Music podcasts
Post categories: Radio
| 16:44 UK time, Tuesday, 20 November 2007
We're now in our second week of rolling out our music based podcasts. This is big news for Audio & Music interactive and we're pretty excited about it.
Why? Well we've been offering radio programmes as podcasts since late 2004 now, but so far we have not included any commercial music for rights reasons. We have included unsigned music from various new/unsigned radio programmes such as Radio Northampton's Weekender and 1Xtra's Ö÷²¥´óÐãgrown shows, but up to now we've had to offer speech-only podcasts from radio stations who mainly broadcast music. So for example we have the Chris Moyles podcast, the Radio 1 Entertainment News podcast and the Scott Mill Daily all of which comprise of speech which has been broadcast in those programmes.
The great thing about these is that they allow our radio stations to have a presence on people's MP3 players, and on services like iTunes. They also make some of our radio content not only available on-demand, but also portable. Which is great. But so far no music, which has not been great.
Now we have reached agreement with the (which is a music industry organisation which collects and distributes royalties on behalf of record companies and performers), we can include commercial music clips up to 30" long in our podcasts. This opens up a whole new world for us in terms of what we can offer in this space. It also raises questions about what kind of content we are broadcasting in the first place (given that the audio content has to have been broadcast), and how much production effort is going to be required to make our linear radio programmes work with just 30" of music. We're going to roll out about 19 new music clip podcasts in this first phase - the full list is here.
Right now we have 7 new podcasts from Radio 1 covering Indie, Dance, Punk, Rock, Chart, a Zane Lowe hottest records recommendation and a mini-mix from Annie Mac's show. We also have two new podcasts from the Asian Network - one from Bobby Friction and one from the Asian Network Chart Show. Radio 2 are currently there with Paul Jones Rhythm and Blues, and 6Music with Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone. The big news this week is the launch of 5 new podcasts from digital station 1Xtra - ranging from Hip Hop, UK Garage, Dancehall, to Drum and Bass. All the new podcasts will be available from here.
The interesting thing for me is going to be working out what works well as a podcast as opposed to a linear radio broadcast. Our approach generally is to offer "short form audio snacks", rather than try to replicate the whole programme experience but with short music clips instead of full tracks. All the research we have done into podcasting suggests that people generally want something special and different from normal broadcast radio programmes, and that short is better than long. Most of our speech podcasts are a maximum of 30 mins long, but with these new music podcasts we are aiming for really short form - about ten minutes is what I'm recommending.
I'd rather leave people wanting more than offer something that doesn't get listened to all the way through. Oh and what a problem that is - not knowing if people listen to some or all of what they download! If anyone has the answer to that question, please let me know. On that basis my hunch is that the ultra-short Mini Mix and Zane Lowe recommendations podcasts will be very popular. Both are about 6 minutes long - they're so dense you need to listen twice. Again, a good thing in my view.
So, it's taken a while to get everything in place to allow us to experiment in this area, but we're finally there. There's a buzz of excitement in interactive teams, and the radio stations too, about how this can get our audio content to people who don't normally listen, or who would much prefer to listen in their own time, on their own portable media device. It'll be interesting to get feedback from record labels too - my feeling is that they should be happy about this, as these new podcasts will increase our ability to recommend new music to people who will go on to explore those artists further.
Be interesting to hear what people think is working from this new batch of podcasts. Any programmes missing from the list that you'd like to see added? Bear in mind that our podcasts have to be broadcast material, not made specially for podcasting.
Interesting, and great news!
Some questions:
1) Did you also sign a deal with PRS (Performing Rights Society), or did you have an existing deal with them that covers this usage?
2) Just to confirm, the 30 second music clips have to have been broadcast on the radio? Does this mean they have to have been broadcast as clips, or can they have been broadcast as full tracks? And do they have to been been broadcast BEFORE the mp3 is released, or can the podcast be released before broadcast?
3) This is UK only right?
4) Some suggestions for shows that could be podcast in this way: 6Music Chart, Listeners 6Music. Oh and can you put the music back into the Music Week podcast?
Frankie
I'll try to answer your questions:
1.Yes, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã also has an arrangement with the MCPS-PRS Alliance which now allows us to include short music clips for download.
2. Yes, all the music clips have to have been broadcast on the radio, although they will often (not always) have been broadcast as full tracks originally. No, the podcast shouldn't be released before the broadcast (mainly because it's based on what was broadcast...).
3. Yes, UK only
4. Thanks for suggestions, I'll pass them on. The next phase of new podcasts will be in Q1 08, so expect more then.
Last.fm collect stats on what people play on their media player software on their computers, and the latest version also counts what they have played on their iPods (but not currently any other music players). You can get stats about what podcasts have been actually played (rather than just downloaded) from them.
For example
There also seem to be quite a lot filed in random other locations, such as listed by DJ name etc.