The UK Radioplayer - much to be proud about

Yet Bauer who are part of Radio Player, still use their own clunky players for their stations if visiting via their websites. Fearful of losing listeners?

When I’ve tried to listen to a UKRD station using the player, it’s the 32k mono feeds that stream, there are still some commercial groups which don’t stream using the player. Litt Corp’s for example (Time/Palm), yet Tune-in has those and a multitude of stations from across the world in one place.

I’ll give credit for Radio Player unifying the template for website players, but there is clearly still room for improvement.

Regarding Martins comments.

Stations have to pay to join the system, so I suspect that the stations you quote who are not part have decided that either the return is not worth the expense, or it’s just “not on their radar” that it might be a good idea to be part of it.

The stations themselves select what audio stream they use on the radio player console – I don’t think the flash applet supports Windows Media Audio, so perhaps that is why some stations have a lower quality audio stream on radio player.

It’s interesting to note that Bauer are still not using their UK Radio Player console as the default player from their website. Just loading Key 103’s in house ‘radio player’ pop-up and then comparing it to their ‘uk radio player’ window. The latter actually looked nicer, with pictures of the jock ‘now on air’ and ‘recently played’ more obvious. The only functionality only on their own player seems to be a list of the other Bauer stations, a function I’m sure they could implement in their UK Radio Player console.

Martin suggests they are worried to lose listeners. Is that a problem?

I can only talk from first hand experience at the slightly different angle at a Community Radio station. Since joining UK Radio Player, according to the stats I’ve got access to, there was both an increase in on-line listening and a not insignificant number of referrals from other radio stations consoles via the ‘search’ function. I can only assume a similar amount of traffic will leave our console to visit another station.

To my mind this ‘cross pollination’ can only be a good thing for radio as a whole. Though I can see why Bauer, or other commercial operators, may have reservations that a listener lost on-line may end up a listener lost on the core FM service as well.

As was argued in a session at Radiodays Europe, this is like handing the keys to your business to someone else: someone who isn’t in radio, doesn’t care about radio, and someone who simply sits there and sells ads around your content – in many cases, not sharing a dime from those ads with you, the broadcaster.

You can say the same about google but we all use it to get listed on.

The product isn’t that unique. Who’s stopping TuneIn upgrading their interface to something better than radioplayer. Plus you have to pay for it. Service that you have to pay for v free self funding service. I know which one I’d go for.

Mike from Radioplayer here. Many thanks, James, for writing such a comprehensive and supportive history of our first two years.

A few points about some issues raised here.

Progress: I totally agree. There’s huge room for improvement. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved on behalf of UK Radio, but it’s only a small proportion of what needs to be done if we’re to help Radio thrive digitally.

Scale: We launched with 157 live stations and some listen-again programmes. We now feature 360 live stations, plus thousands of programmes, clips, and podcasts. And new stations are joining all the time, particularly smaller ones – who we can help with streams, visuals, and podcast feeds.

Quality: We don’t specify minimum stream bitrate in desktop Radioplayer. We’re as ‘hands-off’ as possible, so stations can balance their streaming costs with the quality their listeners expect from them. Interestingly, we get more comments from users about volume-jumps between stations, than about stream bitrate.

Cost: Yes, we do ask stations to contribute to Radioplayer’s running costs, based on their size (£99 for the smallest). We’re non-profit, so every penny goes into developing new ways of getting UK Radio into people’s lives. As well as desktop Radioplayer we now have apps on Apple and Android phones, and we’re working on a beautiful tablet Radioplayer too. We’re also talking to manufacturers about improving actual radios, and we’re working on integrating radio into car dashboards.

Losing listeners: The theory goes as follows – ‘If I use Radioplayer as my primary player on my website, I’m allowing listeners to switch to my competitors more easily’. Wrong. Here’s how it really works, in a world where there’s a million entertainment choices under your mouse finger.

1) Someone finds your station, clicks ‘listen’, and spends time with you – because you’re entertaining, relevant, and you meet their needs perfectly at that moment.

2) Eventually their needs alter, and they decide to be entertained by someone else. Unfortunate though it is, THIS WILL ALWAYS HAPPEN AT SOME POINT.

3) This is when you have a choice. Do you want them to launch Spotify or iTunes, browse YouTube, listen to a music stream from the States? Or do you want them to stay with UK Radio, in a player where they’ve set you as a preset, and can click back to you easily when their mood changes again?

Yes – we have to compete as vigorously as ever with the station down the road or down the dial, for the limited ear-time and ad-spend that’s devoted to radio. But if we want that overall ear-time and ad-spend to grow, so we have a bigger industry to compete in, we have to act together.

Nice story and points from Mike. I’m really looking forward to the Norwegian launch, working on metadata, vizualisations and New ad opportunities for the P4 cluster of brands over here.

I don’t understand the worry for losing listeners at all. What you really get is a stronger industry and the ability to actually win listeners. We basically compete on content, not distribution.

In Norway we’ve desided on a bigger player than the UK version. This will give us great opportunities for more creative content, visualizations, on demand sound and other stuff that shows the difference between radio and streaming services like Spotify etc.

A big leap for radio!

My question is why charge? Why not make it free to add your station like TuneIn?

Cost: Yes, we do ask stations to contribute to Radioplayer’s running costs, based on their size (£99 for the smallest). We’re non-profit, so every penny goes into developing new ways of getting UK Radio into people’s lives. As well as desktop Radioplayer we now have apps on Apple and Android phones, and we’re working on a beautiful tablet Radioplayer too. We’re also talking to manufacturers about improving actual radios, and we’re working on integrating radio into car dashboards.

Making it opensource might reduce the cost?
The only unavoidable cost is submitting it to both Apple and Android App stores…

We run a very lightweight operation, but we still incur costs for people, a small office, software development, database hosting, marketing.

We don’t commercialise the player centrally like TuneIn do (serving ads around radio streams), so we have to cover our costs somehow.

In an ideal world, it would be a completely free service, yes. We haven’t worked out a way to do that yet, while maintaining quality, and allowing stations to monetise their streams.

Service that you have to pay for v free self funding service. I know which one I’d go for.

Yes, I’d go for the service that I controlled, that let me monetise my radio service further and let me control the user experience and what I linked to within my player: because this isn’t a time to give all the keys away to company which doesn’t care about my radio station.

By all means, be listed on TuneIn. But also make sure you are controlling your main future platform. Yourself.