James Cridland is Managing Director of media.info, and an Australia-based radio futurologist. He is a consultant, writer and public speaker who concentrates on the effect that new platforms and technology are having on the radio business. Find out more or subscribe at http://james.cridland.net
James Cridland’s articles
- Radio Seeks Smart Speaker Home Audience – where I am a bit rude about TuneIn, I’m afraid.
- My weekly column. Here in Norwegian. Jeg liker virkelig øl!
- My weekly column, in English. Smart ads aren’t so smart – so when will we fix streaming?
- New DAB+ sets available in Australia – this is good to see. Sets here are priced with a high premium.
United States
- Edison Research and NPR released their “smart audio report” (i.e. smart speakers). It’s good news for radio and audio in general.
- Spotify have just added a “submit your podcast” form. You should add your podcasts.
- Meanwhile, Pandora CEO Tim Westergren steps down.
- A good episode of The Radio Stuff discusses technique for compelling radio.
- Radio Seeks Smart Speaker Home Audience – where I am a bit rude about TuneIn, I’m afraid.
- Want Google Home to play your favourite radio station? Yikes, this thread – not very easy, by the looks of things. This is why relying on TuneIn is not always a good idea (because they don’t care about radio)
- Spotify ads are 25 percent more effective than average, “study” says. No, I’ve no idea what the ‘average’ is supposed to be either.
- Opinion piece in the WaPo: “Why Arab states are wrong to try to shut down Al Jazeera” – I can only assume that the Arabic version of Al Jazeera is very different from the polished, professional and seemingly quite balanced Al Jazeera English
- Nielsen’s Audio Today stats for 2017. New data about radio and podcast use. Notable the demographics of podcast users.
- Bringing Back the Preset Buttons on voice speakers – this piece argues for radio stations to have their own “skills”. I’d argue that you should probably ensure that your aggregator has good integration with the Amazon Echo instead.
- Stats around radio news from the US
- Radio working on ROI data from better radio receivers
United Kingdom
- ‘Music Events’: A Guided Tour of a new web platform for the BBC’s music team.
- Wave 105 Facebook Metrics – a promotional video from this English radio station with some big figures.
- AudioBoom claim 68% of podcast listeners listen to less radio. Their main client base? Er, radio companies.
- “Radio 1: Why is the station struggling to find new DJs?” – looks like a covering exercise to me, this. Capital appears to have no difficulty keeping audiences and finding new talent…
- Interesting UK job – a digital director job for radio with a difference
- How “BBC English” was standardised in the 1920s-1930s
- Radio 1 announces Radio 1 Vintage, a pop-up station celebrating its 50th birthday. This is awesome audio. And a very interesting idea to those of a certain age. (I can’t help but be reminded, when working for a commercial radio station coming up to a significant birthday, being explicitly told not to mention it on-air at all).
Australia
- Pandora to close in Australia and New Zealand. That’s a rapid change for the company: only eleven months ago it was celebrating being made the in-store radio service for supermarket Woolworths.
- New DAB+ sets available in Australia – this is good to see. Sets here are priced with a high premium.
Elsewhere
- Canada: 7 Things You Need to Build a Low-Cost YouTube Studio – probably good reading for radio stations wanting to produce good video, this. (Or, take a leaf out of some of Vista’s stations and do them in the street outside the radio station, rather than hidden in an anonymous studio?)
- Switzerland: UN agency backs enabling smartphones as FM radios – the UN agency is the ITU, and this was forwarded to me by a Norwegian, who have elected to switch FM off this year in favour of DAB+. You can guess his point.
- Ireland: Nails Mahoney to explain “why radio sucks”
- France: the history and impact of Radioplayer. En Français.