Meeting Topic: The Future of Radio in the UK
Moderator Name: Peter Cook
Speaker Name: James Cridland, Radio Futurologist
Other business or activities at the meeting:
Our next meeting will be on January 26 and will be about the state of the art of mastering. The meeting will take the form of a panel discussion.
We're also gearing up for an event in the spring in conjunction with the PAL/MIAC show. The topic is "eStudio | The New Enterprise Studio Paradigm". In an era of emerging technologies and music industry practices, redefining the traditional sound recording studio as well as the roles of the sound engineer and producer has become part of the changing landscape.
New hardware and software has allowed the traditional studio owner to broaden the scope of his/her core capabilities in an effort to deepen market presence. The studio is more often now directly engaged in the entire chain of the creation of music, from artist development and product promotion through to a label-like stake in any potential profits.
Entrepreneurial spirit combined with initiative and resourcefulness have brought forth the emergence of the independent recording studio capable of offering services over a broader range of the audio industry and beyond.
Meeting Location: CBC Broadcast Centre, Toronto
Peter Cook introduced James Cridland, "Radio Futurologist". James explained that he's travelling around the world 'til the end of March discussing radio and new platforms.
He explained his work at the BBC, which included working on their iPlayer. He offered some interesting statistics, 25% of radio listening in the UK is done in cars, 2.2% is done on the internet, 3.6% is done on DTV and 13.3% is done on DAB.
Radio, he argued, needs to evolve to stay relevant. Many radios now come with large colour screens, e.g. mobile phones, computers. The key is to use new media and repurpose content for various delivery methods, e.g. iPhones, DAB. He discussed the "AudioBoo" service, which allows for short audio clips to be delivered to followers in a very similar way to Twitter. For radio, this could be a promising development. The ability to receive immediate, timely and newsworthy content increases relevance of radio.
One unique problem with digital delivery is to ensure that tags are all consistent. James offered the example of Guns N' Roses. He played a portion of a song and asked audience members to write down the name of the artist. We offered him a half-dozen variations on the name of the band. To a digital delivery system this means that there are six bands instead of one. The Music Brainz service gives content a unique ID that allows it to be identified properly.
For the UK Market, he indicated that UK broadcasters have all agreed on a common technology platform and compete on content. This ensures that devices are able to receive all stations.
He discussed delivery of content, i.e. broadcasting. He offered the example that it is cost prohibitive to deliver all radio via the Internet. Broadcast towers reach the mass market. The internet is suited best for personalizing the content and offering feedback to the broadcasters.
He discussed the Radio DNS project. This allows stations to embed information in their broadcasts that equipped radios can use to look up content on the internet. This allows, for example, and enhancement to the "now playing" information, for example by offering an image of the album or information on upcoming concert by the band.
Radio is going multi-format!
