James Cridland’s Future of Radio: The MIDAS touch – RAJAR tells us how people listen to the radio

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

United States

  • Pirate Radio Stations Explode on YouTube – interesting misuse of the technology that YouTube provides. Odd that their algorithms haven’t stamped this out (but that would assume, of course, that YouTube wants to stamp this out).
  • Meanwhile, a new bill from the FCC is up in the US legislature tightening the laws against pirate radio
  • ‘Almost 18% of Heavy Radio Listeners do not have a radio receiver in their home‘ – goodness, that’s quite a stat (from Edison Research) and highlights the multiplatform nature of radio. As I say in my conference speeches: radio is a thing, not a platform.
  • Beyoncé, Kanye streaming stats ‘manipulated’ on Tidal (so they get lots more royalties). Because online stats are always correct, so I’m repeatedly told, except when they’re not, of course
  • New radio station in the US being sold on music obscurity. Arguably, a) people want familiarity; b) those that don’t already have Spotify. Discuss.

United Kingdom

Australia

Elsewhere

  • Denmark: Good new speakers for Radiodays Europe’s Podcast Day. If you use the code “PODNEWS” you’ll save money on your tickets too, by the way: until the end of this week. Just saying.
  • Switzerland: they’re turning FM off in the next few years, and the government is now planning a four year information campaign: Switzerland Plans DAB+ Education Initiative. As an aside, we learn on May 17th whether the UK radio industry has hit the 50% target for digital listening which triggers a decision from the government about FM switchoff.
  • Africa: In the East African country of Burundi, the BBC and VOA have been banned – from being rebroadcast, at least. There aren’t any restrictions on the internet, though Viber and WhatsApp have been banned before.

James Cridland