Who's To Co-Opt? And Who's To Compete With?
Written Oct. 2, 2007 by Sean Ross in HD Radio + Technology with 2 Comments
This morning's announcement from the HD Radio camp that CBS Radio, Clear Channel, Cumulus, Cox, Entercom and Greater Media are in the process of installing iTunes Tagging technology brought a swift response from Robert Unmacht of iN3 Partners, whose clients include Radio-Info.com.
Unmacht, who has weighed in on song tagging before here, is not the only person to suggest that radio is giving the iPod entirely too much currency, but his take is one of the most explicit.
"'Radio: helping to make Apple the standard in digital distribution,'" he writes.
"Odd that they hate satellite [radio] and support what will be a far bigger threat in 5-10 years.
"Apple has its eye on digital distribution in the broadband era: audio; video; film; records; information; books; radio.
"This move with HD is small in soooo many ways but it does help make Apple a standard, having HD buy into it now will make each future technology that much easier for Apple.
"Once it is a standard, how you get their products will not matter. One day you switch to the iPod in car receiver and radio as we knew it is gone."
Even taking a more benign view of the iPod/HD Radio interface, I'd still like the same effort to go into designing something else: the iPod-size combination HD radio/wireless Internet receiver. It's the one that lets you pick up any radio stream in the world, but because broadcasters have been pro-active in the design process, it's the one that helps you easily find any HD-2 channel, not just the ones in your market. Because while song-tagging technology might be nice to have, the Infinite Dial in my hand is the one that would go to the gym with me instead of the iPod.
Reader Comments
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This kind of criticism that Unmacht is using is simply out-of-touch with reality. The simple truth is that Apple does not need the major broadcast groups to tag their content, it simply makes Apple's job easier if they do.
Look at it this way: The ability to identify songs simply does not require the assistance of major broadcast groups. Apple could partner with BDS or some other audio fingerprinting company and simply use technology to identify songs as they are broadcast. While this would be difficult to do today, the advent of Wi-fi enabled iPods make this possibility a sooner rather than later possibility.
So broadcast groups have two options: 1) Tag their content today, retaining a modicum of control and possibly some incremental revenue or 2) Not play ball, and watch while Apple takes a little bit longer to implement the strategy, and when they do, watch broadcasters get nothing.
There is also nothing saying that this tagging process will be unique to the iPod. Broadcasters could sell their song tagging to other digital stores/players. Heck, they could just sell it to the record labels or consumer services.
The bottom line is that it is better to control your fate and the possible monetization than to sit back and let someone else's technology leave you with nothing.
Isn't it ironic that the stations which don't ID songs on the air will do so via tagging while the listeners who used to listen for "that song" again and again will now identify it, buy it, and leave the radio station for the song?