads “Music, chat, and more”. The definition of ‘more’ isn’t clear.)

There’s a ‘programme type’ specification, in genres, for FM and DAB. Good in theory, but here are the PTY codes for Virgin’s stations:
Virgin Radio (new and classic rock): ROCK MUSIC
Virgin Radio Classic Rock: ROCK MUSIC
Virgin Radio Xtreme (cutting edge new rock): ROCK MUSIC
Virgin Radio Groove (disco, soul and Motown): er… OTHER MUSIC

It’s easier to find on-demand stuff, like podcasts or the BBC Radio Player, than it is to find a great live radio station. And as someone who loves great live radio stations that’s a problem.

My (Virgin) team are already working with two other major radio broadcasters to make a commonly-supported API. And I’ve submitted a paper to do just this for all stations.

And each station needs to work out how it can talk about its programmes better in programme schedules. Our metadata is poor to non-existent.

We even need to make sure that REM is spelt right. Is it “REM” or “R.E.M.”? Is it “The end of the world as we know it” or “The end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)”?

Live content like radio stations might need special rules and a special solution to help people find our live content. It’s a much harder job than finding pre-existing pre-packaged content.