Speaking of branch events, I can exclusively reveal that radio futurologist extraordinaire Mr James Cridland will soon be giving the London Branch an insight into what he’s been learning on his recent trans-global expedition. It should be a fascinating evening, so make sure you clear your diary for the 24th Feb from 6pm at the Gibson Building, Rathbone Street, London. Registration will open shortly.

Visual Radio didn’t fail because of the concept of FM+IP; it failed because:

1. The ‘Visual Radio app’ had to be configured by the user before it would give them a list of stations that supported it. (This is no different. RadioDNS fixes that).

2. Unlike the TOKYO FM thing, the ‘Visual Radio’ bit had to be selected by the user every time they listened to the radio. It didn’t appear automatically.

3. Unlike mobiles in Tokyo, we all had to pay per byte of bandwidth in those days, so it cost consumers money every time they fired up the application.

4. Only Virgin Radio supported it – only one rather esoteric FM station in London. Later, along came a few of GWR’s stations. But that was it; the BBC failed to support it (that’s 50% of your audience right there). And Virgin couldn’t even promote it on-air, since it didn’t work nationally or on DAB.

5. The backend software provided for Nokia by a third party was utter crap, and I spent many hours (successfully) getting an API written for it so we didn’t have to touch the thing

6. It wasn’t actually very good.

I’d hate you to think that FM+IP isn’t a valid way of augmenting the radio experience. We’ve learnt lots since.

* anecdotal evidence