James Cridland, the radio futurologist, is a conference speaker, writer and consultant. He runs the media information website media.info and helps organise the yearly Next Radio conference. He also publishes podnews.net, a daily briefing on podcasting and on-demand, and writes a weekly international radio trends newsletter, at james.crid.land.
James Cridland’s articles
- Are we moving to an all-IP media future? Yeah… but nah. Audio version
Worldwide
- Interesting piece about (Spotify) playlists and their place in the world
- Canada: Congratulations to radio podcast The Sound Off Podcast ▸ for reaching episode 100!
- Touchscreens. Not so good in cars, it turns out. (Helpful information for putting radio/audio in them)
- This is a very nice thing – Songbird makes smart playlists for Spotify. I’d argue that this is why Spotify continues to lead the pack: because the service has lots of people innovating on it like this.
- Well, these are wierd. Want a radio, but want to see the circuitboard inside? You’ll want these. (via @kaedotcom)
United States
- ‘Between November 2017 and March 2018, NPR member-station streaming from Amazon Echo more than quadrupled.‘
- Nobody knows radio’s future, argues Perry Michael Simon.
- Public radio in the US – seeing some nice increases in audience. I wonder how much of this is driven by podcasting making more people interested in talk radio.
- Can’t decide whether this article in WIRED is a) ignorant, b) borderline racist, c) just really confused. It’s a piece all about the fact that – shock – some podcasts are done by people who don’t have an American accent.
United Kingdom
- Earshot Creative makes a lovely observation that “breakfast radio hosts do one thing with alarming regularity” – good to spot a nonsense cliché.
- Ouch. A review of BBC Radio 2’s drivetime show.
- Just like radio, the death of live television doesn’t appear to be on the horizon according to Enders Analysis.
- Imaging in 2018 – The Future of Radio Imaging is a nice piece.
- Is Your Conference Seating Sexist? – thankfully, Next Radio doesn’t do seats. Until the last session.
- Revealed: How Britain’s Biggest Local TV Company Has ‘Gamed’ The BBC For Licence Fee Payers’ Money – astonishing piece. It shows, with clarity, what happens if you let government define the media industry.
- Chris Moyles takes control of Radio X billboards – very clever stunt for talkability
- Half an hour of rather excellent local information about Shaftesbury: Alfred, from radio’s Keri Jones. Are ultra local podcasts like this part of radio’s future? I’d think they are.
Australia
- Tassie radio stations want to convert from AM to FM (hardly a surprise!)
- Nice new advertising campaign for Sydney’s WSFM
- Prison radio in Australia