How can terrestrial radio partner with online radio for the benefit of both? That’s just one topic tackled by Duncan Orrell-Jones, CEO of Slacker Radio. In this Q&A from hivio, the audio future festival, Orrell-Jones outlines Slacker’s business strategy and how it contrasts with the strategies of more familiar names like Pandora or Spotify. Slacker’s emphasis is on building a state-of-the-art radio experience and pursuing unique deals in partnership and distribution. Some of

Beginning later this month, Pandora becomes the exclusive streaming home for the uber-popular Serial podcast. And starting next year, Pandora adds Serial’s sister radio show/podcast This American Life (on what can only be a non-exclusive basis). I’ve been thinking about the consequence of this announcement, and here’s the best I can come up with: It’s good PR for Pandora in an otherwise quiet time It’s great news for Serial, which gets to add an all-new distribution partner w

There are events for radio and online radio and digital and local revenue and commercial and public and Christian broadcasters, but there’s no event for people across the audio space to gather together in one place at one time. Audio is one medium, and hivio, the audio future festival, is that one event. I’m proud to announce that tickets are available for the third annual hivio audio future festival – this year in Los Angeles at the legendary Hollywood Improv. Who’s on the s

This post was originally published by PBS’s MediaShift and is reprinted here with their permission. I wrote it shortly before last week’s spate of Apple announcements. The launch of Apple’s iOS 7 signals more than a major upgrade to Apple’s mobile operating system. Embedded in its feature set is an alternative to every music-playing radio station and every online radio service – iTunes Radio. But is iTunes Radio just another choice for music, along with Pandora, Spotify, and

…much like the one being staged in “secret” at the NAB Radio Show right now. And like that meeting, the purpose of mine is to plot radio’s digital future. Because, as we all know, the future of any industry is best mapped out by its leading executives, locked together in a private room with nary a consumer in sight.  Consumers will do what they’re told, after all.  The control is all ours! This is how General Motors did it for years! I will make sure only to invite folks who

So what’s in store for the auto dashboard of tomorrow? It may not be whatever’s on the drawing board in Detroit (or in the picture above). It may really be whatever’s in your pocket. So says venture capitalist John Backus: In-car electronics, standalone GPS, satellite radio, seatback DVD players and HD radio will quickly disappear, replaced only by the smartphone powering a dumb screen on the dashboard. In other words, argues Backus, YOU are the new dashboard. And when he say

Okay, so I have weird tastes.  I’m the guy whose favorite dishes in restaurants are discontinued for lack of interest.  And my music tastes are just as irregular. But thanks to the Internet you can find anything nowadays, and thanks to personalized radio services you can create what you want out of nothing if you so desire. It so happens that there’s a channel on SiriusXM that gets close enough to one thread of my weird tastes.  Also,  I created my own version on one of the p

Earlier this week, a number of leading broadcasters piped in on a scenario whereby Pandora and other online radio services would be measured alongside radio in Arbitron’s supposedly forthcoming Total Audience Measurement report, and the most telling word was this one:  “Frightening.” Indeed it is “frightening,” the thought that a stable ecosystem of radio brands with huge barriers to entry could be penetrated overnight by a theoretically limitless number of present and future

That’s the word from newly public Pandora on their first-ever quarterly report. As GigaOm writes: Pandora posted total revenue of $67 million during the second fiscal quarter of the year, more than doubling its revenue from the same period one year ago. Revenue from ads accounted for the lion’s share of Pandora’s Q2 sales, totaling $58.3 million.  And while Pandora did not turn a bottom-line profit for the quarter — the company’s net loss was $1.8 million — it seems to be imp

How many US radio listeners already have FM built-in to their mobile phones? And how often do they use it? How does this compare to the number who have downloaded a personalized radio app, like Pandora or Slacker?  How often do they use those? And how do these numbers compare to downloads and use of station-specific mobile apps? These were the questions I set out to answer in a national telephone study of 1,346 radio listeners, aged 15-69, conducted by VIP Media Research duri

(This is part 2 of the post.  For part 1, go here) Recently, the radio industry has obsessed on a few low hanging strengths relative to Pandora:  “We’re local,” “we’re big,” “we’re useful in an emergency.” I have already talked about the flaw in “we’re big.” Ditto “we’re local” (“local” is not a mailing address, it’s what you do that’s local. “Local” is not Lady Gaga.  By the way, Pandora is personal which in many ways is better than “local”). Ditto radio’s unquestioned value

When broadcasters take a break from diminishing Pandora long enough to recognize that they have to worry about it, how do they respond? More than a few broadcast companies are rushing to figure out how to manufacture personalized versions of their radio brands (yes, misbegotten “Pandora is a feature” crowd, I’m talking to you).  The idea is that this functionality has great consumer appeal, and Pandora’s success at offering it is a threat to the broader radio industry. This f

From Slacker’s Jonathan Sasse in the LA Times: “If you look at where broadcast radio is going, it looks like they’re trying to become what online radio used to be,”  Sasse said. “What we’re trying to become is what broadcast radio used to be, which is radio that’s expertly programmed and tailored to you. It used to be that when I came to a new town, I’d find an awesome station with a local DJ that talks about the music in my city, the concerts in my city and play some new mus

Will Pandora expand to spoken word (I hate that term passionately) content? Not any time soon, I think.  But here’s the take from the New York Times: [In Pandora’s initial public offering], when discussing the competition, Pandora notes that this non-musical content gives “terrestrial” radio stations an edge over its service. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Pandora will be announcing a slate of talk shows tomorrow, or that it’s actively developing a service in this ve

Will the future of radio be personalizable, like Pandora? No. But with an audience craving music and happy to tailor and tweak that experience to their liking, there’s no question that personalizable music content is one area sorely lacking in radio’s arsenal, and the glaring absence of this feature is why Pandora has 80 million registered users, tons of glowing publicity, and a cascade of integration deals with automakers and other consumer electronics manufacturers. Bob Pit

Does radio have a future in the world of online radio? Or is this a future that belongs to the pure-plays – the Pandoras and the Slackers? I sat down with Triton Media COO Mike Agovino to discuss the transforming economics of online radio.  Triton, whose clients include both radio and pure-plays, is in a unique position to see the online radio landscape in its entirety, and what Mike sees is good news for broadcasters. In this conversation, Mike covers both the cost and the r

Pandora and other online radio pure-plays want to be in the car, and that will mean trouble for Sirius/XM, right? After all, Pandora et. al. are free while Sirius/XM is not. Not so fast. Here are five reasons why that logic could be all wet: 1.  Sirius/XM is destination programming.  For Pandora, the destination is me. That is, personalized radio services solve one problem really well, but they don’t solve all problems equally well. Tons of Sirius/XM listenership is for profe

What’s new in online radio and what are the implications for advertising? That was the topic in a recent conference call hosted for a technology audience, not an audience of broadcasters. One of my great joys is listening in or participating in the Yi-Tan Tech Community “Conversations about Change” call.  It’s a weekly conference call directed towards tech-savvy listeners, executives, and investors, and it’s hosted by Jerry Michalski and Pip Coburn. Recently the topic was the

In part one we discussed the future of online radio – especially the shape online radio will take in your automobiles. Here we complete the chat with an overview of the new premium on-demand service coming soon to Slacker which will put Slacker on par with existing and forthcoming services like Rhapsody, Spotify, Rdio and other services. (If that sounds like a crowded field, it is.  But why should Slacker fans spend their money elsewhere if this is an additional service Slack

Talk to some broadcasters and they’ll claim that mobile device manufacturers hate online radio because of the bandwidth usage.  Not so, says Jonathan Sasse, VP Marketing for Slacker, one of the leading personalized online radio services. Talk to some broadcasters and they’ll claim there’s no money to be made from streaming.  Not so, once again, says Jonathan. Talk to some broadcasters and you’ll get a picture of the auto dashboard of the future that includes HD radio – maybe.