James Cridland

A universal radio, BBC Sounds out of app stores, and MIDAS

An HD radio in 2015

This is Radioland, my radio newsletter.

I’m continuing to explore the idea of a universal digital radio receiver - one that would do analogue plus HD, DRM and DAB.

In Australia’s RadioInfo, Ruxandra Obreja from Digital Radio Mondiale wrote a response to my idea. She writes that there are chipsets that deal with all of them, like the Si469 series from Skyworks, or the now deprecated SAF360x series from NXP: yet for both these examples, you need different firmware on the silicon for each digital standard (HD, DRM, DAB+, CDR etc). There’s no chipset, yet, dealing with everything in the same firmware.

She goes on: “The snag is that even if the chipset solutions exist there will be a complication with HD Radio because the royalty will be applied even if the radio is not used in North America”. Digging a little more, it looks as though HD Radio would charge 3% of the cost of sale - if, of course, they’d allow HD Radio decoding to be in the same receiver as DAB+ or DRM (which might be a condition of the licence). I’d love to learn more about it. (There are a lot of patents!) Maybe we’re better giving up on the HD Radio idea for now - and just focusing on a receiver that does DAB+ and DRM, which mostly share a patent pool anyway.

She finishes by asking “who needs such a complex and expensive catch-all receiver?” - a valid question, and I’m not expecting this universal digital radio to be cheap. But - it seems to me that a reference device that deals with all digital standards (as well as all analogue ones) would have a small audience, and possibly bigger than the existing analogue-only models. Additionally, manufacturing costs go down with scale; so if you were to build one receiver that can be sold in every part of the world, that’s going to be cheaper than building individual versions for different countries. And I remember that in the early days of DAB+, you could pay £10 to upgrade some Pure DAB radio receivers to also receive DAB+. They had DAB+ decoding built-in to the chipset, but turned it off in some countries so they didn’t have to pay the AAC patent; but made the clever decision that you could pay a small payment, and update the firmware using a USB connection. Why not do this with the HD Radio component if it’s really needed?

I still think this idea has legs - particuarly since the physical radio receiver (and its expensive tooling) doesn’t need to change; all the buttons and antennas and RF stages stay the same: it just needs new software inside. And it should mean it’s much easier to find radio receivers that just work, wherever you go - which should benefit all of us. What’s odd, though, is that I can’t seem to get any responses from emails sent to existing travel radio manufacturers. Does anyone have any contacts?

RCS

  • Radiodays Asia is in Jakarta, Indonesia, in early September. It’s the meeting point for radio, audio, podcast and education in Asia - and I’m very much looking forward to taking part once more. There’s a full day of podcasting, which already has some excellent speakers. If you’d like to go - please use code PODNEWS which saves on selected passes. (And if you’re planning on being close to Indonesia in early September but can’t get your company to pay, let me know).

    • While I’m at it - Podcast Movement is in mid-August in Dallas, TX. I’ll be there too; and, again, code PODNEWS will save you on selected passes. Bonus!

  • The BBC Sounds app has been removed from app stores outside the UK, pending its full closure on 21 July. After then, all audio-on-demand goes away for international users, but most podcasts will be available on BBC Audio, within the BBC app. You’ll also be able to listen to all BBC Radio stations by using the “Audio FAQ” link and scrolling down to a set of links (or just using something other than the BBC, like TuneIn or Apple Music, or your smart speaker).

    • While audio on demand is removed completely for international users, if you download the BBC World Service app you’ll apparently discover the full audio-on-demand output from the BBC World Service in there. It’s covered in pre-2021 logos, and doesn’t want to load at all for me, but I’m told it’s an option - maybe it’ll work for you.
    • Every podcast you play in the BBC Audio app starts with a jingle for BBC Sounds - “radio, music, podcasts” - which, of course, is promoting the app we’ve literally just been told we can’t use. Yet, the next thing you hear (“This podcast is supported by ads outside the UK”) is dynamically inserted and only audible outside the UK. It’s surprising to me how bad the BBC is at doing this.

  • In the UK, RAJAR released its MIDAS Spring 2025 study, which looks at audio consumption in the country. Lots of helpful data about how, and what, people consume.

  • In Australia, something so obvious I’m slightly confused as to why it’s taken so long - a radio group has added a smartwatch app that plays your favourite radio station (as long as its theirs). It’s for Apple Watch only for now (the leading smartwatch anyway). I just gave it a go - I was expecting it to use the speaker on the Apple Watch, but no - it requires you to a) have your iPhone in your pocket (or a SIM-enabled Apple Watch), and b) pair some earbuds to it. That’s slightly less exciting. (But, it does mean a station logo on your watch… and we have a recall-based radio survey here.)

    • I went to read up on this. Audio is only supported on Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 - and kills your battery, with ten minutes of audio reducing battery life by an hour.

  • WorldDAB has put videos of its recent WorldDAB Automotive conference online. There are quite a few gems in here: CRA’s Lizzie Young talking about Australia’s multiplatform radio market; also overviews from Spain, Germany, and France.

Thank you to the excellent Elliot Stechman for his kind donation to keep this newsletter going. Based in Mumbai, India, he’s experienced in anything you want to know about media, broadcasting and hardware.

Want to supercharge your radio show? Here’s a £1 week-long trial of Show Prep - from a world class radio consultant and the best show-prep writer in the UK. Great for UK stations, or for English-language stations everywhere, too. (ad)

Where I am speaking next

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Selected bits from Radioland are in RadioInfo in Australia, and RAIN News in the US
Lesen Sie außerdem ausgewählte Artikel auf Deutsch in Radioszene

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