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MARK RAMSEY MEDIA

And Radio’s Secret Power is…

Aug 30, 2015

And Radio’s Secret Power is…

Recently one of my radio clients explained how his 20-year-old daughter uses radio: “She chases her favorite songs around the dial,” he said. For her, every station button is another chance at hitting the proverbial jackpot. Either I land on a song I love or I don’t. And if I don’t, I move to the next button. It’s radio as slot machine, and – like a slot machine – the odds are better than even that any given spin is a loser. But this is the behavior of someone who is using ra

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Whatever Happened to Radio Bumper Stickers?

Jul 25, 2015

Whatever Happened to Radio Bumper Stickers?

Once a radio industry – and radio station fan – mainstay, it’s hard for me to find a radio station bumper sticker on the road nowadays. “People won’t put bumper stickers on their cars anymore,” some say. That’s nonsense. People won’t put just any bumper sticker on their cars. Just as people won’t put just any vanity slogan on their license plate or just any branded frame around it. People brand themselves and their cars with symbols that give their lives meaning and tell thei

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Jul 13, 2015

What’s EXCLUSIVE about your Radio Brand?

If you aren’t the exclusive provider for something meaningful, you’re sunk. In April, I shared Bloomburg’s report that Apple Music’s strategy would be to secure new music exclusives from some of the industry’s hottest artists, and I wrote about how exclusives were set to power the next generation of online radio competition and, by association, all radio competition. Now there’s a report that this strategy is beginning to unfold, big time: Apple [has] started creating their o

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Spotify after Apple Music – Brian Benedik at hivio 2015

Jul 1, 2015

Spotify after Apple Music – Brian Benedik at hivio 2015

What’s in store for Spotify now that we’re living in a post-Apple Music world? That’s what I discussed with Brian Benedik, Spotify’s North American VP for Advertising and Sponsorships at hivio 2015. Some of the questions Brian addresses: In its news releases Spotify seems to refer to “audio shows” rather than “podcasts.” Why? Spotify has added entertainment, news, and video clips to its wealth of music. What have you learned about consumer interest in these additions? How hav

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Dear Media: We Hoaxed You! Love, Taylor Swift and Apple Music

Jun 30, 2015

Dear Media: We Hoaxed You! Love, Taylor Swift and Apple Music

Was the Taylor Swift / Apple Music dustup nothing more than a premeditated hoax? Maybe! Listen to our argument! And… “I Want My MTV” is out, and “I AM My MTV” is in, but will anybody care? It’s episode 22 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Plus, rants and raves about Amazon’s trend-setting plan to pay some self-published authors based on the number of pages read, and the one irrefutable, universal law of podcasting success

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Jun 29, 2015

What Apple’s Beats 1 Means for Your Radio Brand

The shape of Apple’s new live-streaming radio station Beats 1 is coming into focus, and it’s full of exclusive celebrity content: The New York Times reports that Elton John will have a regular show on Beats 1 titled “Elton John’s Rocket Hour,” and it will play old and new music. Other musicians with shows on Beats 1 include Pharrell Williams, Drake, Josh Homme, St. Vincent, Jaden Smith, and Disclosure. Pharrell isn’t just a presenting a show, though. His new single “Freedom”

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Media Unplugged – Is the New Apple Music a “Mess?”

Jun 17, 2015

Media Unplugged – Is the New Apple Music a “Mess?”

Is the new Apple Music a mess? And… The new marketing muscle of your favorite movie stars. It’s episode 21 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Plus, rants and raves about Kaitlin Jenner’s first name, the mismatch between social media performance and actual TV ratings, and the journalist who tricked media outlets into believing that chocolate makes you thin. Listen as we go inside media to reveal the ugly truth! Click the pl

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What Apple Music’s Streaming Radio Station REALLY Means

Jun 13, 2015

What Apple Music’s Streaming Radio Station REALLY Means

In part one of the slicing of Apple Music, I looked at the all-you-can-eat streaming service itself. Today, in part two, I go inside the strategy behind Apple Music’s streaming radio station, Beats 1. What is Beats 1? It is “Apple’s first 24/7 worldwide radio station.” Special? Innovative? No (and does Zane really not have his own board op?). That’s despite the hyperbolic and breathless reception this initiative is getting by some tech-heads who should know better. Take MacWo

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Slicing Apple Music – Part 1: Will It Kill Spotify?

Jun 9, 2015

Slicing Apple Music – Part 1: Will It Kill Spotify?

As is now widely known, Apple Music is comprised of three key elements: iTunes – but on demand and in the cloud (a la Spotify), a worldwide radio station, and a social network that connects fans to artists and their content in whatever flavor it exists. I’m going to analyze each of these pegs in Apple Music’s new stool. One at a time. Today, the on-demand piece. When Apple introduced the iTunes store in 2003, there was no elegant (let alone legal) ecosystem for getting the so

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Apple Watch Fail?

May 13, 2015

Apple Watch Fail?

Apple Watch #fail? And Reese Witherspoon – Actress or Online Retail Brand? It’s episode 19 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Plus rants and raves on topics like the puzzling logic of the millionaire co-founding failure of the Secret app, the myth that streaming music is “free,” the wax museum that’s featuring YouTube stars, and the WordPress plugin that creates catchy headlines just like all the other catchy headlines. Li

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How Many Cars will be Dashboard-Powered by Google and Apple?

May 6, 2015

How Many Cars will be Dashboard-Powered by Google and Apple?

There’s much interest and much consternation about the entry of Google and Apple into operating-system extensions for the car dashboard with Android Auto and CarPlay, respectively. According to BI Intelligence: By 2020, nearly 40 million cars will be using Android Auto and 37.1 million will be using CarPlay, and that will cover nearly all cars launching connected car services, according to BI Intelligence estimates. That conclusion springs from a premium-priced report from BI

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Exclusives Power the Next Generation of Online Radio Competition

Apr 16, 2015

Exclusives Power the Next Generation of Online Radio Competition

Once it was enough just to stream whatever the music industry pumped out. The marketplace was littered with online radio alternatives large and small. This was fine when there was nothing but blue sky and everyone was land-grabbing to scale distribution as quickly as possible. But now the online radio ranker has winners and losers – stars and dogs. And nothing perpetuates stars like stardom. So how do the challengers disrupt the leaders? Apple has one answer. Apple is not typ

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Music Labels Don’t Understand the Real Value of Music

Mar 10, 2015

Music Labels Don’t Understand the Real Value of Music

Memo to music labels: The “value” of music is defined by consumers, fans, and listeners, not by you and your minions. From Billboard: A renewed focus on the value of music comes as a transition point for the record business. Rob Wells, Universal Music Group’s president of digital who brokered deals with “freemium” services like Spotify, left the company in late February. Now the company is rethinking the value of unlimited free streaming, according to a label source. At the s

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Here’s Why Apple Hired a Famous Radio DJ

Feb 16, 2015

Here’s Why Apple Hired a Famous Radio DJ

Why would Apple hire a well-known radio DJ? This past weekend Apple plucked popular British DJ Zane Lowe from BBC’s Radio 1. Lowe is famous for his artist interviews and for what Rolling Stone describes as his “keen ear for emerging new music.” It’s assumed that Lowe will work on iTunes Radio and its music products, of course. But not simply behind the scenes. He will be more than a “master curator.” How do I know? Because there are many folks in the world who have an ear for

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Your New Auto Dashboard Debuts This Month

Jan 4, 2015

Your New Auto Dashboard Debuts This Month

In a preview of CES, The Hollywood Reporter cuts to the chase – the most fundamental reason why the technology of the car dashboard is bound to change no matter what the power players of the radio industry desire: Car buyers—particularly millennials—are no longer as susceptible to the [auto] industry’s traditional marketing tropes of styling, horsepower and handling. Instead, they see the car as an extension of their digital lives, and increasingly demand that it mesh seamles

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So THAT’S How Apple’s PR Team Really Does It!

Sep 22, 2014

So THAT’S How Apple’s PR Team Really Does It!

Want to peek behind the curtain of Apple’s PR machine? That’s just what branding authority and celebrated author Tom Asacker and I do in episode 3 of Media Unplugged, our new twice-monthly podcast where we go behind the big media spin to spell out what’s really happening and what it means for media, brands, and consumers. Plus, ABC’s Dancing With The Stars managed to find an actual star this time – assuming you’re a fan of Bethany Mota on YouTube. What does that say about “st

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Here’s Why Radio Will Have a Tough Time on Mobile Phones

Aug 24, 2014

Here’s Why Radio Will Have a Tough Time on Mobile Phones

The battle for real estate and attention on mobile devices is even tougher than you think. This past week Techcrunch reported on a study by comScore which indicated… U.S. users are now spending the majority of their time consuming digital media within mobile applications. That means mobile apps, including the number 1 most popular app Facebook, eat up more of our time than desktop usage or mobile web surfing, accounting for 52% of the time spent using digital media. Combined

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The New Auto Dashboard: Is Radio Screwed?

Jun 30, 2014

The New Auto Dashboard: Is Radio Screwed?

Last week, Google announced Android Auto, which – like Apple’s CarPlay – aims to fully fulfill the promise of the so-called connected car. Watch this video to see an illustration of how the platform integrates music, both from Google Play and from third party apps like Pandora or iHeartRadio: So what does this mean for radio? Well let’s take a step back. Broadcasters have been obsessed over the dashboard lately because they smell big trouble. But the trouble is much bigger th

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Radio and the Future of Mobile Phones

Apr 16, 2014

Radio and the Future of Mobile Phones

In January, Google will reportedly release a “modular smartphone” in an attempt to disrupt market leaders Apple and Samsung. From Business Insider: Project Ara is Google’s attempt to make a mobile device where the major components, including the camera, speakers, GPS and other common features of modern smartphones, can be swapped out for new ones, mixing and matching modules to customise the phone to do what the user needs it to do. “Designed exclusively for 6 billion people,

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What Apple’s CarPlay Means for Radio

Mar 3, 2014

What Apple’s CarPlay Means for Radio

By now you’ve heard about Apple’s new CarPlay platform which is gearing up for battle with Google’s Open Automotive Alliance, not to mention all the other platforms making a land grab for that whitest of spaces, the car dashboard. The Apple platform – coming soon – will only be available on a few new car models and will be integrated with only the newest iPhone models and features only a few non-Apple app partners (notably excluding Pandora). But this is how change comes, one

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