#streaming

Apr 11, 2018

Spotify’s Attack on Radio in the Car

It’s informed speculation at this point, but the story goes like this: By the end of this month, Spotify is expected to make some hardware announcements, and there’s a good chance that one of those announcements will be designed to bring the platform closer to more cars. Obviously anybody with a smartphone and bluetooth can conceivably use Spotify in their cars, but the platform is notoriously laborious – indeed, that’s the whole point of Spotify: Getting exactly what you wan

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Did Smart Speakers Affect Radio Listening in 2017?

mramsey1

Jan 23, 2018

Did Smart Speakers Affect Radio Listening in 2017?

There’s lots of talk about the impact of smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo on usage for radio. Indeed, last year alone, some 25 million of these devices were sold, 11 million in the holiday quarter alone. The appeal to broadcasters is obvious: A device that’s all about listening – and it’s being embraced by millions of American households who quite possibly don’t own radios at home and thus are less likely to listen to them. What if we could return the radio to the living roo

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Radio’s Streaming Effort May Be Screwed – Part 2

mramsey1

Sep 19, 2017

Radio’s Streaming Effort May Be Screwed – Part 2

Yesterday I published a piece that argued two things: First, the decline in streaming for broadcast radio stations is real – it’s a trend, not a blip. Second, that decline has consequences not only for your streaming strategy but also for the strategy of spreading your radio brands across every new platform under the sun (“Alexa, I mean you!”). So what do you do? Here’s what I think you have to do. And not just you, but everyone who comes at digital from a place that has not,

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Radio’s Streaming Effort May Be Screwed – Part 1

mramsey1

Sep 18, 2017

Radio’s Streaming Effort May Be Screwed – Part 1

It’s one of the most disturbing results from the recent Triton streaming audio trends report, and most broadcasters are looking the other way. This is the picture I’m talking about: The charts show year-over-year streaming listening growth for pureplays (e.g., Spotify, Pandora, etc.) and for broadcasters. And it clearly shows two things: Pureplay listening is rising rapidly – it’s up more than 16% overall year-over year; meanwhile streaming listening to broadcast brands – the

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Media Unplugged: Should You Buy Followers and Likes on Social Media?

mramsey1

Jun 26, 2017

Media Unplugged: Should You Buy Followers and Likes on Social Media?

Should you buy followers and likes on social media? And… How to profit from the spoils of streaming? Just ask The Weeknd. Plus, rants and raves about the couple who learns to survive without food (?) and a long-overdue update on news from wax museums around the world. It sounds better than it looks, folks. Just like the idea of a wax museum itself. It’s episode 66 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. This episode is brought

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Access To Your Radio Station Is Not Enough

mramsey1

Jun 22, 2017

Access To Your Radio Station Is Not Enough

This one is going to upset some of you, so get ready…. Recently I did some research where listeners were asked what platforms they listened to and where they listened to them. One respondent, a 40’ish woman with a teenaged son, indicated that her son would never listen radio “because he’s always wearing those headphones attached to his mobile phone.” At first, I couldn’t understand why she viewed this as an obstacle to listening to radio, since radio can run through those sam

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Media Unplugged: Amazon Lands NFL Streaming Rights…So What?

mramsey1

Apr 10, 2017

Media Unplugged: Amazon Lands NFL Streaming Rights…So What?

Amazon lands NFL streaming rights…So what? And… Should Twitter be charging? Plus, rants and raves about Netflix’s new ratings system, the value of authenticity (or lack thereof) in Pepsi’s aborted new campaign, and more. It’s episode 61 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. This episode is brought to you by StackAdapt, an omnichannel digital advertising platform that helps brands accelerate customer acquisition. Sources: htt

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mramsey1

Jun 16, 2016

Radio’s Future in a Self-Driving Car

Estimates vary, but the consensus seems to be that we’ll see a meaningful number of self-driving cars replacing the human-powered ones by 2020, less than four years hence. Personally, I think that’s a bit optimistic, but I have no doubt that the future of cars is a self-powered one. While we fret about the future of radio in fast-changing conventional dashboards, we’re missing the much bigger worry: What happens when all the tech sacrifices made to cater to the driver’s atten

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Radio’s Advertising Spending Forecast – 2015 – 2020

mramsey1

Mar 17, 2016

Radio’s Advertising Spending Forecast – 2015 – 2020

There’s a new report from one of my favorite media experts, Jack Myers, and it highlights advertising revenue projections for radio and other media from 2015 to 2020 (you can download your own copy here). To summarize: Terrestrial radio (non-digital advertising only) is expected to be essentially flat with 0.6% growth annually. Digital advertising revenue is expected to increase by 18% annually over the next five years. That means digital will rise from 9% of overall ad reven

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mramsey1

Mar 16, 2016

Audio is a Feature, Not an Industry

So what does it mean when the radio industry headlines lead with debt-burdened iHeartMedia and this: iHeartMedia Battles Angry Creditors as Bankruptcy Looms. What does it mean when the next headline is about Cumulus, and this quotation: “Q4 and 2015 results dismal as radio’s decline shows no signs of stabilization.” What does it mean when CBS announces their plan to spin all of their radio assets while at the same time vowing to boost revenue $3.75 Billion by 2020 based on ev

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mramsey1

Nov 19, 2015

Why Slacker is Radio’s Best-Kept Secret

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

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How Spotify’s Data Insights Propel Their Strategy

mramsey1

Nov 13, 2015

How Spotify’s Data Insights Propel Their Strategy

What if music genres are a lot less important to how listeners tune in music than “use case” moments? That is, what if what you want to do while you’re listening is more important than the genre you are listening to? That’s just one insight from Spotify’s deep dive into their massive dataset. Think about the implications of that for a moment. It suggests that you should spend less time trumpeting your genre and more time trumpeting the moments that your genre is suited for in

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Radio Play-By-Play without Play-By-Play Rights Fees

mramsey1

Nov 4, 2015

Radio Play-By-Play without Play-By-Play Rights Fees

So let’s say you’re a radio station that attracts a male audience, but when play-by-play airs on another station, BOOM – off go listeners from your station to theirs. What do you do when your fans want to hear that play-by-play and they leave your station to hear it? Well, consider this: What if they could get the play-by-play and get it from you – no rights or rights fees necessary? What if they could get the play-by-play and get it from you - no rights or rights fees necess

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Pandora to Exclusively Stream Serial Podcast – and What It Means

mramsey1

Nov 3, 2015

Pandora to Exclusively Stream Serial Podcast – and What It Means

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

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Here’s Why Apple Hired a Famous Radio DJ

mramsey1

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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What’s the Future of Radio? That’s the Wrong Question

mramsey1

Feb 12, 2015

What’s the Future of Radio? That’s the Wrong Question

Everyone wants to know about “the future of radio”? But what if that’s the wrong question? For example, what happens if (or is it when?) the FCC relaxes the rules restricting cross-ownership of newspaper, TV, and radio stations in local media markets? Reflect on how dramatically the radio industry changed when broadcasters were free to consolidate within the single distribution channel called “radio.” Now how much do you think the landscape will change when the differences be

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How to Monetize your Online Radio Streams

mramsey1

Feb 5, 2015

How to Monetize your Online Radio Streams

Last week I published a piece using actual data from actual broadcasters that argued that their brands could make more money if streaming spots were monetized separately from over-the-air spots. That is, separate inventories have greater revenue potential than one simulcast pool. So how does a radio broadcaster maximize revenue from that online-only pool of inventory? I’m going to provide some thoughts on that. Now I’ll warn you: Not all of these ideas are easy and some of th

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Radio Survey: To Simulcast Spots or Not to Simulcast Spots

mramsey1

Jan 28, 2015

Radio Survey: To Simulcast Spots or Not to Simulcast Spots

In the second release from a new study of radio industry thought-leaders, managers say their radio brands can make more money by monetizing streams separately with their own spot inventory than by simulcasting those spots with the over-the-air brands. The study was conducted by Mark Ramsey Media by telephone in November and December, 2014 among more than 100 top-50 market radio General Managers, Sales Managers, Digital Executives, and Program Directors. 56% of these managers

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mramsey1

Jan 27, 2015

Is Streaming Momentum Stuck? Really?

There’s been lots of attention in the radio industry trades lately about the lack of audience momentum for many broadcasters in the streaming space, even as so-called pure-plays like Pandora and Spotify grow by leaps and bounds. Tom Taylor writes: iHeart’s not the only terrestrial operator with flat or negative growth over the period from February 2013 to October 2014. #3-ranked CBS is down from about 69,000 average domestic streams (6am-8pm weekdays) to a little less than 60

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Would Today’s Youth Miss Radio if it Went Away?

mramsey1

Dec 4, 2014

Would Today’s Youth Miss Radio if it Went Away?

In an article aptly titled “Young People Don’t Care About Newspapers, Old People Don’t Care About Smartphones,” Business Insider quoted an Ofcom study contrasting the responses of persons 16-24 to folks 75 and over. The question? “What media would you miss the most?” And here’s the chart: BI writes: People between the ages of 16 and 24, for example, would not blink an eye if newspapers and magazines went extinct; smartphones are the “must-have” device of the younger generatio

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