Reclaiming Music Discovery
Written Jun. 30, 2010 by Tom Webster in Internet Radio + Music Industry + Terrestrial Radio with 2 Comments
One of the recurring themes we have seen in our annual research series with Arbitron is the continuing erosion of radio's image for music discovery. Certainly, radio has ceded this territory to the Internet - but as tempting as it may be to dwell on the negative, the fact is that the Internet as a medium is actually better suited to music discovery than radio anyway. This isn't a knock on radio as much as it is a recognition that the various cognitive activities that music discovery and appreciation engages are best served by the combination of audio stimulus, search, context and serendipity that only the Internet can provide.
Still, while the Internet may have wrested this crown from radio, it isn't a zero-sum game. After all, radio stations have websites too, right? In fact, the interactive capabilities of the Internet give ambitious radio stations more (and more powerful) tools than ever to foster music discovery. Today, there is no better example of this than NPR's music initiatives. In recent weeks, NPR has released a number of new music initiatives, and commercial radio would do well to follow their lead.
NPR recently released an NPR Music app for the Apple iPhone/iPad ecosystem that basically packages up all of their original performances, interviews and other artist information that they already had sitting in the can. This app, however, is but a taste of the significant web presence NPR has built at their online portal for NPR Music. There was certainly a time when "NPR Music" might have conjured up images of classical, jazz or folk music, but one look at the NPR Music website tells you that their goals are a bit more ambitious than that. NPR's "Listener Top 10" reads like the playlist at a college radio station, and the post itself is designed to encourage interaction, debate and ultimately engagement.
Music discovery matters - it's what makes music radio important, instead of simply a utility. NPR has boldly stepped into what has been a vacuum for radio on the web and provided a glimpse of one possible future. What's your take?
Reader Comments
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Wonderful post. I've been hyping the new streaming service RDIO to a lot of my friends, and one remarked that while it was great to have access to such a vast catalog on demand, he felt initially the user interface did not facilitate the discovery of new music. It was a keen reminder to me how important "discovery" really is to the music experience, and you've done a great job highlighting that point.
Off to read "The Infinite Dial"...
Music Discovery is a form of curation. Smart curation, not based on market research or focus groups, but by taste makers. Is there a revenue model to support smart curation? There is, but with internet pitting all forms of media in competition with one another, there will be room for less. I think the top curators will be the new "radio" stations - magazines, newspapers, whatever