Music streaming won't kill the radio star

Some excellent points but sadly much of the output these days features little in the way of listener interactivity.

Many commercial stations are now just playlists themselves interspersed with ads and the odd ten second link from a presenter who is specifically told not to inject any personality.

Of course there are exceptions but, by and large the above is true.

Agree, radio is still in a great place.

It has to be said though that these streaming services seem to have forgotten what a massive draw a human curator is. No clicking on “Genius” in iTunes could produce an inspired music playlist like a good DG can. No amazon instant streaming recommendation is going to make a night of diverse programming around the European Horror such as an evening on BBC Four might.

Plus, and this is a big one, there is no ondemand solution that really compares to the sit back 24 hours a day, entertain me nature that broadcast radio and tv does.

Now this is all well and good, but why have I just stopped listening to radio in my car and opted to subscribe to spotify and play things via a mobile app?

Have to say that I can do this is mainly thanks to sharemyplaylists.com that takes some of the burden of playlist creation away from me. The major draw over radio is that I can skip through songs, don’t have adverts and don’t get the dreaded “Oh no, I think I’ve learned all the lyrics to all the songs on the Radio 1 playlist …. including Gangnam Style” that happened a few weeks ago.

Perhaps my ideal is a mixture of the two. Radio shows with real humans creating brilliant shows, but utilising the benefits of a subscription streaming service. So radio with diverse playlists, no adverts, and can allow the listeners to skip tracks/chatter/or entire shows easily. I guess this is only possible online at the moment, and given that phone data plans are hardly decreasing in price, I can’t see anything like this replacing broadcast radio in the mainstream anytime soon. A thought though.

I agree with the title . . . . but Radio is NOT just about music!

And it’s SO sad that all the commercial stations seem to think that all they need is three songs in a row and ten second links from Presenters. So if they’re not going to have any proper content, why have any Local presenters at all? Just network the shows across all the stations in a group, and that will save costs. And they wonder why their audience figures are forever dwindling!

If people only want back-to-back music, they will listen to their mp3 players, ipods, mobile phones . . . the reality is that although most people DO want some music, they want to be entertained too . . . . and that doesn’t mean it has to be some very witty famous personality, just someone friendly who can relate to them and talk to them about things that matter – often in their local area.

A radio station I used to work for had the strapline “More Than Just Music” – well everyone I ever talk to says that’s exactly what they want from Radio. Commercial Radio used to have it sussed, most stations were No 1 in their area, beating the BBC national stations, because they provided the kind of mixed programming the listener wanted. Why do the Bosses think people have changed?!

They haven’t ! Just listen to BBC Radio 2, they have copied the kind of programming that Commercial Radio used to have, and THAT is why they are the Number 1 station in the UK.

On top of that, the big advantage that Commercial stations had over the BBC national stations were that they could relate to the local audience – but as we know, that advantage has been thrown away by the majority of stations with all their networked programmes.

People still want Radio – the total listening figures are as good as they have ever been – but just look at the stations that are forever getting bigger and bigger audiences, it’s stations with CONTENT, including all-talk stations like Radio 4, Radio 5, as well as Radio 2 and BBC Local Stations.

I don’t believe everybody REALLY wants to listen to those stations all the time, but they have no choice, as there is virtually NO content any more on commercial stations.

I just find it laughable that the big bosses can’t see this . . . . and it really saddens me that the quality of commercial radio broadcasting in this country is forever sliding downhill.

The big bosses can see it though I think some of the PDs out there can’t. Mind you I heared yesterday from one who said he hates what he’s having to put out on air but keeping his head down and doing as he is told because he’s in fear of his job. This was no small, single station either.

Of course the revenues to support stations come via advertisers and ultimately, squeezing the best profit out of that revenue is ALL a board of directors cares about.

Nothing new there, its business.

There’s also nothing new in austerity. After all times are hard. If you can run a radio station from a PC in the corner for most of the day and still manage to have half decent Rajars as well as sell your advertising space it would be daft not to do so wouldn’t it?

Centralisation, cost cutting, some stupidity and of course the other influences such as Spotify and a BBC more closely tuned in to what listeners want are all factors that are in play.

Those in the industry, just like that PD I mentioned earlier, in fear of their jobs, are either keeping stchum or pedalling this nonsense about more people listening than ever before and radio is buoyant etc.

Unfortunately, its only too easy to hear the results of the cost cutting and the pressure some of these frontline people must be under on many stations.

I wish had a solution to the problem and I also wish that people would face the issue rather than denying it exists. Far too many people within the industry as well as listeners are now saying the same thing – commercial radio must entertain. It must do this before the clever people developing the fledgling streaming services realise how simple it would be for them to step in and fulfill a need that is being overlooked.

They can stream VT links, ads and even live presenters just as easily as they can music.

How are they going to VT links when I’ve made the playlist? I can really see me sending my playlist to Roberto or Toby Anstis to VT round!

Radio and Spotify ( a copy of itunes – search and listen ) are two different buckets. you dont search and listen when you drive the car. In today’s fast life music is very much required to elevate your moods. I have come across a totally new interactive radio service, Muzikool, which is very recently launched exclusively in the UK. have a look at www.muzikool.com. Their service is very much innovative and addresses the missing pain that non-interactive radio fails to address.
http://www.youtube.com/muzikooldotcom

Why am I being told that I’m outside of the UK?

I’m on Virgin Media 100MB/s (DOCSIS 3, whatever that means for any techheads here) and iPlayer and Demand 5 both work perfectly, which they wouldn’t outside of the UK!

So I’m a bit bamboozled.