Radiodays: Playing with Radioplayer blog

BLOG: A session on radio players, was, as you would expect, very interactive – with plenty of questions from the floor. The group discussed the UK’s Radioplayer, SBS’s Radio Play and Germany’s rad.io / radio.de.

Firstly each of the speakers outlined their own systems and products. Bernard Bahners from radio.de talked about his third-party aggregation service and how they catalogue radio stations and provide discovery and traffic for stations. He also explained how the underlying data is made available through the web, mobile and OEMs.

Simon Gooch from SBS explained that they, like lots of radio stations, see users who visit the radio station website, pop the player and close the site. They’ve decided to upgrade their players and make them more web-like. They’ve also brought all of their stations (from Mix Megapol to The Voice) into one product – Radio Play. Simon also felt that in a market where music services like Spotify have real traction, it was also important that SBS had their own audio online product.

Michael Hill, from the UK’s Radioplayer, explained why Radioplayer came about – a desire to improve the user experience for online radio and grow digital listening on connected devices. He talked about how the vast majority of UK stations – public, private and voluntary – now all sit in a web, mobile and (soon to be) tablet product.

The audience discussed the role of aggregators in radio’s value chain. Whilst a question from the floor asked, “Is it right for a third-party aggregator to get in-between a station and its listeners?” Bernhard, from radio.de, suggested that aggregators can be prolific traffic drivers, especially for smaller stations that need to drive awareness.

Simon and Michael were keen for radio to own its own future by developing systems – both back end and front end – to allow stations and groups to control their distribution to a variety of devices and platform. They agreed that it would be a gamble to leave it purely to a third party.

Read more from the Radiodays Europe blog at RadiodaysEurope.com