[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Jack Isquith is SVP, Strategic Development and Content Programming at Slacker. We spoke to him two days before Beats Music launched its service publicly, which was accompanied by marketing of the platform’s human-curated listening. Beats promotes expert human curation as an antidote to algorithmic playlists; Slacker has included program hosts and human expertise in its programs for years. We wanted to know Isquith’s reaction to the Beats strategy, and its potential to impact the marketplace.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]RAIN: Beats Music is betting on music curation by human experts as a key to success. How does the arrival of Beats affect Slacker?
JI: First of all, we’re flattered. The emphasis that they’re putting on curation validates something we’ve been doing for six or seven years, and been doing impressively for the last few years. We think it’s interesting and flattering.
I always try to start from the listener’s point of view. All this competition is great for users. It’s only been within the last few years when any of these legal music services are clearly better and more exciting than Napster, the illegal Napster. We crossed over that hurdle. As more companies come into the marketplace and try to innovate, it gives the listener more choices, and hopefully [the music services] raise their games. It’s the same as media has always been. Anyone who gives you the cliche that “We’re just focused on the audience and programming, we have our head down, it’s all about the product,” is being disingenuous. If you’re a good person in media and tech, you’re paying attention to what everybody is doing, trying to perfect against all the possibilities that are out there.
RAIN: So, despite whatever impact the marketing of Beats has, and however tectonic the launch is, in the long run it’s a rising tide for the industry.
JI: Look at the data, and how much listening is moving from terrestrial radio to Internet radio and streaming music. The trends all point to growth and dramatic audience shift. If Beats Music is right about curation, that no algorithm or pure tech platform can be as good as the combination of technology and human curation, that bodes well for Slacker. We’ve made a big bet on the combination of technology and human expertise.
We have another differentiator against everyone else in the market, and it’s a big bet. It’s the idea of the human voice — hosts. That takes half a page from terrestrial radio, and half a page from new technology.
We focus our programming team on three C’s: Curation, Community, and Context. We discuss these in every programming meeting. We’re making a big bet that you really need hosts and the human voice, the sense of humanity actually in the listening product. We believe in the DJ host and think there are good things about the terrestrial radio product, but we think that model is broken. Twenty-two minutes of ads is a terrible experience, lowest common denominator is broken, yelling at your audience is broken — but the idea of a human being creating community and curating content, we think that still works, and we’ve made a bet on it.
RAIN: You’re portraying Slacker as a service for a real music lover who enjoys context around the listening.
JI: We’re making a bigger bet. All of this curation and context — your presumption is that it appeals only to a hard-core music fan. We don’t think that’s true. There’s broader appeal for providing curation for mainstream fans. when we do things like Grammy A to Z, or the Topp 101 Songs of the Century, or The 55 Most Embarrasing Facebook Songs, we think those are mass-appeal plays.
RAIN: Can you give statistics?
Bryce Baer, Slacker PR: Here’s an example. We have a new country station. Adding a host who is heard every couple of songs with just a bit of context raised listening by 20 percent. Curated stations like “Countdown” and “A to Z” tend to do upwards of three times the time spent listening as their counterparts, like a classic rock station vs. “101 Greatest Classic Rock Songs of All Time.” The more curated it is, the more people engage with it.
RAIN: Those “list” stations seem to do well. Is there a link between them and the BuzzFeed-style web programming, which is list-based?
JI: Yep. We’re the first to admit, we looked at the Internet writ large, and how all of this seems to work, from BuzzFeed to Facebook algorithms. It’s easy to say that people love lists, people love context that is mass-appeal that everyone can get into, and people love playing along. Certainly, we’re paying a lot of attention to things like BuzzFeed.
RAIN: Can users distinguish differences in all the music services, or do they all seem the same?
JI: I think listeners have trouble distinguishing. Not just between the services, but understanding all the models. If you talk to the average person, who maybe an active listener but not a fanatic, they would have trouble defining on-demand vs. Internet radio, streaming, the cloud, “access” — all the different names and concepts that get throw around so precisely by people in the industry. There is a transformation where people are increasingly waking up to the idea that through technology their entertainment experiences can be better, they can have better control. Certain [companies] have done this well — look at Netflix. It has changed the way people relate to viewing content. We are still in early-to-medium days in music. We think it’s more important to provide great experiences, then to define what all these different lanes are. that’s why Slacker is primarily a radio-type service. But there is an on-demand part for subscribers. As people get more educated, the bar will get higher concerning what they want. We have to check off those boxes.
RAIN: If Beats scorches the earth with marketing, and receives a lot of tire-kicking within a relatively ignorant marketplace, is that a threat to Slacker — regardless of the inherent excellence of the service, which might be lost to general consumer awareness.
JI: I’ll tell you this. One of the best things that ever happened to Slacker was Clear Channel’s launch of iHeartRadio. When iHeartRadio launched, people asked us whether we’d fold up our tent and go home. It’s over! Look at the amount of money Clear Channel could spend — why would you stay in the space. Now we look at it in the rear-view mirror, and it was one of the best things that happened to Slacker. They spent tens of millions of dollars on the message: “Hey, there’s this thing called Internet radio, you should check it out. Stop listening the way you’re listening now, and fire up the Internet.” turned out to be good for us. So, will there be challenges with someone coming into the marketplace, and could we get hurt? If they do a brilliant job and offer a much better product than we do, and run their business in a way that achieves their goals — perhaps. History has taught us so far that the more people know about these options, the better it is for our company.
RAIN: What about YouTube?
JI: YouTube is really interesting. It’s the largest digital music service in the world, many times over. We look at the upcoming service and think, “What’s that going to look like? That could be interesting.” But it’s really hard to talk about what’s going to happen before a competitor launches. I don’t know what the impact is going to be with YouTube, but we approach it in the same way. If we have a great product focused on the listener, and are properly humble about the idea that we don’t have the answers, we think the market is going in a way that bodes well for us. So far, every new marketplace entry has been good for us.
RAIN: What does 2014 look like to you?
JI: We think 2014 is a really great year for listeners, with a lot of innovation by Beats and others coming into the space. We’re planning to continually raise our game. We also think 2014 will be a good year for Slacker. There is a growing awareness for, and desire for, something we do well. We think there’s going to be a separation of people who really know how to curate, and who have built a technical and editorial structure around curation, from people who play a list of music on top of an algorithm.
We’re going to have a couple of big announcements around our growing footprint, our distribution and marketing efforts. It’s going to be a really good for us and for listeners.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”3657″ img_link_target=”_self”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“All this competition is great for users.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]
“We’re flattered. The emphasis that Beats Music is putting on curation validates something we’ve been doing for six or seven years.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“We’ve made a big bet on the combination of technology and human expertise.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“We focus our programming team on three C’s: Curation, Community, and Context. We discuss these in every programming meeting.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“The more curated it is, the more people engage with it.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_single_image image=”3658″ img_link_target=”_self”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“There is a transformation where people are increasingly waking up to the idea that through technology their entertainment experiences can be better, they can have better control.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“One of the best things that ever happened to Slacker was Clear Channel’s launch of iHeartRadio. They spent tens of millions of dollars on the message: ‘Hey, there’s this thing called Internet radio, you should check it out.'”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“We think 2014 is a really great year for listeners, with a lot of innovation by Beats and others coming into the space. We’re planning to continually raise our game. There is a growing awareness of, and desire for, something we do well.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_single_image image=”3661″ img_link_target=”_self”][/vc_column][/vc_row]