Streaming Radio Online
A vague announcement of changes to come with BBC radio streaming. Written by me and a cast of thousands of reviewers - and on the BBC Internet Blog now. Pop along and leave a comment there, and if it doesn’t work, leave one here instead… (grin)

Photo: Thomas Hawk. Used under licence.

An email comes through (to my work address, but I never answer these kinds of things on behalf of my employer, that would be dangerous)…

I am working on a report on the economic implications of Web 2.0 – the collaborative internet – and one of the questions I am asking is: is it a threat or an aid to traditional media? How might we see traditional media adapt to stay competitive in this new world? Would you have a window over the next couple of days to comment on this question in terms of the music industry?

I’ve no particular comment in terms of the music industry. There’s a common misconception that the music radio industry is, in some way, part of the music industry. It’s not. Indeed, there’s a common misconception outside the media that record companies pay radio stations to play certain acts. That’s not the case either; in fact, radio stations pay to play music (between 8 and 10% of their income, usually). Yes, “pluggers” are employed by record companies to ensure that their product gets played; but radio stations are pretty adept at choosing songs themselves.

But anyway.

“Is it a threat, or an aid, to traditional media?”

That depends on what you mean by Web2.0. I used Wikipedia, which has a long definition, partly including this:

The most “Web 2.0″-orientated (applications), which could only exist on the Internet, deriving their effectiveness from the inter-human connections and from the network effects that Web 2.0 makes possible, and growing in effectiveness in proportion as people make more use of them. O’Reilly gave as examples eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball and AdSense.

So, in short, if we think of Web2.0 as being “effectiveness from inter-human connections”, then we need to work out if it’s “a threat or an aid to traditional media”, which begs the question: what is traditional media?

“Traditional media”, in the broadcast sense, might mean a linear broadcast stream. Turn on the radio, and you hear whatever’s on the radio right now: no way to pause it, rewind it, control it in any way other than the “off” switch. And the same’s true of television. Except it isn’t.

Television, we’re told, is becoming less and less reliant on the schedule. Viewers with Sky+, the most popular digital video recorder in the UK, frequently claim that “they never watch live TV any more” - their hard-drive recording specific programmes, allowing the viewer to instantly access these programmes. This ‘disaggregation’ is made possible by the electronic programme guide. The programme title - the main way viewers navigate through the schedules - has never been more important.

Radio, too, is seeing ‘disaggregation’. DAB Digital Radio now also contains an electronic programme guide for many radio stations: it’s not as advanced or as consistent as its TV cousin (and the user interface for EPGs on DAB sets is normally pretty poor) but it holds the key to reinventing part of the medium. Broadcasters, like multiplex-owner “MuxCo”,plan to use the EPG to broadcast innovative new programming using overnight capacity. But radio has also benefitted from the internet. The BBC’s listen-again service is continually growing (in terms of unique users) month after month; and the BBC’s listen-again service is particularly efficient at growing niche programming, with some listening figures for programmes comparable to those off-air. Podcasts, too, add considerable numbers to broadcaster listening figures: and some programmes (In Our Time, Peter Day’s World of Business, The Geoff Show) are disproportionately popular online - once more, niche programming reaching a wider audience. It’s not just the BBC doing this; commercial broadcasters are there too (and, in some cases, in front of the lumbering, sometimes-inflexible beast that the BBC is).

And, while still pretty new, catch-up services (the BBC iPlayer, 4oD, itv.com) are redefining how people watch the television, too. All signs point towards these services being as popular as the BBC Radio Player, in time.

“How might we see traditional media adapt to stay competitive in this new world?”

All the above is ‘traditional media’: dramatically adapted to stay competitive, and relevant, in this new world. Total radio listening has remained steady, despite commercial radio’s suicidal tendencies in the past few years. The addition of more choice in the form of DAB Digital Radio appears to add to total radio listening, which is excellent news.

The report-writers, and the journalists, love an “Internet kills the media” story: unfavourably comparing “total spent on the internet” with “total spent on radio” or “total spent on tv”, as if a 90-word Google AdWords ad is, somehow, equivalent to a glossy thirty-second TV ad.

The reality is that the ‘traditional’ media is continually adapting its products to fit the Web2.0 world. Virgin Radio even went so far as to launch its own social networking site (before the big Facebook craze); the BBC’s Radio Player launched in 2001-ish, far before the excitement of YouTube.

And have we succeeded? Mass media like radio and television has daily access to audiences that even the largest websites would dream about. MySpace, the home of tons of music and youth-orientated websites, is used for 25 minutes a week; yet BBC Radio 1 itself is listened-to, on average, over 10 hours a week - youth commercial station Galaxy reaching over 7 hours a week. And that’s in spite of the tremendous growth of media outlets (see the photo above). If Web2.0 is all about “inter-human connections”, then we do a pretty good job.

Yes, we’ve work to do. It’s why I enjoy working in multiplatform support for radio, keeping radio relevant to today’s audiences. And no, we’re not complacent - partly the reason why we continue to reinvent our brand (by adding visuals to radio on DAB or on phones, for example).

But, I’d humbly suggest, “traditional media” is, in the UK at least, doing a good job of keeping up with the Web2.0s. Things are different in the US and other countries - and much of it has to do with the absence of a strong, forward-looking, public service broadcaster. Even the most rabid anti-BBC person (as I once was) would agree that the presence of the BBC raises the standard of all broadcasting in this country. Mark Ramsey’s hectoring from the sidelines in the US reflects a particular issue there; but not here.

I once joked in a conference: “We’re already up to ‘Web 3.11 for Workgroups’”. And I believe it, to a degree. We’re in pretty good shape. Don’t talk us down.

Photo: giovanni gallucci | new media consultant. Used under licence

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A version of this blog entry now appears on the BBC website.

Dan Taylor has just posted his most-visited websites (according to del.icio.us). I’m quite a fan of #28, but I thought I’d post something similar.

I don’t use del.icio.us as a bookmarking tool - rather more a social sharing tool. Instead, I use Google Bookmarks, and Google’s Web History has a fairly comprehensive view of my internet use. At least - it should. It knows every single website I visit, courtesy of the Google toolbar which is on every machine I use. Curiously, I can’t get “the sites I visit most” from the web history. What I can get is what I search for most, and my use of Google - which might be vaguely interesting.

First, I’ve now made 10,215 searches with Google (there’s a scary thing).

Looking at my use of Google over the past 12 months, it’s interesting to see what I’ve been looking at.

My #1 query is the #1 query to get into Media UK - London Lite. This is mainly here for my own search-engine optimisation work. Similarly, #3, #4 and #5 are also all queries for search-engine optimisation, particular to my work at Virgin Radio.

Interestingly, Gmail is my second-highest search. I suspect this is because one of the machines I use doesn’t do ctrl+enter auto-filling, and therefore Firefox is querying Google, on my behalf, when I type “gmail” into the address bar and hit enter. It does appear to work!

I’ll not reproduce those searches here (I’m good to my old employer), but here are my top sites…

Top sites
1. en.wikipedia.org - normally for background about subjects
2. www.php.net - for reference on PHP functions
3. www.bbc.co.uk - my employer!
4. james.cridland.net - probably to help me find old blog posts to cross-link to
5. www.google.com - interesting, this one. Perhaps this is related to Gmail?
6. www.mediauk.com - My own website, and related to the SEO work mentioned above
7. www.w3schools.com - for reference on CSS styling, particularly
8. ubuntuforums.org - interesting this is so high, and reflects my own support queries
9. backstage.bbc.co.uk - probably looking for feeds and things
10. news.bbc.co.uk - the third employer-related link. Aren’t I good?

Interestingly, in my “top clicks” list, Dan Taylor’s very own blog is #9 in the list - probably related to his regular “top albums of the year” feature, given he shares a spookily similar musical choice to me, and I suffer from search-blindness when going to allofmp3 mp3sparks Amazon iTunes to buy my music.

Not sure what all this says about me, but interesting to look into, nonetheless: like Dan, note the lack of “Web2.0″ snazziness in my most visited sites.

Photo: Peter Kaminski; used under licence

A few weeks, ago, BBC News added some social bookmark links to their website. At the bottom of every page, the graphic above appears, together with some explanatory text of what a social bookmark website is.

Now, for a while, I used Furl, and now mainly use Google bookmarks to store my own bookmarks. And yes, I still use Del.icio.us too. But I don’t see Furl or Google bookmarks there at all.

Elsewhere on bbc.co.uk, I don’t see any links on things like this weekend’s Reading and Leeds Festivals, nor the excellent Seven Ages of Rock site, which is otherwise replete with links to Wikipedia, Flickr, Last.FM etc.

Above is the bar you’ll find on many Virgin Radio website pages - for example on its V Festival. At first glance, ‘bookmark this’ and ‘add this’ are slightly confusing; ‘add this’ actually refers to the RSS feed within that particular page, whereas clicking ‘bookmark this’ used to bring a nice dropdown of particular sites, but appears now to open a new page. This gives the correct links to add this page to any social bookmark system, and also tells a user how to bookmark it to their computer if they wanted to.

The Telegraph also links to an arbitrary list at the bottom of their pages; this time without any images or icons. They’re linking to NowPublic, I notice.

Finally, the New York Times links to a few, including a special appearance of Newsvine, all behind a dropdown.

There really ought to be a better way; and it’s good to see that The Share Icon Project is attempting to do for these types of links that the RSS feed icon has so successfully done; to give one little icon, and from there to link to a page which contains my favourites, not just the bloke at the BBC/Virgin/Telgraph/NYT who happened to code the service in the first place. A nice well-used icon should also ensure that people are able to use this on more pages, since you shouldn’t need a ton of space - or even, in time, any explanation, for what the icon means.

Of course, there’s a question-mark about how useful these links are. I’d never use those buttons, preferring to use my delicious toolbar (or Google toolbar). But, at the bottom of a page, they certainly jog your memory. Perhaps they might be better marked: “Would someone else find this page useful?”

But in any case, some consistency about how we link to social bookmarking websites would be a good idea. I don’t think we can go far wrong with the ’share’ icon. Which is why I’m now using it; and if you agree, I’d urge you to, as well.