#mobile

Jan 5, 2017

Here’s How Radio Gets MORE Important In Cars

I have written extensively about the challenges radio will have in cars with a dashboard which is built to sync with Apple Carplay and Android Auto. I have also written a lot about what happens to radio when cars drive themselves (hint: It gets ugly). But there’s another force out there and it’s a force in the other direction. And that force is your own voice. Ford has announced an integration between their Sync platform and Amazon’s Alexa voice control system: [Starting] thi

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mramsey1

Nov 8, 2016

Now Any Car Is An Android Auto

The evolution of the car dashboard: It’s all some folks in radio want to talk about. Understandably, since such a large fraction of radio listening happens while driving. But isn’t it just the nature of disruption to change the conversation all at once? And that’s what happened today with the news that consumers wanting Android Auto no longer need to wait to buy a compatible car to use the platform. Now the platform is coming to them!Look out #radio: #android #auto is coming

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Apple CarPlay And Android Auto Are About To Explode

mramsey1

Oct 11, 2016

Apple CarPlay And Android Auto Are About To Explode

I have written a lot about the coming transformation of the auto dashboard and my belief that, in the long run, it will be the domain of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto – that these platforms will squeeze out most alternatives. Why? Because consumers will exert their will on automakers and demand that their dashboards are not only as powerful as their smartphones but that they are identical to them (at least within the constraints of driver safety, a sacrifice any driver under

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mramsey1

Dec 21, 2015

How Radio Can Make Money in Mobile

If you’re a radio broadcaster, your audience is mobile-first, but what about your audio platform? Increasingly, mobile is the place where you need to activate audience interaction and monetize audience engagement. So do you have a compelling mobile solution for your audio brand, one that actually makes money? Bill Freund is EVP/Chief Revenue Officer and Sara Sisenwein is VP Marketing for Clip Interactive, a mobile applications platform for broadcast radio and music labels, th

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The New Auto Dashboard Isn’t as Scary as Radio Thinks

mramsey1

Sep 29, 2015

The New Auto Dashboard Isn’t as Scary as Radio Thinks

Every time there’s some new innovation out there which enhances the choice set available to consumers who want to hear audio entertainment or information, a chill runs up the spine of every broadcaster, because with such a large fraction of listening, radio seems to stand more to lose than to gain from the expansion of choice. Without question, new choices squeeze existing options. Indeed, given the growing number of distractions available to consumers across every platform –

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A Dramatic Reinvention of Mobile News/Talk Apps

mramsey1

Jan 19, 2015

A Dramatic Reinvention of Mobile News/Talk Apps

What if your News/Talk station could have a mobile app that not only replayed your linear over-the-air stream, but also created something new? That is, what if you could personalize the content to the individual consumer – news, traffic, weather? And what if it could be presented in a non-linear stream, unique to every individual? That’s the promise of NewsBeat, a new platform built to give consumers the content they want whenever they want it – not just whenever it happens t

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If CNN’s Ratings “Don’t Matter,” Why Do Yours?

mramsey1

Oct 8, 2014

If CNN’s Ratings “Don’t Matter,” Why Do Yours?

The entire category of cable news is suffering a ratings slide. So acknowledges Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. But what’s his solution? How will he turn the cable news ratings situation around? Well it turns out that’s asking the wrong question. In fact, CNN’s response has been to add specialty shows which are decidedly not “cable news” per se – shows like Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown, a new show from Mike Rowe, and custom-produced documentaries. That is, CNN is broadening th

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How Broadcasters Can Monetize Their Mobile Apps

mramsey1

Sep 17, 2014

How Broadcasters Can Monetize Their Mobile Apps

I have long argued that radio broadcasters demand too little of their mobile apps. Yes, they can stream the over-the-air content. But so can your radio. What else can they do? What about your app is so essential, so engaging, such an important complement to the over-the-air and streaming experience that it demands not only that I download it, but that I also use it on a regular basis? That’s why I like the Clip Interactive platform so much (I have featured them before in this

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mramsey1

Sep 2, 2014

How Important is Radio in an Emergency?

It’s virtually taken on faith in the radio industry: This idea that when all other technologies fail, there’s still radio in an emergency. But open your eyes and you’ll see that radio’s role in emergencies is under threat, thanks to technology. Sure, there are times when all the power goes out, but in those times our technology is powered by batteries. Take the recent Napa earthquake as an example. From CBS San Francisco: Power outages were mostly irrelevant when it came to h

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

mramsey1

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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Radio Listeners: Is “Free” All That Matters?

mramsey1

Apr 21, 2014

Radio Listeners: Is “Free” All That Matters?

“When it comes to mobile devices, we need to remind listeners that radio is FREE – that its use does not sap so much precious battery energy and even more precious data plan bandwidth.” So argue the folks I call the “freeks.” These are the well intentioned folks in the radio industry who believe that listeners do not have their own best interests at heart. That listeners are, as a group, a bit dull-minded. Thus, listeners must be marketed at and advertised to in order to conv

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Radio’s REAL Problem on the New Auto Dashboard

mramsey1

Apr 7, 2014

Radio’s REAL Problem on the New Auto Dashboard

Yesterday I wrote that some auto industry analysts believe radio needs to be easy to find and use on the new auto dashboard because ease of discovery and use will trump any discussion of how good or bad the actual content is. In other words, consumers are not likely to seek out great content they care about unless it’s first easy to find and use. While it’s certainly true that making anything easier to find and use promotes both discovery and use, is that even within radio’s

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Radio’s Spot on the New Dashboard – Time to Do a Deal?

mramsey1

Apr 6, 2014

Radio’s Spot on the New Dashboard – Time to Do a Deal?

This past week I had a conversation with someone knowledgeable in the auto technology space: “The dash is getting crowded and complicated,” she argued, “and the harder to find a radio station is the less apt folks will be to listen to it.” “But if the content is compelling enough, they will seek it out,” I replied. “Ease of use trumps compelling content,” she argued back. “It has to be easy to find and use first, and some of these new dashboards don’t even have an FM/AM butto

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mramsey1

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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Clip Interactive: Making Your Radio Mobile App Better

mramsey1

Feb 10, 2014

Clip Interactive: Making Your Radio Mobile App Better

If you’re like me you get an empty feeling from too many radio mobile apps. The addition of podcasts and social links can’t mask the fact that the app is often little more than the audio stream with a fresh face. But is that all radio mobile apps should be? Clip Interactive doesn’t think so. Bill Freund is Clip’s EVP Chief Revenue Officer. What follows is an abbreviated transcript. For the full Q&A click the video image below. Prefer audio? Try this: Download Audio (You can s

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Radio’s Auto Dashboard Strategy: We’ve Got It All Wrong

mramsey1

Sep 19, 2013

Radio’s Auto Dashboard Strategy: We’ve Got It All Wrong

In the race to exploit new digital opportunities, Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker has described three “consumer Internet ‘white spaces’ yet to be reimagined.” One of these was the “ear” and another was the car. And she describes the latter as “largely untapped.” Naturally, broadcasters are in a tizzy because one industry’s white space is another industry’s breadbasket. Indeed, roughly two-thirds of radio listening occurs away from home, largely in autos. What to do? What

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The Best New Audio App of 2013? It’s AGOGO

mramsey1

Aug 7, 2013

The Best New Audio App of 2013? It’s AGOGO

Well, for starters, your content is in it. But not just yours. Podcast content too. But more than that: Content that is not audio is made audio. And your music (through Rdio or Spotify) is integrated with content that relates to your music to create a seamless and frictionless listening experience here, there, and on the go. Quality content from all over is curated according to your interests, irrespective of the channels or “silos” they are traditionally presented in or on.

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mramsey1

May 20, 2013

I Don’t Need an App for That

The rule most broadcasters use in framing their mobile app (if they’re wise enough to have one) is: Does this app offer up a stream of the station? Does it throw in some podcasts and some blogs and even some social media feeds? All of that’s fine – as far as it goes. But does it go far enough? When you ponder a mobile platform for a station that can already be experienced on every mobile platform on every highway in your market (i.e., the “car”), you have to ask this question

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Radios Ripped from New Cars? “Not So Fast,” say Consumers

mramsey1

Mar 13, 2013

Radios Ripped from New Cars? “Not So Fast,” say Consumers

You can climb down from the ceiling now, Mr. Broadcaster – it turns out new cars will feature FM/AM radios built-in for the foreseeable future (although certainly not forever). The logic of this should be obvious to us all, but particularly obvious for anyone who bothers to talk with consumers. And I did. Between March 9 and March 10 2013, I fielded a random, balanced, national online study of 1,000 consumers and asked how they feel about those radios in their cars – and how

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mramsey1

Feb 21, 2013

Too Many Apps, Not Enough Time

Are we suffering app overload? That’s the conclusion of Business Insider: People download a lot of apps, but they abandon 95 percent of them, according to a study by Nuance.The result: They keep using the same apps—Nielsen says Facebook, YouTube, Google Play, Google Search, and Gmail were the top five apps in both 2011 and 2012.And they’re not spending markedly more time in apps: 39 minutes a day in 2012 versus 37 minutes in 2011. While the Nuance stats are not new, the “if y

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