Our friends at Siemens in Maidenhead, who are part of the team that keep the iPlayer on the internet and who played a part in the improved sound quality for radio. They’re holding the Bafta that the iPlayer won. I held it for a little while too, but I’d much rather hold a Sony Radio Academy Award. Photo by Matthew Thompson. Used under licence.

Come play with the iPlayer beta. It’s bigger telly, a better interface, and… radio. Built in. Properly. No rebadged Radio Player this time, this is the real deal. It went live just before 6.00pm tonight.

I’m currently listening-again to a very nice documentary from BBC Radio 2 (available till 6.30 on Friday here) about The Beatles. In Flash, finally. At a decent bitrate, finally. No Real Player required (good job, it’s a devil to install on this Ubuntu box).

It’s not perfect yet. But my goodness, what a change.

I’ll bet there’s a ton of interested people asking what bitrates and codecs we’re using (I’ve been fending off the personal emails ever since it launched). So, I’ve written a long, long, blog post explaining this - with lots of nice Wikipedia explanatory links and a link to an internet fridge - for the BBC Radio Labs blog. It’s scheduled to go live tomorrow, Friday, at the arbitrary time of 3.22pm (though it might go earlier). Until then, please know that there are at least two further changes to bitrates and codecs this year. This is not the finished audio quality.

The joy is that the iPlayer looks really simple, but behind the scenes it’s a really, really complicated thing. I’m proud to have played my part in it - radically changing the BBC’s online radio offering (for, I hope you’ll agree, the better).

Finally, my friends outside the UK get the improved navigation and everything except the Flash player (it should drop into Real Player for on-demand content). Let me know if it does. Or if it doesn’t.

Now, enough of that. Go and switch on the radio.

In spite of having what I now suspect as hayfever plus a cold plus a hangover, I went to Alexandra Palace today for the BBC’s Mashed, a place where hackers across the UK came to play with some of the BBC’s content and other bits.

Alexandra Palace has an interesting link to the BBC, and broadcasting in general. It was in 1936 when the first, ever, television broadcasts came out of here - and the BBC used Alexandra Palace as broadcast studios and a transmitter site until 1956. BBC broadcasts still come from the building: it runs a low-power analogue television relay, two commercial radio FM broadcasts, and also broadcasts the BBC’s DAB multiplex (and Digital One, and all the local London muxes too). And this weekend, it was also broadcasting two more channels - this time, digital terrestrial television, as the BBC let people play with MHEG.

For reasons associated with my hayfever/cold/hangover combination, I arrived in the middle of the presentation of the hacks - still in time to see some of my team’s work (which includes a way to punch in your lastfm profile and be told what kind of programmes you might like on the BBC, which is rather marvellous).

I saw many others, too - including a rather splendid automatic translator for television. Here’s roughly how it worked: it watched live BBC television, got the subtitles off Freeview (which are sent as bitmaps, by the way, not text); OCRd the bitmaps to turn them into text; popped off to Babelfish to translate them into German, got the German text into a speech synthesiser, and added that audio over the top of the (delayed) video. Bloody clever. And it worked using a Mac and a PC (”to keep everyone happy”, said the team).

I’d have liked to have taken part a little longer; but I was mightily impressed at what I saw. Wonderfully organised, and a real credit to the BBC. Many congratulations, Matt and Ian.

Grüße Deutschland!

It’s been an eye-opening day. I’ve been at RadioDay 2008 in Cologne, a really very large get-together for the German radio industry. Over 2,000 people come every year: three separate tracks of conference speakers, and a quite wide-ranging amount of corporate stands.

The overwhelming impression, for someone who doesn’t understand the German radio market well, is one of disunity and pluralism. Everyone takes advertising here, whether “public” or “private”. There’s no equivalent of the RadioCentre, a place where the UK commercial radio industry gets together - instead are two sets of advertising companies, one with a logo that on first glance reads “ASS Radio”, which was hugely amusing for at least twenty-five minutes. There are almost no national radio stations either; and virtually no networking. The NRJ group apparently does do some networking (for two hours a night) but the NRJ station in the old East Germany - and yes, to my surprise, people here still do refer to it as such - doesn’t take the shared programming, since they’re owned by the Polish NRJ not the French NRJ (even if it’s the same brand, which would in ordinary circumstances lend me nicely to another Virgin riff, but I won’t). “Disunity” sounds like a negative, and it is in many ways (it’s harder to buy radio advertising here, and harder to reach consensus on technology-related issues) but it’s also a benefit, with a much more vibrant, creative industry than the Global/Bauer/GMG/BBC-controlled industry we have at home.

Radioday is their “Radio Festival”, a place where people come to meet and talk. The party in the evening, where I’ve just come from, is famous for its food - everything from currywurst to chinese food - its entertainment - this year, the entertaining spectacle of Croatia beating Germany, followed by Austria drawing with Poland, followed by Mousse T (”Horny horny horny”) and, among others, Roachford (sing “Cuddly Toy” and all, er, his, cough, other hits) - and its beer - tiddly little 20ml glases of Kolsch, the local beer type.

The difference between Radioday here and the Radio Festival in the UK is that, because of the sheer number of people who work in the radio industry here, there are loads of potential visitors. The uncharitable might claim it’s 1983 here - mostly, not networked; mostly, multiple owners; and almost totally still in the analogue era. And it won’t come as a surprise that I was there talking about DAB Digital Radio, which is the only real way of getting digital radio into a device costing as little as 15 euro. It’s a far cry from the UK industry, that’s for sure.

Today has been interesting to see how different the German radio market is, and what a surprise it is to them when public and private broadcasters work together. I was speaking with Nick Piggott from GCap Media, and I hope that we’ve shown that if you agree on technology and compete on content - then good things happen. And that means agreeing on Europe-wide technology, not just within Germany.

Photo: Merlijn Hoek - used under licence, and yes, I’ve a few pictures to upload shortly. Disclosures: for this conference, flights, accommodation and food was paid-for by AS&S Radio and Radioday. I got a nice gift of an analogue radio from AS&S Radio for speaking at an event the previous night, and a small speaking fee which I donated to charity.

Updated on legal advice. Woo!

A shop-front in Brussels, on 28th May. I took this. I liked the name, and the style of it.

Stuff about t’BBC

While the BBC fiddles, Britain’s innovation burns [Techcrunch UK]
Mike Butcher … worn record … growl … comments … Jem Stone … excellent … I have a rant too … Mike Butcher … lovely man … worn record …

Radiofall (XMPP-HTTP mashup) [mibly]
Another nice mashup of BBC data, this time using stuff from BBC Audio & Music Interactive's own XMPP services. Thank you @kael for your delicious tag - tag something for:jamescridland to ensure I see it…

Meet Olinda, trailblazer of the airwaves [Daily Telegraph]
Nice writeup of one of my team's projects. Still haven’t seen the radio itself, though. @tristanf, is it under your desk?

BBC radio on your iGoogle homepage
…an official gadget for your iGoogle homepage. Nicely done. I’ve added it. Why don’t you?

Other radio stuff

What's your name again? [Nik Goodman]
How to choose a good radio station name. Might be useful for a certain Mr David Lloyd. My comment on this posting doesn’t make a whole amount of sense, looking back at it. The Shizzle, I meant to say.

Radio and the digital native [RAB and RadioCentre]
Really good research from the RAB here (though my colleague Yasser tells me that it directly contradicts some BBC research, which is odd). I wonder how I can get on their mailing list, so I can be told of this stuff going up? There's some really good news for radio here.

Martin Kelner on the radio craze of 'testing tunes' [The Guardian]
"What radio does not want is me playing records I have brought in from home and swapping dubious jokes with my mates. So I have been encouraged by my employers to take early retirement from music radio." - bring this man to talkSPORT, I say. Not very loudly. UTV don’t listen to a word I say.

The Radio Hat [oddee.com]
Check out the radio hat - four or five magazine covers down. I want one. (Not)

Ego-search-a-go-go

James Cridland v Matt Deegan [feedcompare]
I win! Thanks to Matt Deegan for sending this to me. Nice website. (And his, too)

My full disclosure
…recently updated to include my work with the Radio Academy, and to stop claiming that I own shares in Emap plc. Shortly I won’t own shares in GCap Media plc either. I’ll just be stuck with UBC shares, and SMG. Never, ever, rely on me for investment advice. Unless you want to lose all your money.

This is a tidied and edited list of my del.icio.us postings from May 23rd to June 3rd. You can subscribe to this list, live, via rss.

One of the first things that happened to me when I joined the BBC was an invitation from the Sony Radio Academy Awards to be on their organising committee. I was tremendously privileged, and really rather over-awed, to be part of the team that organises the awards: full, as it is, of radio’s biggest names. I felt rather humbled that the awards, the UK radio industry’s biggest and most critically-acclaimed, takes its job so seriously; really hard thought brings the awards to you every year, and judges and committee members alike are incredibly concerned with ensuring the awards are run fairly and with the radio industry’s best thoughts at heart.

Of course, I came with an agenda. As someone who’s worked within radio’s new media arena since the early 1990s, I was acutely aware that the Sony Radio Academy Awards were seen, by our community at least, as irrelevant. The “Interactive Programme Award” was a new award in 2007 which looked promising - but appeared, on closer inspection, to be more about phoneins and audience interaction, and less about the brave new world of new platforms and new media. (This year, that award was renamed the “Listener Participation Award”.)

And so, this year, a brand new award was accepted by the committee: the Multiplatform Radio Award. It exists to: recognise excellence in the creation of multiplatform support for radio - services that are designed to enrich and extend a radio programme, event, or station. Entries are invited from publishers and producers of radio station websites, services delivered to mobile (via text, mms, wap or web), DAB digital radio data services including DLS ’scrolling text’, or services on other platforms. Judges will be seeking to reward entries which make effective use of their chosen medium and enhance the listener’s experience. This may extend to supporting a programme or event during transmission, or pre/post broadcast. Services should be directly related to radio station output.

On Monday night, I was at the Grosvenor House Hotel, to watch the Awards being announced. I was already delighted with the amount of entries for the Multiplatform Radio Awards, and also - given I had nothing to do with the judging - delighted at a good cross-section of entries; from bronze award-winner Planet Rock, to BBC local radio, two BBC national radio services for which I’m responsible (one of which attained silver), but I was especially proud of the winner.

You see - it’s one thing doing a fantastic job capturing the excitement and additional content opportunities at the BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend. I’m proud of the team who did such a great job last year, and this year, putting it together. It supports a radio station event particularly well. With the advances this year (check it out before Saturday, due to some rights restrictions, for the full thing), I have no doubt that it’s capable of winning Gold in next year’s awards.

But this year’s winner, the BBC World Service’s Bangladesh Boat Project, was really something else; because this was a piece of radio conceived, first and foremost, as a full multiplatform experience - with, it seems to me, just as much thought on how it would work on new platforms as it would on the radio.

As Ben Sutherland says on the BBC Editors blog: If predictions about sea level rises come true, much of Bangladesh will simply be erased from the map. Our aim, therefore, was to hire a boat and use it to travel the long, wide rivers of the country to meet the people most at risk. There were amazing stories [...] but not only was the method of getting these stories remarkable, but so was our way of getting it out. We weren’t just using tri-media, and we weren’t just World Service. We were on Radio 5 Live, News 24, Radio Scotland - and on Twitter, iTunes, Google.

In the words of the judges, “it embraced everything from podcasts to GPS and Googlemaps to add value to the listener/user experience and met those listeners where they really lived using third party sites such as Flickr.” They even had the foresight to put those photos under a CC licence, to enable people like me to use them again. W00t, as apparently it’s trendy to say.

While I’d rather have had one of my team walk away with a deserved Gold, I am rather in awe of what the BBC World Service team achieved. It is true multiplatform radio; not just additional content but a great showcase of the theory that by not just embracing new platforms but producing specifically for them, you’ll contribute to the sound of the station as a whole.

Here’s to many more years of the award. And a win for my team next year would be nice.

Photo from the BBC World Service; used under licence. Disclosure: I’m a regular listener to the BBC World Service, and I have many friends there. My full disclosure is also relevant to this post.

I’m privileged to have been elected as a Trustee of The Radio Academy.

Thank you for your support. I’m looking forward to playing my part.

Sean Ross posts in Infinite Dial, a radio website well worth visiting, about a new radio station, being broadcast on FM and also on erockster.com:

Here’s erockster.com as heard on KAJR at 7:40 local time this morning, mostly unhosted but with various artist drops:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps”
Beach Boys, “California Girls”
Tegan & Sara, “Burn Your Life”
Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”
Bright Eyes, “Old Soul Song”
…
If, three years ago, you were one of those people who liked to point out that Bob- and Jack-FM were not your iPod on shuffle, this may well be.

If we continue to think of radio stations as purely music (”unhosted but with artist drops”), we’re going to hell in a handcart. Because last.fm, Pandora, et al, does a much better job of playing me new music that I’ve otherwise not heard of but I like than the likes of the nonstop music channels like Core, The Arrow, Virgin Groove, Century Digital, etc.

I’m not a typical listener: nor a typical music fan. Listen to my music choice (that’s my music collection in one big playlist), while looking at my most-played tracks of the last 3 months, and you’ll see that my most played track in that three months is The Divine Comedy’s “Absent Friends”, which I’ve played just four times. A typical commercial radio station will play their top tracks eight times a day - once every three hours. Assuming I listen to music for a total of two hours a day (in commutes and desk-bound working), commercial radio would have had me listen to that track 60 times in three months.

Indeed, over the last week, my 210 different artists, and a total of 323 tracks means that, in just 18 hours, I’ve listened to more tracks than many commercial radio stations play per week. I’m singling out commercial radio here, by the way, not because of a misplaced loyalty to my employer, but that commercial radio’s music choice is, by and large, far more tightly musically formatted - and that, for whatever reason, only commercial radio runs nonstop music services.

Clear Channel’s new radio station, or The Arrow, or Virgin Xtreme, or any number of other “music jukebox” channels, just play a mix of music which is suboptimal, for me, to that available from a computer program or a website - or, even, from a tightly tuned iTunes.

Surely the future of radio isn’t just non-stop music jukebox channels? Can’t one-to-one technology do that job better? Or is the job of a programme director really just the job of a music scheduler these days?

(And does the above shine any light on the widening gap between commercial radio services and those from the BBC? Is the Radio 1 breakfast show, or Terry Wogan, or Chris Evans, or Scott Mills ‘all about the music’?)

Photo: flickr user niznoz. Used under licence.