After three years of development, Radio Rewind has launched its audio recording, archiving, clipping, and sharing platform. The service allows radio stations to auto-record some or all of their broadcast content, then reach into the archive to clip excerpts for social sharing.
The product was developed by Anthony Gherghetta, Product Manager for Australia-based Radio Rewind, and the project was funded by Radio Rewind chairman Steve Ahern.
While conceived as a tool for broadcasters to re-purpose content that would otherwise be lost after its single use, Radio Rewind is also a public-facing audio browsing platform that invites anyone to clip and socialize a piece of broadcast audio. Subscribing radio stations may withhold some or all of their content from the public platform.
The two dashboards — back end for radio stations, and front end for public — are essentially identical. The public service does not have the recording function, naturally. We were told by Steve Ahern that Radio Rewind is explicitly not intended to be a podcasting platform. That said, any radio station might use this tool as part of its extension to on-demand audio.
We tried Radio Rewind, and found it elegantly simple. WABC Radio in New York is one of approximately 30 stations currently enrolled, and it was easy to assign a time (we randomly chose 7:08am on a random recent day), and clip length (10 minutes). After the clip loaded (which took a minute or so), we could assign start and end points for the snackable, shareable clip. From there, saving the clip led to a web page where it could be socialized. Here is the result (we weren’t particularly interested in urinary incontinence, but that’s what was on at 7:08am).
Steve Ahern emphasizes the speed and ease with which Radio Rewind accomplishes a specific content re-purposing scenario: “Stations using Rewind Radio tell us that it is perfect for sharing quick turn-around audio. Podcasts and audio downloads are useful for long-form content, but there are lots of short grabs and interviews that never make it to a station’s webpage, social media or podcast feed because they take too much work to edit. Rewind Radio streamlines that process.”
We asked about music licensing issues. Radio stations are responsible for their own liability in that regard, depending on regional regulations.
Ahern said the service cost to stations is $100/week. “At $5200 per year, [Radio Rewind] is cheaper than hiring an additional staff member to be assigned to social media. It makes it easy for anyone to do better social media while they are doing their own show.”
The public clipping/sharing service was free of charge when we tested, and did not require registration. We think that if enough stations pile into Radio Rewind (especially talk programming), it could provide social-viral potential.