Blogging Nick Piggott

Ubiquitous and mobile – two characteristics that encompass the radio experience. For over twenty years, between the invention of the transistor and the arrival of the Walkman, those characteristics were unique to radio (the medium) and radio (the device).

Radio, the device, has no future.

That seems to be a bold statement to make against sales of 6.5m DAB Digital Radios in the UK, all of which have been dedicated “radio” devices, or “radio” devices primarily sold on the feature of radio. Those radio devices have been bought by an unconverged generation; older, more affluent, less aware of the fashionability of technology. They have replaced traditional wooden transistor radios by radios that are reassuringly recognisable, and simple to operate.

Radio, the medium, is capable of much more.

Once you shake off the radio=medium=device thinking, it allows so much more exploration of what radio is, and what it could be for people who do live in a converged media world; who do want to buy technology because it’s fashionable, and who want functionality executed brilliantly. That isn’t to say that DAB is pointless. DAB Digital Radio is a distribution platform that is extremely well suited to delivering radio into converged mobile devices, and it’s been a huge impediment to its growth to have been stuck in the radio=medium=device paradigm.

So if we are passionate about retaining our ubiquity, our mobility and our attraction to users, then we have to go and find out what devices listeners love, and find a way of getting radio to them.

Apple dominate the personal, mobile entertainment device market.

They understand the combination of form and functionality, and are uncompromising about delivering a converged experience on a converged device. As technologists and media operators, we might rail against the tightly-controlled integrated platform they’ve created, but it works for consumers. However, even an organisation as focused on delivering a brilliant mobile entertainment device can slip up, and I think Apple have.

Why is there no live radio on the iPod / iPod Touch / iPhone?

Is it conspiracy or cockup? It’s hard to say, and I doubt Apple would want to admit to either. But the absence of the UK’s/Europe’s most popular form of mobile entertainment from the most popular mobile entertainment device makes no sense to me. If Apple is intent on universal ownership of their device (and that’s a reasonable objective for a company), then we need to be equally passionate and focused about getting radio onto them. By hook, or by crook.

GCap Media is the first broadcaster to deliver live streaming radio to the iPod Touch and iPhone

I am immensely proud of my team – Andy Buckingham, Ben Poor and newcomer Adam Fox – for hacking their way into the iPod Touch and iPhone and being the first people to deliver live streaming radio. You don’t need any specific firmware, you don’t need to jailbreak your device, you don’t need to install anything. Simply visiting www.musicradio.com from your iPod Touch or iPhone will give you access to the live streams from GCap’s major stations, plus those essential features that all radio must now come with; what’s playing now, on-demand audio (podcasts), opportunities to purchase (from a selection of vendors, incidentally), and access to the station websites. Andy, Ben and Adam did the creative work to make it happen, and my role was to provide encouragement, direction and cups of tea.

No doubt the inquisitive will quickly reverse engineer what we did, and we’ll see more and more radio arrive on the iPod Touch and iPhone, at which point I would rather hope that Apple would choose to support it formally and embrace the opportunities. I’m positive that the EMEA people in Apple can help their colleagues in Cupertino see how important radio is in Europe, and how rather forward looking European broadcasters are.

Of course, there are weaknesses to our approach (not least of which it involves rather more horsepower at the back than we would like, and it’s at times like these that Amazon EC2 is a welcome helping hand), and inherent weaknesses in trying to use WiFi (or even 3G) to provide a reliable streamed service to mobile devices. If you up and leave your WiFi hotspot, then you’re going to lose your radio service. Anyone who’s used 3G on their laptop to stream content will know that 3G is a very stop/start system when you’re on the move.

So view what we’ve done as a prototype – an “in principle” demonstration of what is possible with radio on the move on a modern media device. By itself it won’t be material to GCap’s earnings this year, and I doubt it will deliver significant listening hours. Indeed, using the current approach of streaming over WiFi or 3G, it scales very poorly and we will struggle to deal with significant numbers of concurrent listeners.

If this prototype excites listeners and the radio industry, then the next step is to capitalise on that and look at how to integrate a proper mass-market distribution technology into the device, of which only one candidate fits the bill (in terms of economics, functionality and power consumption) and that’s DAB Digital Radio. And of course, whilst Apple make the world’s most successful portable media device with a phone in it, Nokia make the world’s most successful mobile phones with media players in them – and Nokia are already ahead of Apple with Nokia Visual Radio and Nokia Streaming Radio.

I was lucky enough to visit The Consumer Electronics Show this year. CES lies at the very heart of the consumer electronics industry, and is a bellwether for the health of consumer spending and consumer interests. I went to go and see how radio fits into this frenetic and fast-moving world.

CES is vast. Truly awe-inspiringly vast. 140,000 delegates, thousands and thousands exhibitors, spread across tens of thousands of hall space across three huge venues. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to CES. (with apologies to Douglas Adams). Your chances of seeing it all are slimmer than a whelks chance in a supernova (ditto). But one does ones very best, and wears comfortable shoes (the very best tip I got from reading the blogosphere)

CES has the whole spectrum of consumer electronics providers – from the powerhouses of Samsung, LG, Microsoft, Intel, Motorola, Panasonic – to hundreds and hundreds of booths in a shanty town like arrangement representing the manufacturing communities of China and Taiwan.

Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Paul Otellini (Intel) both devoted large segments of their Keynote speeches to the future of Digital Entertainment (and a quick bash on Guitar Hero for Bill, and a bloke called Slash). Sweeping presentations and brilliant visuals emphasised a seamless entertainment experience in the home, the car and the mobile device. TV – yep. Films – you got ‘em. Music – sure thing. Radio… Hello, hello, paging radio – is radio in the house? Apparently not. Oh well. (Otellini’s speech started with a reworking of The Buggles, Video Killed The Radio Star which rather fell over when people realised that video hasn’t actually killed the radio star – but hey, it was a great 80’s start to the show).

So where was radio amongst the vast shiny stands of the world’s major consumer electronics brands. Not present. Largely, I guess, because radio isn’t cutting edge techsexy. (Although I’ve no idea what LG were thinking of when inventing Mobile Pedestrian Handheld “MPH”, and attempting another flogging session of the dead horse of mobile TV). Does Microsoft’s Mediaroom (their IPTV platform) support radio; well, they weren’t sure, but it does do music. How about Microsoft Media Center (sic) – same response. Slightly better news at the Zune stand, where they recognised that lack of streaming support was a bit of a negative, and said there was a roadplan.

Nokia was good. They were demonstrating streaming radio on the N95 and Capital 95.8 streamed faultlessly first time. They talked about bringing together the Visual Radio and Streaming Radio into a single client, which is an exciting prospect. And they really joined in with the enviro/green theme of the show (which must have had a dedicated, and doubtless coal-fired, power plant. Amusingly the local coal lobby was running adverts on the local radio stations about how important and how much cleaner coal was nowadays. Yeah, yeah).

Most of the brand MP3 players have FM radio chucked in as an afterthought. It adds headcount, but nothing very exciting or revolutionary for the radio industry. iRiver were the notable exception, demoing their excellent little B20 device (which has the most comprehensive DAB Digital Radio implementation ever seen, on any device, anywhere) alongside their new W7 and W10 wifi enabled devices. Cowon also demo’ed a MP3+DAB radio unit. But where are Creative, Apple?

So, what about WiMax – to some people, the solution for broadcast radio to the masses? XOHM is the US implementation of WiMax, and they had a great theme driven stand. I asked which theme radio fitted into, and they thought it would probably be the “in the car” theme. But the “in the car” team hadn’t thought about radio. They thought it probably would work because mobile TV works over WiMax, but they promised to have a think about it and get back to me. Seems like the admiration between radio and WiMax isn’t mutual.

So far, the picture looks a bit glum. In a show driven by innovation in consumer electronics, there’s not much radio brings to the party. But let’s go deeper, and talk to the people on the stands.

Most the product managers I was able to talk to were quite interested in the idea of a new kind of radio. In essence, they were saying – give us something new to talk about, and we’ll include it. Logitech and Sonus talked about how their streaming devices can support visualisation, extended information, and interactivity – but no radio station has ever come and asked them about it. I spent some time with the folks from HD Radio, and they talked about how well the iTunes Tagging concept had been received, and demo’ed their natty media player device. Sirius and XM both had impressive stands showing of their range of own brand devices. Radio can do innovation, but apparently only when it’s done by new entrants; it would seem that legacy businesses find it awfully hard to get their heads round anything other than today and yesterday.

The other astonishing hit of the show, in terms of ubiquity, was Digital Picture Frames. They were simply everywhere, despite being described by one wag as “21st Century Lava Lamps”. I predict that an awful lot of homes will have them, and the manufacturers are already trying to differentiate themselves. Some have WiFi, some have Bluetooth, some play MP3s to accompany the pictures. But hang on, if it can play MP3, why not DAB digital radio? Isn’t the Kitchen Radio of the future actually a nifty 7″ digital picture frame, that shows Slideshow when you’re listening to the radio, and shows your favourite pictures when you’re not. Why, hey – now there’s an opportunity. (And a new Slideshow spec will be out shortly).

I was really pleased to be able to meet Jack Schofield of The Guardian in Vegas. We literally bumped into each other on the strip, and used the opportunity to have a really good discussion about DAB Digital Radio. Readers of both our outputs know that my responses have been tart at times, but I hope that the time we spent having an interesting and wide-ranging chat affirms with Jack that there’s no personal animosity, and that everyone on the Digital Radio project has a real passion for radio and that we do the very best we can with the resources and freedoms we have.

One final observation, and this is more to do with radio programming than digital radio. Vegas is the home of the 80’s pop hit. Music is piped everywhere – streets, lobbies, casino floors, restaurants, lifts. Not once, and I mean not one single time in a 6 day stay, did I hear anything other than pop hits from the 1980’s. Nu Shooz, I Can’t Wait; Falco, Der Kommisar; El Debarge, Who’s Johnny…. Given that Vegas is a multi-million dollar industry that is heavily researched, I believe that 80’s pop hits must make people happy, must make people spend lots of money, and therefore must be the sleeper hit format for digital radio in 2008.

There’s a flickr stream of my CES photos here.

Nick travelled with bmi from Manchester to Vegas, who were lovely, even if they caught a 5 hour delay on the way back. You have to love a British airline that serves clotted cream tea, cornish pasties and cottage pie, and brings the tea round before the coffee.

Installations Folder on N76 by RafeB @ flickr

Nokia Visual Radio had everything going for it, so why hasn’t it taken off?

The premise of adding visual and interactive content to radio has been proven by various research projects, and Nokia showed an outstanding commitment by putting the client software on virtually every one of their mainstream handsets for the last couple of years. Given the normal churn rate of handsets, that must mean that virtually every Nokia phone in mainstream use (and in turn, the majority of handsets in use) has access to the service. That’s millions and millions of consumers in most European countries who could access synchronised visual content from radio stations, and interact. From a commercial point of view, it ought to be an incredibly powerful proposition – direct response to radio/visual advertising from mobile handsets.

So why are there only 3 UK radio stations participating? Why are there less than 20 stations worldwide using the technology?

The biggest single stumbling block has been a comprehensive mis-understanding of the degree of effort radio stations were able (or willing) to put into producing the service. The initial software was so laughably bad, it was actually comical. I know one station that pretty much had three people authoring the output in real-time; that’s not software, that’s a pair of lead-boots. Nokia had advisors with plenty of technology experience, it’s fascinating to see such a disconnect with the real world of radio.

I was really pleased to see this critical bit of the chain fixed recently, with the news that RCS’s excellent (and frankly, visionary) Radioshow software is going to be the authoring tool for radio stations. Or more to the point, it allows radio stations to enter the Visual Radio business by simply piping their “playing now” information from their playout system through to RCS. Hopefully by dramatically lowering the bar, there will be far more stations on the service, creating the critical mass to make it a mainstream success.

There are more things that could be improved with Nokia Visual Radio – it should use RDS to identify a station and start the NVR service, rather than the extremely clunky directory system; and of course, the best way to deliver radio and data services to mobile devices is DAB Digital Radio. But I would say that Nokia have already invested a lot in Nokia Visual Radio, so for the time being it might be good for the radio industry to show some interest in return.

iphone plus jajah by jahah @ flickr 

It appears my scepticism about the rumours of the iPod to include Digital Radio was well founded. How on earth the real announcement got extrapolated to that is quite impossible to believe, but a salutary tale none-the-less.

The actual news is that the iPhone now has WiFi access to the iTunes store. (How clever not to go bunging up the tiny datafootpath of GPRS that is the iPhone’s sole contact with the real world). I’m not that impressed. Same application, different bearer, big deal.

The interesting stuff comes in the last breaths. Apple have linked up with Starbucks. A meeting of the brands – can you imagine the ponytails, chino jeans and lattés in those meetings? Starbucks, you might be aware, is also hopping on the music bandwagon by making big its policy of playing music in its stores. (I’m sure MacDonalds have done that for years?). But here’s the big revolutionary “oh my god, how clever are Apple?!” idea.

Starbucks will tell Apple the song that’s currently playing the store… and the last ten songs played. You can download them (using the WiFi in all Starbucks) with just a couple of clicks.

Wow. Wish I’d thought of that.

(Actually – wish I’d thought of taking the idea to Apple).

Now I wonder if Apple is interested in doing the same with radio stations, or if we’re just simply not cool enough for them? (Note to self – buy new Chinos, grow ponytail, drink more latté).

BT Movio have announced today that their mobile TV service, delivered via DAB on the DigitalOne multiplex, will cease sometime prior to June 2008. Various reports today have suggested that the service will stay live until January 2008, although it’s not clear if Virgin Mobile (the only network to take the service up) has ever made any firm commitments to their subscribers about a minimum supply period

I have mixed emotions about this turn of events. Only a few days ago, I commented that the BT Movio service was a bold attempt to get DAB technology into mobile phones. Ultimately, the service only appeared in one mobile phone device, the bizarrely named Lobster phone manufactured by HTC.

I know that a great deal of effort went into the engineering of this world-first device, and it is actually a superb DAB digital radio device with an OKay-ish Microsoft Smartphone attached. That’s one of the disappointing facets of this event – that an excellent DAB + Mobile Phone combination will be withdrawn from sale, and there are so many of them left in the warehouse. If BT or Virgin want to minimise their exposure, they would do well to sell the Lobster just on its excellent DAB Digital Radio credentials. It’s got a great EPG, great navigation model and great reception. If it had a DAB Slideshow viewer, it would be nearly perfect from a radio point of view.

The other, often unrecognised, benefit is that BT Movio helped DigitalOne improve their network coverage substantially to provide good handheld portable DAB reception. It will be a real shame if these network extensions, particularly in the London area, are decommissioned. Quite of lot of the improvement in Central London coverage has come from a relatively modest site installed on the BT Tower, which boosts the DigitalOne and London II multiplexes.

Movio’s closure will free up about 400kbit/s on the DigitalOne multiplex. That’s capacity that’s been unavailable to the radio industry, and led to the operation of Core, Capital Life and theJazz in mono. There’s an opportunity there not only to restore those to stereo services, but also to enable some of the data services that should be defining the digital radio experience of the future. Unfortunately, Movio was doubtless carrying a large proportion of the cost of the DigitalOne network which will now fall onto a radio industry that’s having some hard times at the moment. I ferverently hope that the economics of radio have improved markedly before Movio’s funding ends in a year from now.

Some press reports have speculated on a correlation between the European Commission’s decision to get behind DVB-H and Virgin/Movio’s decision to drop their service. The DAB-IP platform used by Movio was always an unique and very proprietory platform, despite efforts to make it a standard in the DAB family. It’s demise is not really that relevant in the wider discussion about mobile TV technology, and DMB still remains a very formidable competitor to DVB-H. It’s outlandish that the EU should tacitly suggest a “not made here” approach to a technology built upon Eureka 147. That’s the kind of thing America does, and you would have thought we (and they) would have learnt about the dangers of blindly supporting the loudest local lobby.

On balance, I believe that Movio’s demise is not a body blow to Mobile TV, nor a significant factor in the DMB v DVB-H debate, but I do believe it provides a very significant opportunity for radio to do something revolutionary in a short window of opportunity. How would it be if DigitalOne was able to let its service providers do something exciting and evolutionary that sparked interest and investment in digital radio and that ultimately made the revenue loss from Mobile TV bareable?