How I See Radio's Digital Future

By Jerry Del Colliano

Imagine not having to tune in to a terrestrial radio show from 5 to 10 am but still hear the things about radio you used to love.

Instead -- a personality or team of personalities making content available on mobile devices like the iPod, iPad, iPhone, smartphones, car entertainment centers and whatever other technology may surface in the months and years ahead.

This terrestrial show does not exist on-the-air. Just as a cornucopia of features for your favorite mobile Internet device.

You’re a listener.

You choose from a menu of “bits” or “features” all variably timed. But you have the option to mash them up in a menu that, say, allows you to start with the “Kim Kardashian” bit and ends with Lady Gaga.

Or sample today’s content a la carte.

For now, the content is likely to be just talk because record labels have made it too expensive for Internet and mobile content providers to include music in these new media offerings.

But -- no worries.

There are plenty of places to get your fill of music once you’ve been entertained by "radio" personalities in the digital future.

And, at any time, you can take a break and choose an app that will give you the latest live, local newscast.

If you’re watching and not just listening, you can view the content -- see the pictures, videos.

Want to learn more, you can dig deeper and read – or save text for perusal later.

You can respond instantly through the traditional social networking tools or you could respond through a special, closed group of listeners known as “your fans”. These people can interact with each other. You can provide additional content and yes, you will be required to spend time interacting with your fans. In the future this will be seen as a benefit not a mass marketing tool.

While each segment may be sponsored in traditional ways with live-read commercials from your favorite personalities, produced commercials, unless they are very creative, would probably be a non-starter in the digital morning show of the future.

Of course, you could see visual ads on the phones and mobile devices.

But the greatest and largest source of revenue will come from event-based deployment of your fans – that is, on a regular (maybe even monthly basis), you invite fans to local venues to participate in live happenings that are sponsored by companies looking to have direct access to your fans.

A Wango Tango for niche groups, if you will – referring to the annual Clear Channel event developed by Roy Laughlin and still going strong today.

Parts of what I have just described are already available and some are under development.

But to bring it all together, radio companies have the inside advantage over other content companies in informing and entertaining digitally. Their biggest disadvantage is a dim view of the digital future.

Many of you are aware that I use my business as a “lab” to develop things such as paid models for content and the next iteration of social networking beyond Twitter and Facebook. I often first try what I ultimately recommend.

By the time I convene my next Media Solutions Lab in Scottsdale (January 27, 2011), I will share the latest successes and challenges with content providers in and out of the broadcasting space. We plan to spend some time on how to effectively transition to the digital future.

What is exciting is that the tower and transmitter is being replaced by the mobile Internet through intuitive and entertaining devices that fans carry with them – meaning you no longer have to wait for a car radio to be turned on or a clock radio to go off in the morning to connect with your fans.

These fans in the digital space are always connected – to you!

And you see I have used the term “fans” and not “P1s” because we need to humanize the audience. Ask me about the people who read my work every day and I can go on for a half hour. There are between 175,000 and 200,000 visits per month, passionate, well-informed people curiously looking to the future and trying to comprehend present media trends.

That's just the beginning in the era of social networking.

If I tell you that I communicate with up to 300 “fans” a day who write to me personally and actually know them from previous emails, circumstances, likes and dislikes, you'd begin to see that my view of the digital future is not to create new age excuses to do mass marketing but personalized contact to promote social networking.

Social networking is two-way communication -- not today's direct mail.

One third of all the topics I write about are suggested by “fans” – and most support my independence from undue advertiser influence.

The lines are blurred – and it’s a good thing.

Radio can be the provider of content – written, spoken, and viewed.

You and I can as well. You’ll hear me, see me (God forbid) and continue to interact.

But there are new rules.

One, all content must be unique.

Copycats may have worked in format radio but it will lay an egg here.

Two, what you present must be compelling – that is, will you start your day with it?

Will you end your day with it? Will you use it all day? Or just check in two, three, four times a day the way we used to encourage them to use news radio.

There will be no more traditional morning rush.

Each individual with access to mobile Internet will determine their own prime hours. Maybe they listen to Pandora on the way to work and listen to a favorite personality (sans music) at night or in their spare time.

And three, content must be addictive to succeed.

With an infinite number of streams, apps and ways to reach audiences, what you do must be so addicting that your fans will look forward to coming back for more.

Terrestrial radio will not die. There will still be an audience for 24/7 programming – but not repeater radio which is not unique, compelling or addictive. And terrestrial radio will likely never again be a growth industry as long as consumers want to be the PD of their mobile devices.

I see the digital future as an aggressive growth business which is being held back currently by music industry royalty impediments, radio companies in denial that 24/7 broadcasting is not how consumers want their content and the failure of many of us to embrace the unknown.

All it will take to buy a ticket of admission to the digital future, is an open mind.

And those tickets have been hard to come by in a media industry obsessed with the past.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-i-see-radios-digital-future.html

Written by Jerry Del Colliano

Posted by Dexter Bryant Jr.
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Lala Means Apple Loves Streaming

By Jerry Del Colliano

I got a kick out of some of the radio industry comment that Apple was shuttering recently acquired Palo Alto-based Lala – a company it purchased less than six months ago for $80 million.

The presumption being that Apple was not going to be offering a streaming music service that was thought to be another competitor to terrestrial radio.

What is really happening – to borrow a phrase from the great Delfonics Philly soul song “La La Means I Love You” is that Apple loves streaming from the “cloud” so much it is shutting down the failed Lala site in favor of redeploying Lala's streaming technology.

Lala was founded in 2006 and never really made it as a purveyor of free streaming music and access to cuts for only ten cents a song. Apparently iPod usage and traditional online filesharing was more attractive than letting users upload their libraries to a cloud.

Apple knows this.

Apple watchers who risk life and limb when they try to guess what Steve Jobs is up to next have been chattering about Apple’s presumed plan to allow iTunes users the ability to keep their music libraries and videos on Apple servers so that they can access them via any Internet or mobile Internet device anywhere – anytime.

Unlike radio companies, Apple was looking to buy people and technology not necessarily a failed company – thus the expenditure to buy Lala.

Steve Jobs has been teasing the Apple faithful that he has many more cool products to offer this year. (Full disclosure: I have been and am currently an Apple stockholder).

This new cloud-based subscription service from Apple may become more than just speculation within the next few months – that’s what I’m thinking.

Interesting that Wired.com is reporting that current Lala subscribers will get a refund worth one-tenth of the amount of music in iTunes that their money paid for on Lala.

So Lala will soon be dead but we can safely presume Apple didn’t buy the company to waste money.

Right now Apple is rolling through the media content business the way General Patton rolled through some battles in World War II.

There are going to be issues of great concern to media people of an Apple monopoly over electronic devices and content and I share those concerns although not enough to try to thwart the consumer revolution toward mobile Internet.

Apple is building a stranglehold on media delivery systems.

Fair to say it has the record labels by the balls.

In a few short years, Apple has become a major player in the cell phone business even with the unpopular AT&T as a mobile connect partner. And perhaps you noticed a significant strategic step Jobs took when he introduced the 3G iPad featuring a month-by-month option – no contracts – for the required AT&T service. Apple is that big and persuasive.

Now, publishers have mixed feelings about the bookstore that is becoming so popular on iPads. Publishers like that, unlike Amazon, Apple is letting publishers employ variable pricing, but other publishing houses fear that once Apple dominates the book market they will be at Steve Jobs’ mercy.

And that could very well be.

An ominous sign is that the variable price publishing option is only guaranteed for the first year -- at this point, anyway.

Radio owners know what happens when Jobs doesn’t like radio for his devices – they can’t get a chip built into popular mobile devices like iPods, iPhones or iPads – with the exception of the Nano. And that plus another few million listeners would not even make a difference for radio interests.

I think that Jobs wants to be Pandora.

There. I've said it.

Radio is not cool with Apple's young-targeted consumer base. And frankly, it’s hard to see an iPhone or iPod as a radio in the sense that the industry once saw the Walkman as a radio device.

If Jobs indeed wants to be Pandora, he could get started by offering a streaming service to his almost 150 million registered iTunes customers.

Keep in mind that’s 150 million active credit cards on file ready to buy things which could include subscriptions.

The thing with Steve Jobs is that when he says something publicly, he can be playing with the public. Jobs often disses that which he is eventually going to do at Apple.

The iPad would be a recent example.

In a sense, Jobs voted against it before he voted for it.

So Apple often says they are in it to sell electronics and the rest is just to help sell iPods, iPads, iPhones and computers.

Well, with all due respect to the most fascinating genius I have observed in a long time, I think Jobs is playing with us again. He is heading right into dominating the music business, publishing, newspapers, video and movie businesses and, yes, radio.

But not the radio industry its leaders still think has a chance with the next generation.

A new “radio” – streams of music and content that iTunes subscribers could sign up for and enjoy as an alternative to free music. That, in and of itself is incredible. Since when is free less desirable than paid?

That’s what is happening as large corporations figure out the Internet.

While television, radio, print, film and even gaming interests were out plying their trades, Apple was focusing on the changemakers – the young people that traditional media usually tend to ignore.

And now the threat exists that publishers will have to pay whatever Apple wants for inclusion in its mobile Internet empire or leave money on the table.

Yes, Apple is in it to sell electronics but with media executives asleep at the helm, you are now witnessing the first palpable signs that Steve Jobs is leading a frontal attack on these sleepy media businesses that let him bypass them and go directly to the consumer.

The critical difference is …

Jobs knows what he is doing.

Media executives know how to pander to Wall Street.

Think of the ramifications.

In five years, if everyone is accessing information and content on mobile Internet devices like the kind Apple sells – and that 150 million iTunes customer base just doubles – even the best over-the-air radio will be playing to deaf ears.

My message.

Tune into the consumer and let them drive innovation.

Build your content for Apple platforms no matter what the entry price.

Then learn to think like Steve Jobs and pray that some smart alternatives can compete with Apple someday.

Until then, watch the master at work as he eats traditional media executives alive in their own backyards.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2010/05/lala-means-apple-loves-streaming.html

Written by Jerry Del Colliano for Inside Music Media

Posted by Dexter Bryant Jr.
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