Week of January 29, 2007

Can Second Life Get More Real?

Friday, February 2, 2007

The hugely popular virtual world site Second Life is about to get more real: A newspaper in Sweden is reporting that the country is going to establish an embassy in the virtual world. While it obviously won't issue visas and passports, it will include someone who will answer questions about those things. You may want to think about how you can get your station more involved in the virtual world that is Second Life.

Sophisticated Radio Automation...For Free

Thursday, February 1, 2007

As we illustrated earlier this week, you can expect technology to be adapted and used for many more purposes than the original intent of its release. Today's example is Campware. Campware was developed by the Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF) to provide emerging democracies a free solution for building radio stations.

Campware is a sophisticated and robust radio automation system, and the MDLF is providing it for free. While the intention was for the system to be used in emerging countries, it is open for anyone to use, and you can bet that Internet radio stations looking to launch will jump all over Campware. This is typical in today's New Media Landscape: The technical and infrastructure barriers of entry crumble making it easier for new and hungry competitors to take part.

Radio Needs More Than MySpace

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

This week Showtime launched the 4th season of their groundbreaking series, The L Word. In the previous season, one of the characters, on the show, launched a social networking site, called OurChart, for lesbians. Now in a case of life imitating art, or perhaps just a clever marketing ploy, OurChart.com is a real social networking site, including blogs from the characters on the show, communities and gust columns.

Social networks, of course, led by the unprecedented growth of MySpace are a key part of the community of the web. Specialized social nets, such as OurChartcom, are the next generation of social nets. Yet radio executives have been slow to embrace the possibilities, preferring their stations web sites and tepid marketing efforts such as newsletters to full-blown social networking. Radio stations that settle for setting up their own MySpance pages, thinking that they have social networking "covered," are missing the point.

PPM Is Just The First Step

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

If you thought the PPM itself was the brave new world for radio, that's just the start. Arbitron's PPM is just the first step in a revolution in radio ratings and advertising. Lurking just beyond is Project Apollo. This is a collaborative effort between Arbitron, Nielsen and major advertisers to gauge the effectiveness of media advertising. Think of it as overlaying PPM data on listening and viewing patterns with actual purchasing data from those same PPM respondents.

The pilot program started a year ago. In addition to the PPM device, selected households also receive a scanner device so that they can swipe and record all of their purchases. So while programmers in the near future are comparing PPM data on listener behavior with their music logs, advertisers will be doing the same with the respondents' purchasing habits.

Innovative Uses Of Google: Generating Radio Airplay

Monday, January 29, 2007

I was doing some research on Google's radio initiative with dMarc when I stumbled upon this blog entry. The writer outlines a way that independent musicians can use dMarc to generate promotion and airplay for their music without going through radio station programming departments (albeit through minute-long snippets and not full songs). We often think of the disruptive nature of new technology, and the opportunities of the technology itself, but we rarely think of the opportunities technology can provide creative thinkers from completely unrelated industries.

If you are hitting a roadblock in some aspect of your job (as indie musicians often face with radio), take another look at technology. You never know when a solution is sitting right there in front of your face.