I notice thoughtful posts from Paul Fairburn, Dusty Rhodes and Adam Bowie about the closure of UBC’s Cliq service.

Cliq was originally a service using DAB data to let you buy any song you heard on any participating radio station. It was rather clever, though for the life of me I couldn’t work out how to earn any money out of it. Then, it became a service using a Java client for mobile phones, again, allowing you to download any song you heard on a participating radio station. This was rather clever too: less technically clever than the DAB version, but slightly easier to earn revenue from. UBC have called it a day, pulled the plug, and Cliq will henceforth be a business-to-business service for broadcasters and manufacturers alike.

Bloggers like me have mostly used our blogs to post why we thought it failed, and what we would have done better if we ran the service instead of our own day jobs, like we know better. This probably irritates my friends at UBC (past and present) so, apart from mentioning that if you’re going to produce a service to run on the radio, try to call it a name that people know how to spell, I’ll refrain from it. (And anyway, GWR Group were first with the ludicrously named “koko.com” as their own website brand. Hah.)

However, Cliq highlights one of the main things I’ve spotted since joining the BBC - and it won’t be a surprise to regular readers of this blog, but boringly I’ll mention it again in a Mark Ramsey bold style: there’s more to radio than music.

There is clearly a market for something that, when you hit a button, buys the song you’re listening to. Radio remains the main way that people discover new music; it’s only natural that it retails it. But there’s clearly a market for something that does other things when you hit a button. Like these silly ideas:

- I’m listening to the radio on my phone - and press the “email the studio” button to, er, email the studio.
- I’m listening to the radio on my iPod - and press the “podcast” button on the screen to automatically subscribe to the show’s podcast.
- I hear a fantastic deal on double-glazing, and hit the “want it” button to get the company’s phone number emailed to me by the radio station.
- The presenter’s asking me whether he should play Keane or Queen. I hit the “Queen” button. So do lots of other people.
- I thoroughly enjoy the current book that’s being read, and click the “read it” button to get the first chapter sent via email, with an offer to buy the full book.
- On the way home from work in the car, I hear five songs I really enjoy. On arriving home, there’s an email in my inbox with the titles, and links to buy.

Oh, and if it worked well on DAB, and online, and on HD Radio, and even, hell, why not, FM… then that would be good too. And no, I don’t have wifi everywhere, and no, I quite like my mobile phone too and I don’t want a new one. And I want it to work on a load of different radio stations, please.

Radio’s more than just music - and it’s listened-to on more than just one device. So when we want to interact with it, there needs to be more on offer than just music commerce.

Photo: Tonx; used under licence

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