Listening to TOKYO FM on your keitai
Posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 10:00am. #
Just like in Europe, listening to the radio on a mobile phone is more and more popular. Working with one of the big operators, TOKYO FM has done a neat trick – augmenting the listening experience over FM with additional information via IP. The concept is similar to Nokia’s Visual Radio – it uses FM for the audio and additional stuff over IP. You tell the phone where you live, and the FM radio app configures the phone to include the local radio stations it should be able to pick up, and the additional information. Unlike Visual Radio, the additional information just appears, without having to manually switch the visual radio service on.
Not only can TOKYO FM monetise their listeners by showing them advertising, they can also sell the songs they play; TOKYO FM runs its own mobile download service. Advertising can be interactive, too. And the app can even be ‘skinned’ for your favourite radio station.
This is a really interesting way of augmenting the user experience: using FM broadcast’s reliability and scalability, but additional personalisation and information over IP. The push notification is operated by the mobile phone operator – KDDI in this case – rather than the broadcaster.
(As an aside, RadioDNS is very similar to this, but since RadioDNS operates on what the radio can actually receive, rather than any preset pre-configured list, it requires no user setup; and the broadcaster is more in control of the messages that appear.)
And it’s a good job that TOKYO FM is trying hard to make their listening experience as good as it can be; since mobile phones also pick up live television, which is broadcast as well in a special (and non-standard, of course) way. Here’s an image of the same phone watching the television – with some of the ad banners that also appear when listening. The ad banners are there because the internet browser controls are available to the phone’s OS in other applications; and the TV broadcasts use ISDB-T HD television (yes, they’re actually, bizarrely, HD broadcasts, even though the display probably won’t be the resolution that HD actually makes available.
This is the third of four articles about TOKYO FM, the innovative station in Japan. In the last part tomorrow, discover why TOKYO FM’s now-playing information is always 100% correct, and why it’s a win-win for everyone.
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Adam
TOKYO FM: Augmenting the mobile radio listening experience over FM with additional info via IP.– http://bit.ly/bnPw5d /by @jamescridland
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