Thought this was worth a mention. I’m a huge fan of the concept, and recommend to all my students that if they make radio programmes, they should submit them for peer review and possible broadcast here on PRX.org

Shane Brown on “Street Cred” 89.1FM, Birmingham U.K.

Tim Wall’s earlier NRS entry “Thinking through the new economics of sound broadcasting over the internet” discussed the current need for new programming ideas and fresh radio services for listeners. His posting concluded that radio’s future held “considerable possibilities for public service and community broadcasters.” Following on from this theme and in keeping with Robin Valk’s NRS comments on inspiring stations like New York’s WFUV and Digbeth’s “Rhubarb”, I thought I’d report on an innovative station, just two miles from Birmingham City University’s Radio Dept.

Aston FM 89.1 is an example of community radio at its best ( astonfm.com ). They pay their way with regular commercial breaks promoting local businesses and have managed to wrangle a reasonably powerful transmission signal. Unlike many of their tightly rotated competitors, Aston’s playlist exceeds five thousand tracks – so you get an incredibly varied sound to the station. They also provide a legal home for underground radio by sharing their frequency late at night with local “pirates”.

“Aston FM is Birmingham ’s newest local radio station, broadcasting to the whole of Birmingham from Villa Park, 24 hours a day seven days a week, on 89.1 FM and on the internet. Aston FM is the only radio station to broadcast live, all Aston Villa football matches, both home and away. Aston FM is committed to working with all the different communities in Birmingham and giving the City a radio station it can be proud of. We invite guests in for interviews to talk about what is going on in the City and actively encourage listeners to tell us what is happening in their part of Birmingham. We are also involved in training children from local schools in all aspects of radio and helping them put together their own radio shows to be played on the internet.”

As other stations move towards nationally networked content, Aston FM’s been quick to exploit their local presence. But it’s their attitude to specialist programming that really stands them apart. More specifically, the way they’ve embraced local pirate radio culture.

Just to set the scene a little… Pirate radio is common on the U.K.’s FM dial. Heavy regulations, limited access to frequencies and the increasing affordability of equipment means many young broadcasters are simply setting up their own illegal stations. It should be mentioned that unlicensed broadcasting is a criminal offence in the U.K. with a maximum sentence of two years. Convicted pirates can also expect to have their equipment confiscated and be barred from working on a legal station for five years (a long walk off the metaphorical media plank). However, as Miranda Sawyer wrote in the Observer, 2.11.08, “Ofcom research from 2007 showed that 25 percent of the entire London radio audience tunes into pirates (40 per cent of the black audience).” So they must be doing something right…

“Smart, hi-tech and inclusive, pirate stations are paving the way for the future of radio. The future of radio is the internet: the pirates have moved online in a big way. All the biggest stations have live web feeds. Combine this with mobile phone internet access and you can use your phone to tune into a London Pirate when you’re in, say, Glasgow. Then simply plug your mobile into your car radio and away you go. Pirate stations instantly move from being local to national and even worldwide.”

Sawyer’s article used this shift to online radio as an example of “DAB’s increasingly shrinking relevance” – but that’s another story for another day. Pirate radio’s current popularity and community radio’s continued growth meant the two were inevitably destined to meet.

“Street Cred” was a typical underground station until they found a safe home on Aston’s 89.1 frequency. Regular presenter DJ Hevs started out by playing sets on pirate station KRISS FM 95.3 in Birmingham, broadcasting to Walsall and the surrounding areas. However, he was raided by the authorities and prosecuted, prompting him to write on his myspace page; “I lost my music, lost my hope, and was starting to think, is this really worth it?” Thankfully, Aston FM came to the rescue and he’s now legally “smashing up the airwaves, playing the chunkiest 4 x 4 basslines” every Saturday night, 11pm until 2am.

I talked with Gary James from Aston FM about how pirate and community radio has managed to join forces and co-exist in (relative) harmony…

Can you tell us something about pirate radio in the Midlands?

Pirate radio has been going for a number of years in Birmingham. Usually young people have equipment based in tower blocks in the city, broadcasting illegally and often using someone else’s frequency.

Generally pirate radio broadcasts late at night and into the early hours of the morning. It’s a specific – very heavy black, afro-Caribbean music. Something you wouldn’t usually hear on normal radio… but it’s got a massive, massive audience. In Birmingham it’s something like 16% of the listening audience tuning into pirate radio. Sometime between, say, 10 at night and 6 in the morning.

How did your relationship with pirate radio actually begin?

When Aston FM was put together, the company that owns Aston FM approached Ofcom (Office of Communications) and said “look, there’s this massive audience out there that are crying out for this sort of music. Surely it makes sense to make it in someway legal”. So Ofcom went away and thought about it and came back and said “Ok – try it for 12 months – you get a pirate station in to broadcast legally on Aston FM’s frequency from the hours of 9 o’clock at night ‘til 2 in the morning and we’ll see how it goes…”

Obviously, because it’s a legal radio station, there had to be some form of professionalism. The naughty words had to go… no swearing. There was a limitation on some of the music, because that type of music does have some strong content which can be a bit iffy. But it has an audience and it’s after the watershed and if those people want to listen to it then that’s fine. There’s always the “on/off” button.

So it was agreed… And now Aston FM has a pirate group onboard called “Street Cred” who are well known in the Midlands. They broadcast from 9 at night ‘til 2 in the morning, 7 days a week, on our frequency 89.1 FM. But because they can be heard now online, streaming on the Aston FM website, they get emails and text messages from literally all over the world. It’s a massive audience.

How have things gone so far?

The whole thing works well. They’re (Street Cred) happy because they’re not being raided every five minutes and having their equipment confiscated by the authorities. It gives them a professional environment to work in, they’ve got a good frequency to broadcast on – and on the other side of things – the Police in Birmingham have said they like it because while the kids are listening to “Street Cred” they’re not out fighting, involved in knife crime, gun crime, graffiti – and generally making a nuisance of themselves. They’re off the streets and listening to the music they love. Some of the guys that work at “Street Cred” are in some ways heroes to these local kids. If they want to follow in their footsteps it can only be good. Certainly for Birmingham and as far as Aston FM and Street Cred’s concerned.

So those are the positives… There must be some negatives. Do some regular listeners take offence at their station being “taken over”?

Nobody’s really come across and said “we don’t like that” to be honest. We’ve probably got three separate audiences at Aston FM and this is the beauty of the station. And if you like – what makes it unique.

You’ve got day time listening, which is your normal sort of average soft rock, pop-music, chart etc. and local content – what’s going on in the city and around. Then you’ve got another audience for specialist shows Monday through to Friday for two hours, 7 ‘til 9 pm. From country music to hip-hop, to grunge, to dance – you name it – it’s there. And finally you’ve got this other audience that kicks in after 9, which is the “Street Cred” pirate radio audience.

It very much is three different audiences – and we know that from the emails and texts we get. We hope that somewhere there is a cross over between all audiences. We hope that some of the “Street Cred” pirate audience will listen at some time during the day. In fact, we’ve taken 2 of their guys, Lee and Paul, who were working for Street Cred and they now do our weekend breakfast show. So they’ve moved from being “pirates” if you like, to working on the station, doing legitimate weekend shows on Aston FM. Which is certainly not playing “pirate” music – but more normal, middle of the road, 60’s / 70’s / 80’s tracks.

You’ve talked about some of the issues with swearing. Any other problems to overcome?

Initially, they weren’t used to working in a radio studio. They were used to a portable mini-mixing desk, probably with three or four faders on it, a couple of decks and may be a CD player… like something you might find at home. And they love their music loud. Their speakers are usually taller than the presenters. They’d really bang it out – especially the bass. So, in the beginning we’d have a few problems as they’d come into the studios and turn everything up to the max! And it was blowing the speakers. That had to be controlled. They weren’t used to that, they were more used to have their music blaring out. They’d think they were nightclub DJ’s, whacking faders up and down. So there was a bit of that going on and a couple of things were being broken. But, to be fair, I think it was assumed from the Aston FM management that once they were shown around the studio and how things work – they’d be like normal presenters. But of course, no, they came from a completely different mentality. It was a small problem to start with that’s now been put right. They understand it now…

So what does the future hold?

Originally, Ofcom said to try it for 12 months and see how it goes. If it’s successful then they will do what they need to do re. the license to continue it. So everyone’s happy at the moment. Like anything new – the teething problems had to be sorted out. But it’s now working well and it’s giving the audience that’s out there for pirate radio somewhere they know they can tune in – at the same time every night, 7 nights a week, all year round and hear the music and the presenters they’re used to. Without worrying that their station’s about to raided and taken off the air. So it’s working well… Everybody’s gelling now. Their presenters are actually learning the trade of being a presenter and how things work in a professional radio studio.

I lead the R&D team for the BBC’s Audio & Music interactive team – we call ourselves BBC Radio Labs- and we try to take new technologies and internet trends and apply them to the BBC’s radio stations and music services. And I plan to write about some of these prototypes and experiments here – it seems appropriate for somewhere called New Radio Strategies after all. Our most recent prototype is a new web application called Radio Pop which tracks your radio listening and builds a social website out of it. Radio Pop is our attempt to fuse the trend of social networking sites with radio. To take the best of each world and combine them into something new.

Primarily we built Radio Pop to learn things about radio and social software. The really popular social networking sites are based almost purely on social interactions – think status updates, poking and throwing sheep – but lots of other social sites, like Flickr or last.fm are built around the idea of a “social object“. This social object is something which you can have conversations around or find that you have in common with people; like books, music, last night’s TV or your holiday photos. We wanted to create something where radio was the social object; because radio has always been about the shared experience – whether it was gathering around the radio set in the living room, chatting about last night’s programme with your friends, calling a phone-in programme or just knowing that you’re one in millions of others listening to Chris Moyles right now. And we were also looking at the trend of “presence” or status updates on the web. Hopefully you’ve all seen that on Twitter or Facebook; the archetypal “What are you doing?”. Well, could we create something where “What are you listening to?” was a core feature?

Sign up to Radio Pop and we will store your listening to BBC Radio whenever you listen online. Radio Pop can then use this data in a number of ways. You can see a history of what you listened to – maybe you heard something last week and you’d like to check it out some more or even track how your listening habits have changed over the years. You get your own profile page with statistics and graphs showing your favourite radio networks and programmes (here’s mine). And you can share your data – show off those statistics to your friends or add a blog badge that shows the world when you’re listening. And as well as listening, Radio Pop features a Pop button for when you hear something you really like. The site will then remember when you clicked it and add it to a list of your Pops. It’s a bit like bookmarks, but for your radio.

Like most social networking sites out there you can add your friends – then you can see what they’re listening to right now, subscribe to their latest programmes feed or see the combined statistics for all your friends. Soon we’ll be able to use all this data to create personalised recommendations for radio programmes, a bit like you get on Amazon.

Since we launched we’ve had lots of great feedback, some of my favourites are: “BBC’s radiopop.co.uk gives terrestrial radio a change. Love it. Best new online music property going.” and “I think the Radio Pop site is actually compelling me to listen to MORE radio”. I particularly like the last one – there certainly seem to be some people who, once you let them track consumption, feel compelled to do so (cf. behaviours on last.fm).

Finally, this doesn’t all have to happen through your computer. With our experimental Olinda radio we can track your listening from a real kitchen radio. But that’s for another post…

Over the past 6 months or so, I’ve been involved in a research project with the BBC. We’ve been looking at what listeners and fans do online. The project investigated notions of interactivity; it looked at the ways in which fans of specific presenters express their fandom online; it examined the things that fans of radio soap The Archers do in order to connect and discuss their favourite show; and my bit, with Professor Tim Wall, was about specialist music online.

Specifically, we looked at three things:

1) What do specialist music fans do online?
2) What does the BBC do for specialist music fans?
3) How do BBC staff think about specialist music provision?

The findings, I think, are quite interesting – and a summary of the project is being published on the BBC Radio Labs blog.

But one of the things I found most interesting was the notion of ‘orientations’ that we noticed among BBC staffers. There were clearly people who thought about the online world as a central part of what they did, and others for whom the broadcast was the thing – and anything that the radio station did online was simply there to extend and reinforce the brand.

Now, these orientations are not polar opposites, and lots of people had a mix of both orientations, but people were predominantly facing one way or another. And in fact, we considered both of those to represent missed opportunities.

Now, of course, what the BBC does for specialist music, it does so for reasons of public service, and we go into some detail on that in our report. But it got me thinking about radio personnel in general, and the ways in which they think about the online environment.

If you’re the kind of music radio person with a broadcast orientation, all the internet is to you is a bigger transmitter. Or it’s a kind of a trap that you lay out there in the world, and when people stumble into it, you can grab them and pull them in to your broadcast programming.

If you have more of an online orientation, you may consider the medium on its own terms, but may not be making the most of the music programming which, if your station is doing anything right, is where all the real action is.

The trick is to step outside both of those frames and consider your station as a media organisation in a broader sense.

You are particularly good at media that uses sound – music, speech and effects – but a holistic view of your organisation as ‘media in general’ encapsulates both the online experience and the broadcast one, so that these can work together with a common goal in mind.

In the case of the BBC, it’s specialist music for public service. In your case, it might be music and entertainment for commercial purposes. Or information and debate for community purposes. Either way, the cognitive step outside the two orientations into a wider media perspective allows you to think about broadcasting and the internet, radio and new media, as part of one coherent thing.

And when you begin to do that, a lot of the problems facing radio in the 21st century begin to melt away, and a lot of really interesting opportunities emerge. I’ll be talking more about that idea here on New Radio Strategies in the coming months.

I remember the good old days of the radio survey. The airwaves were suddenly flooded with juicy prizes, jocks did prep for a change and promotional street teams were stunned by the arrival of half decent giveaways. At the heart of this unnatural flurry of activity was the mythical “diary”. You know the one. An ancient system requiring householders to conscientiously tick boxes on a paper spreadsheet – thereby capturing an accurate record their listening habits.

Hmmm… Nice idea. But it was more often a frenzy of last minute ticking as the diary-keeper saw the research collector walking up the garden path. Of course, the main problem with this kind of research is that instead of providing actual listening patterns – favorite stations are often recalled from memory alone. So although joe-public might be tuned into one particular radio station – they actually record a more recognisable brand (with a bigger advertising budget). Which reminds me of a radio network I once worked for that offered cash incentives for tip-off’s about the streets where research companies had distributed the precious diaries. This top secret information would result in station vehicles cruising ominously up and down the lucky neighbourhoods, “building awareness”.

Traditional diary surveys require a lengthy process and are inaccurate at best. Quarter hour listening figures are usually over-reported and new research has shown that people who fill out diaries often listen to twice as many stations as they actually write down. However, for most radio markets around the world it’s still the best and only system we’ve got.

This uncertainty is embarrassing in an age when every on-line click can be recorded – and precise viewing figures dictate billions in advertising revenue. It’s therefore important for radio to keep up with our high-tech media cousins by providing accurate listening figures – rather than making do with perceived behaviour. Radio advertisers have always been rightly suspicious of surveys and deserve more certainty before committing their cash. This, of course, is where “PPM” steps into the spotlight. (Portable People Meters).

Many “New Radio Strategies” readers will already be familiar with this technology – but it represents such an important step in radio’s evolution that I think it’s worth a few more paragraphs. Especially for those outside the States where PPM has yet to really emerge.
Put simply, PPM uses technology to take the guesswork out of ratings. Survey participants carry around a small electronic device that automatically keeps track of the radio station playing in the background. This ingenious system uses inaudible codes hidden within a broadcast and the PPM unit decodes these signals to identify which station is listened to and for how long. The technique not only works with analogue broadcasting – but is apparently just as accurate with digital signals and internet radio too. Another smart feature is a built in motion detector that can tell whether the surveyed listener is carrying their personal meter around with them. Clever stuff.

Although several contenders are promoting various forms of this new technology – Arbitron, one of America’s biggest media research companies, are leading the pack by already running PPM surveys in key US markets. Arbitron started developing the concept back in 1992, so they’re obviously keen to promote its many wonders, claiming it heralds a “New Age For Radio”. They may be right. It’s not just the obvious benefits of being able to collect and deliver more audience data in less time. PPM promises new insights into how listeners consume radio too. Results are far more reliable – and initial research has shown that, compared to traditional surveys, a typical radio station reaches twice as many listeners than was previously thought.

It goes without saying; “Electronic Audience Measurement” has great potential for radio advertising. There’s a research product called “Media Monitor” which can synch up to PPM data making it possible to track a listener’s reaction to content in real time. Imagine, for example, being able to tell exactly which commercial causes a listener to switch stations… This kind of information can only help to improve the overall sound of a station, providing a valuable insight into the effectiveness of various creative approaches. These “real time ratings” will also help to track listener peaks relating to certain on-air events – giving programmers the opportunity work closer with sales departments to maximise advertising revenue.

So what’s not to like? Well, it seems there have been a few teething problems and niggles… In August ‘07, a PPM survey in Texas was pretty much ruined when vital data was inexplicably lost. PPM research has shown that quarter hour listening figures for radio are down. Many broadcasters are getting impatient with the time it’s taking to roll out the new technology. Arbitron has also been criticised for charging premium prices for the service (which seems strangely hypocritical given radio does the same thing with breakfast advertising etc.) Others speculate that PPM could eventually impact negatively on future revenue.

FMQB, an American in-house radio publication, featured an item about an assistant programme director from WZOR Wisconsin who called PPM, “The biggest sales farce ever…” Adding succinctly that… “Arbitron is horrible.” But my favourite slam comes from the March 2008 edition of GQ magazine which ran a story about the crisis facing US “shock radio”. The feature, titled “Who Will Shock The Children”, reported on a convention of 200 “Morning-Zoo-Crew-Dudes” in downtown Chicago. Arbitron Vice-President John Snyder had bravely given a presentation to a largely hostile audience and the article picked up on the crowd’s displeasure, recounting the jocks’ opinion that… “PPM was irredeemably flawed and possibly a tool of the devil, and that the guys from Arbitron should seriously consider taking their little people meters and shoving them up their asses”.

But grumpy old shock-jocks aside, it seems the industry is generally in favour of PPM. It has to be said… the old diary system is a leftover relic from the days of carts and splicing and anything that presents a more realistic picture of audience behaviour has to be a good thing. With any luck the technology will get more affordable and eventually become industry standard for all radio research companies. As Doug Abernethy, Market Manager for Radio One in Houston, put it…”Radio needs to look at this as a way to rejuvenate our business for the better. Change is inevitable.”

I will be the first to admit that there is nothing genius in here – for the most part, all these pillars are common sense, but that doesn’t make them any less important! And as stated above, I have changed these pillars many times throughout the years, rotating different ones in and out bur for the most part they have expressed the same things. So with all that being said, here we go…..

1. The Right Music – An obvious one, of course, but it needs to be said that if the music isn’t targeted towards your core listening audience then nothing else on this list will matter.

2. The Best Talent – This is NOT an area to skimp on. There’s a reason why certain talent demands big dollars. Because they’re worth it. The whole “you get what you pay for” thing. Back when Mel Karmazin ran CBS/Infinity radio he responded to those who questioned him about paying Howard Stern, Don Imus and others so much. Mel responded by saying something to the effect of, “you’re looking at it wrong – it’s not about how much I’m paying them, it’s about how much they’re MAKING for me.” Nuff said.

3. Unique, Compelling, Exclusive – The “Holy Trinity” of content creation, ESPECIALLY these days where there are unlimited choices for consumers. Any content that you create for your channel, station or platform should have these three elements – uniqueness, compelling-ness (to coin a word) and exclusivity. Sirius and XM got into a bidding war for content because they each wanted content that was unique, compelling and most of all, exclusive. The ONLY place to get Howard Stern was on Sirius; the ONLY place to get Oprah and Friends on radio was XM, they each competed for exclusive sports rights and so on.

4. Think Strategically, Act Tactically – Every station should have its own strategic plan, which simply put is a document that identifies what the overall plan for the station is. Like I said, simple. At its essence, the plan identifies what the station’s three (or so) key elements are. These three elements are the key positions that the radio station is trying to own. Once those are articulated, EVERYTHING that is done on the station has to support one of those key elements – whether it’s imaging, DJ talk, events, promotions and everything else. Once that’s in place, the tactical plan is created. The tactical plan is the document where all of the station tactics are articulated – each of these tactics should support the strategic plan. Sounds simple, and it is. But it’s surprising how many times it’s not done.

5. Specialty Programming – This is an extension of the point above, as specialty programming is a tactic that is deployed in order to carry out the strategic plan. However, it is a pretty important tactic and therefore gets its own number. It is critical for a few reasons, the first of which is that because whatever it is that is created will (hopefully) be good programming for the radio station. . Secondly, the promotion value of the show can’t be overestimated. The specialty program is something specific for your station to promote across dayparts, on the website, in e-mails to the database or elsewhere. Instead of saying, “hey, listen to our radio station ‘cause it’s great…” if there is a specific specialty show to promote the message becomes, “Listen to ‘Most Wanted with Ben Jones’ every night at 7…” (An actual show on Virgin Radio U.K.). And this becomes even more important when promoting across a platform, say like a satellite radio platform.

6. Promote, Promote, Cross-Promote – This ties in with the item above – Promotion is everything. Across dayparts, across channels (in a multi-channel environment), on the website, in e-mail blasts, in outside advertising, wherever, whenever. Promote specific things – shows, jocks, events, contests, whatever. Just promote it.

7. You Have Left the Box – (Think and Re-Think Everything) – You know that proverbial box you’re always hearing about? Not to be cliché about it, but really, take a look at everything you’re doing with a fresh perspective. Don’t necessarily throw out the rulebook (cause there ARE some really useful ‘rules’ that have been established), but re-evaluate EVERYTHING. Look at everything you do and your reasoning behind doing it with a fresh set of goggles. What do you see now? The landscape has changed drastically over the last few years and is still evolving. Make sure you are adapting.

8. It’s More than the Music – Okay, if you’re a music station the music is obviously super important (see #1). But don’t stop there. If you do you’re dead. What does your station do that is SO compelling that someone would rather listen to that rather than their iPod? Are your jocks compelling? Are they babbling idiots or do they have something to say? Do they relate to your audience?

9. Make it a Production – The importance of great production, or imaging, can’t be overstated. At its best, great imaging can go a looong way to communicating to listeners what your radio station is all about. It can convey the brand essence of your station in a way that is creative, exciting and pleasing to the ear rather than seeming intrusive to your audience. At its worst it is annoying, intrusive and sounds like a commercial. Be on the right side of that divide. Make it cool. Make it in tune with the brand essence. Make it fit with the strategic plan. And make it short – you know, attention spans and all.

10. Events – Another ‘more than the music’ element that is critical to the success of a station is events. Partner with cool existing events. Create your own events – be creative, think BIG, be unique. And make sure the event is a good strategic fit for your station. And then of course, promote it! The promotional value of events can’t be overstated – again, it is something specific to promote – and gives all listeners a sense of the ‘bigness’ of all that’s happening on the station/platform. Even if they’re not interested in that specific event, they’ll take note of it.

11. Artist Involvement – Get the Artists involved – through interviews, performances, endorsements, guest DJ slots, hosting a show or other creative ways. This is another area that people can’t get elsewhere – on their iPods or their customized Internet radio channel. The only place that can deliver the artists directly to the people is your radio station! You have to build the relationships with the artists, managers, record people, roadies, whomever; it is imperative that your station delivers the artists to the listeners.

12. The WOW Factor – This is kind of the catch-all. Even if you do everything technically ‘right’, does your station have that ‘it’? Does it reach out and GRAB the listener and entice them to listen? It better. There’s a great scene in that movie “21” when the main character is interviewing for a scholarship to Harvard Law School. The kid has a 4.0 GPA, has aced the law school exam and is a perfect candidate in every regard. The only problem is, as the dean tells him, is that there are 72 others just like him! So, the dean asks him, what makes him stand out and his application ‘jump off the page’ and rise above the rest? What makes his story so compelling? So the same can be asked for your radio station – what makes your station so damn compelling that listeners will say, “WOW”?

13. Communicate – Sounds silly and cliché and basic, but again, sometimes things are cliché for a reason – because they’re true. Communicate externally and internally. Make sure everyone at the station knows what the plan is and make sure everyone listening knows exactly what you stand for and what you’re all about.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about social media over the past couple of months. So much so, that I’ve almost had no time for blogging. Social media’s the term now given to what was for a time known as ‘interactive media’ – until we all figured out that it wasn’t interactive in the sense of being able to actually affect the outcome of the content.

I attended a blogging conference in Chicago last week, and had a lot of discussions about this very issue, and at every opportunity, tried out the idea of radio as a social network for music fandom. I think there’s good work to be done here.

Chris Brogan brought up (in passing) the topic of music in social network sites, and the ways in which social networking needs to specialise in order to develop. It’s no good just being able to log on, make friends and build a profile anymore. Social engagement is a feature, no longer a destination.

Network radio – as in ’social’
And it occurred to me that what he was really talking about was an opportunity for radio.

Music Radio stations are, at least potentially, pre-existing music communities. People have self-selected into groups organised around a brand. The role of that brand, looked at from a social perspective, is to reinforce certain cultural values, reflect musical taste, and (most importantly) act as an source of opinion leadership.

That, I think, is where much music radio currently falls down. And I think this is where new strategies could come into play to help re-think music radio. Reflecting musical taste is prioritised, and making the most of the opinion leaders is downplayed because of what are now quite dated philosophies of music programming.

Not just a jukebox
Because emergent technologies increasingly allow for radio to act as a many-to-many medium, rather than just as a one-to-many medium, there is the opportunity for radio stations to draw upon the wisdom of the crowd and to reward and incentivise music taste-making. And this is an area in which radio has not already been beaten out by internet music servces. Because I think most online music services who cast themselves as ‘the new radio’ miss this one very important point:

It’s not just a jukebox – it’s a very human way of ordering, presenting and making sense of musical cultures. One that understands human routines, changing moods and preferences, why you might want to listen to something at night that you wouldn’t want to listen to during the day… and so on.

And likewise, I think there’s scope for radio to draw on the power of the community to generate and present metadata about the music that allows fans to make connections, develop new ways of engaging with the station output, and contributing more to the informational content about the music than simply “that was… this is… I’m… the time is… and you’re listening to…”

I’d be really interested in your thoughts about the ways in which this idea of community built around a station can be fostered – because I think this is one of the keys to the ongoing success of music radio.

Often, Songs can just up and change audience on us without our really realising it. It can take years, but the appeal of a Song never ever stays still. A glorious example of this was highlighted at a London conference last week. Here’s a link from the Guardian’s gossip column to illustrate. It cattily paints GCap chief exec Fru Hazlitt in a bad light, which is slightly unfair. The gist of the story is that Hazlitt mentioned Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ as her favourite song. No big. But she was then followed by a speaker who demonstrated how research had this same song down as an all time audience turkey. The article failed to mention a few other facts, chief among which was that this was with a specific set of radio listeners in the US, and that this was live monitoring software. I must declare an interest here, by the way – the speaker was Philippe Generali, who heads up RCS, for whom I do a lot of work, and the research interpretation software he was demonstrating is, in my view, pretty damn powerful stuff.

Clever software apart, here is my point: ‘Dancing Queen’ has been through several lives, and it hasn’t stopped yet. And it’s got almost nothing to do with early adopters who bought the records, and almost everything to do with how the song has been used since then. From its first pure pop success, when it was comprehensively dismissed by music purists, though grudging acceptance for its pop craftsmanship, through reinvention as a camp classic with huge gay appeal, and exposure to new audiences through movies like ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ and the ‘Mamma Mia’ musical, through relentless airplay on Gold stations the world over… the song has changed audiences. Several times.

Many boomers who heard it over and over now can’t stand it; post-boomers, like Hazlitt, still love it; kids love it because it is ironic cheesy pop… and the listeners to a particular radio station in the US are pretty damn tired of it.

Like I said, several audiences. It’s up to us to work out who loves it, who hates it, and why. And after that, when to use it, and in what context. I’ll bet it sounds great on an all-Abba channel. Or a mid-70s pop channel.
It all depends on the context. Get that right, and you’ve cracked it.

What, exactly, do we mean by ‘Radio’?

Is it a stream of music on the net, with no segues, links or context? You can call it that; many excellent net providers do, but I don’t really think that’s it. Is it terrestrial radio streaming? Maybe… but that’s not new, it’s just brand extension, surely. Is it podcasts? Well, for me that’s closer, but I’ve got issues there, to do with timing, spontaneity, and the shared experience, so probably not.

So what is it? Something else, something new?

Here’s a definition I pulled off the web two minutes ago: “The sending or receiving of messages or effects, and especially of sound, by means of electromagnetic waves without a connecting wire” Now, that’s very literal, and very accurate. But that’s not it either, for me.

‘Radio’ has been going since the 20s (here’s details of the first US and the first UK stations, from 1920 ands 1922 repectively). It’s a perfect example of technology enabling a new medium, something we’ve seen a lot of recently. But what started nearly 90 years ago has never stopped evolving. We need to dig a little deeper.

I think a narrower definition most people might generally accept is one centred on music output, with or without speech-based radio for Sport, News, comment and ranting/informed discussion. Implicit in that concept is a relationship, as Billy pointed out. For the most part, it centres on some communication flowing from station to listener. This is almost always passive on the listener’s part, and almost always one-way.

Until now. Here’s where the technology of the web aces the 20th century model. The web has weakened the power of all the traditional media powerhouses of the 20th century.

The web gives you lots of ways to access hot new music – so Radio is no longer the go-to place for hot new songs.

The web allows feedback. Smart cookies like last-FM and Pandora spotted the possibilities of user feedback, and they are reaping the benefits.

Terrestrial Radio is looking hard at ways to fight back, and to offer what they still have – the listener relationship – across multiple platforms.

Radio has one more powerful USP, and Bill spotted that as well. Not everyone wants to spend time messing with configuration settings and preferences. We do enough of that stupid computer stuff already, right? Even geeks like me just want to be blown away by something fresh and new. Asking us to invent, quantify or define that for a Radio service provider is plain stupid. We like stuff, or we don’t. Maybe we can be persuaded something is good. That’s the battleground.

That’s where Radio – on whatever platform it adopts – has the upper hand. It’s a question of offering the listener something they can relate to. It’s a question of trust, dammit. And it should involve feedback. Now if I could put my finger on the way to combine all this stuff, I’d be a very rich man.