I don't have to tell you that Ping is going to change the face of music discovery forever - and I don't think that's hyperbole, given both the installed base for iTunes AND the fact that over half of online Americans are already on social networking sites. Using Ping for shared music discovery, playlist sharing, "top tens" and more will be the mixtape for a generation.

You'll see a lot of posts on this over the coming days from a lot of folks covering the radio industry, expressing varying degrees of concern over this - but really, it's an amazing time to be a fan and consumer of music. We've always learned about new music from our friends; what Ping gives us is the ability to also learn from our "friends," our expanded network of social connections.

It is more important than ever to establish a credible image for curation, which means hiring great jocks and empowering them to express their love for music. Following PPM's received wisdom to just "shut up and play the music" will win short term ratings battles, but potentially lose the long term "war" for the hearts and minds of today's 12-34 music listeners and beyond.

We'll have more to say about this later this month, when we premiere the results of our groundbreaking American Youth 2010 Study at the NAB Radio Show. You can Ping me there. :)

While I believe in the inclusion of an FM tuner in mobile phones, the notion of bartering it with Congress for a performance royalty is risky and easily attacked -- as the CEA's Gary Shapiro did -- in almost the same language with which broadcasters assailed the music industry in the first place. From the legislative approval of radio's consolidation to restrictions against LPFM, owners of an FM license have been the beneficiaries of much Congressional protectionism already. And 80% of our own talk hosts would be on the air already mocking any other industry that asked for this sort of intervention or any Congress that gave it to them.

Perhaps what radio should do instead is further demonstrate its own effectiveness. In my fantasy, broadcasters team up and create their own mobile phone. Of course, I'm still waiting for them to create a direct competitor to Pandora or take a stronger hand in designing the Infinite DIal of the future, rather than leaving the directory function of tomorrow's IP radio in the hands of people who make the CEA look like radio boosters.

But would it be crazy to suggest that the free advertising time that radio has given HD Radio for the last few years be redeployed to support those mobile devices that do contain an FM radio? There are, of course, challenges. Broadcasters are asserting that the low sales of existing devices are due to the products themselves and aren't a referendum on consumer interest. And the entire HD campaign proves that you have to pick your causes carefully. The campaign that sells an FM-compatible-smartphone will probably be focused on the phone itself, which would need many attractive features, not just FM.

And, of course, broadcasters have to be prepared to take advantage of actually being on mobile devices. But we know that radio can sell electronics. And this week is one of several each year that proves it. So why not make that industry feel the collective sting of our buggy whip?

I have thought for years this was maybe the easiest technological advance possible for radio -- in fact I wrote about it last summer and got a lot of response as you can read here.

It is essential that the hardware people play their part in making radio relevant as things go forward. This is a great small step.

And while forcing FM onto phones seems extreme and borderline anti-competitive, I wanted to weigh in with this thought: It really would be a good thing if more mobile devices also included radio receivers, and I think those receivers would get a lot of use.

What do I base this opinion on? Several factors:

1) Go to Europe and take a look. Lots of people are listening to FM Radio on their phones. I simply don't buy the argument that some are making that "no one" wants or would listen to FM (or AM for that matter) on their phones.

2) The announcement by AT&T that they will no longer be offering unlimited data plans is a potential game-changer. A lot of people will become much more concious of their usage and perhaps think to use their radios more as a result.

3) Assuming it doesn't add unwanted cost or weight to a phone (which I don't think it would, but I'm no engineer), who wouldn't want another option from their phone? How is more extra stuff a bad thing?

I don't buy the argument that since the few phones that have radios haven't sold well, this proves there is no desire or market for radios. Of course the existence of a radio is not the 'make or break' feature for a new phone. This doesn't mean no one wants one.

Much has been made of the fact that this crusade is a distraction, or that putting FM tuners on phones won't "save" radio. But that turns the issue into a straw man, really - the issue isn't whether or not FM tuners on phones will catapult the industry to double-digit growth, it's whether or not it would be good for radio. It would be good for radio.

So again, I don't see how forcing radios onto phones is a good thing. But I do think the radio industry should do all it can to encourage, cajole, or wheedle the phone companies to add radios. Giving people the option can't subtract from radio listening. If we should "be where people are" by offering apps, what is an FM tuner but a really great app itself?

For a deeper look at what this means to your station and your own email marketing efforts, I invite you to read this post, "Thinking Critically About Email Statistics." I wrote this recently as a guest post on the Blue Sky Factory blog, but it certainly has implications for broadcasters. By the way, if your email marketing efforts aren't meeting your expectations, I highly recommend contacting the folks at Blue Sky Factory - they are leading the way right now in terms of social media integration, deliverability, and best practices for email marketing. We get nothing for saying this, by the way, but if you tell them I sent you I might get a beer out of it :) .

As I observe the negotiations, I can't help but wonder what all of this says about music as art. That's right: art, not commodity. Call me an idealist, but the well-crafted pop song still gives me a little thrill. So does the final verse of Radiohead's "Videotape," the ethereal acoustics of Grizzly Bear's "Southern Point," the cascading voices of School of Seven Bells' "Sempiternal/Amaranth," and Neil Finn's mastery of form on "Don't Dream It's Over." I love music, and seeing the commoditization of recorded music makes me wince, even as I recognize it as inevitable.

Here's one thing I think we can all agree on: music, like any art form, has an intrinsic value, and an extrinsic value. The intrinsic value is a constant, but the extrinsic value ebbs and flows over time. Look what time has done to the extrinsic value of two contemporaries: The Dave Clark Five, and The Beatles. Look what happened to the back catalog of Michael Jackson after his passing. Consider other forms of art - take paintings, for example. When an artist is brand new and struggling, a sale of their work (no matter how gifted) might fetch "X" at their first gallery opening. Upon their second, they might be able to command "2X." After a 10-year body of work they might be worth "20X", and so on. After the artist dies, of course, artwork of great intrinsic value suddenly can take on extraordinary extrinsic value, as the buying public begins to value scarcity over other considerations. The same, of course, is true of sculpture, novels, and pretty much any art form you can name.

So, if we accept my basic proposition (recorded music is an art form), then the genesis of my wacky idea becomes a little clearer. The current speculation is that radio will agree to a blanket 1% performance royalty, but a "flat rate" that equates "Playground Of My Mind" with "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" seems derived from some pretty torturous economics. Instead, my modest proposal: let's let the labels set sliding "tiers" of value for their artists. New, unproven artists that the label believes in could be offered free of performance rights, while the next Lady Gaga might command the equivalent of 2%. Maroon 5 might be in a higher tier, while Yeasayer sits in a lower tier. Tiers would be based upon the artists' clear, demonstrated value to the labels (easily demonstrated by sales) with the potential for "discount rates" to promote back catalog releases (you know, like the movie industry does?)

Critics of this approach might point out the following flaws, which I freely admit:

1. Budget-crazy radio stations might choose to only play lower-tier artists in order to save money.

True. Luckily, there is this thing called "The Invisible Hand." It states, roughly paraphrased, that if you "supply" your listeners with too much music they don't want, they will "demand" to listen to your competitors.

2. The labels might "overvalue" artists for emotional or other non-rational reasons.

That's the beauty of a symbiotic relationship. If the fungus chokes the moss, the lichen dies - and vice versa. See #1 above.

3. Unproven artists won't make any money.

I submit that the opposite is true. If a .5% tier convinces a radio station to play more new, unproven artists, then those artists will a) sell more (that's kinda how radio/records work, remember?) and thus b) ascend quickly to higher tiers.

4. Record keeping would be insane.

Dude, it's 2010. Your music database software spits out numbers. Buy a computer and write a script.

Okay, there are other flaws, I know. Why don't you tell me how lame this idea is in the comments? I'm ready for you. :)

Fifteen years later, I'm hearing a lot of processing issues on radio station streams. I hear stations where the jock or stagers are at dramatically different levels from the music. Or where mid-'60s songs often lose half their content. If you have ever listened to a station at your desk at an office-appropriate level and not known that station was playing "My Girl" by the Temptations until the vocals came in, you know what I'm talking about.

Radio stations, of course, have other issues with their streaming. If your station is not subjecting me to 13 minutes of hardsell PSAs in the second half of the hour, and the otherwise-very-good radio station that prompted this post was not, then what's a few bars of intro between friends? (Even if it is one of the greatest intros of all time.) And we've only recently made the transition as an industry from barely allowing our PDs enough time to hear what goes out over their air to now holding them responsible for what's on the stream.

Listeners are not themselves audiophiles these days. They listen to MP3s through earbuds and hear your station stream through tiny speakers. It doesn't mean that something doesn't register as "wrong" to them when things are out of kilter. I also hear station streams with a lot of oomph, even under less-than-ideal circumstances. Part of the genius of the original Motown records is the famous quality control process that made them sound great on a '60s transistor radio. And part of the quality control process for radio today is making a station sound great on the transistor radio's 2010 equivalent.

You know, it's looking like it might even be a TRIPLE Rainbow.

How did they do? Well, the somewhat phenomenal results can be found on Absolute's public 'behind the curtain' site. (And by the way - who in American commercial radio allows such public viewing of their business as this blog does?) The campaign essentially dominated the iTunes podcasting charts, and I know from Absolute's management that the project netted an extremely large amount of profits from an extremely satisfied client.

The biggest driver of content-based innovation in America is certainly coming from the public-radio complex. To their credit, NPR has its own blog where they publish research data and one can see the explosive growth of usage from non-broadcast sources (what is it with innovators and their openness? Hmmm.) Public radio has created wildly successful programs that increasingly seem to have disconnected from their broadcasts - to most people "This American Life" (from PRI) and "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" (from NPR) are really just podcasts, not broadcast shows. And note the advertiser 'support' their online and mobile efforts are getting from mainstream advertisers.

And while some commercial broadcasters in the US are indeed involved in excellent Web-based efforts (see, for instance, www.weei.com), most radio station Web sites are still brochure sites that are entirely caked over with ads, few stations are streaming anything but their over-the-air signal, and podcasting, the most natural line extension for every radio entity on the planet, remains entirely under-developed.

Instead, it just takes any kind of tour of the Web sites of American commercial stations to see that these often seldom-updated sites are not exploring hardly any kind of audio-content innovation.  As an example, every commercial broadcaster in Utah and Idaho has always known there is a significant niche for LDS music (and the stations that play it on Sundays get huge numbers, typically), and yet somehow a small start-up called "Your LDS Radio ( www.yldsr.com)" comes up highest on Google and appears to be the leader in the category, not something from a commercial broadcaster, who one would think could easily take the crown and monetize it.

And there are dozens and dozens of potential content-based solutions - involving the kind of audio magic that everyone got involved in radio for in the first place - that are literally sitting out there unproduced because instead American radio stations are barely able to fully program their over-the-air services.

So, again let me remind the industry that we are in the business of creating great radio, and hope never to be forced out of it. . The advertising tail cannot entirely wag the commercial radio dog. Instead, somehow we need to allow a thousand seeds of content-based radio to blossom. If we go back to creating compelling audio entertainment and information first, we won't need all the sales-based innovation that is currently the focus of the American commercial radio industry.

So I took a look at the top 100 for this particular station and divided it into three tiers, with an eye toward seeing just how worldwide the worldwide hits were:

Songs That Usually Would Be Big American Testers: There was 38% overlap. These are the "Every Breath You Take" and "Stand By Me"-type mainstays that are as unavoidable in this territory as they are anywhere else.

Songs That Were Hits Here, But Are Not Reliable American Testers: Almost as big a piece, 34% of the top 100 were songs that would generally be recognized, but not preferred by a similar American audience. But there are places in the world where people don't know they're not supposed to like "Mandy" by Barry Manilow.

Songs That Don't Exist To Americans: Not necessarily local content or songs that didn't come out here. Many of these are, in fact, American songs--just not songs that were ever really hits here. They wouldn't test here and most PDs wouldn't have any reason to test them. They account for the remaining 28% of the top 100.

This, of course, is the reason that music testing is valuable. There's an equal amount of one time hits in this territory that are completely lost to time. In the U.S., time and population shifts have wiped out a lot of local hits. But anything that's not "Every Breath You Take" can still shift, and often does, every few months depending on how you play it. And there's always the moment in its lifespan where a once-reliable top-of-the-pager finally starts its journey away from all-ages ubiquity--something we'll live to see happen even for "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Every Breath You Take," if not tomorrow.

FUD is alive and well today, and equally as dangerous for the radio industry as it was for Amdahl's software venture. FUD occurs when our attention is diverted from the prize, from the main thrust of your strategy, by shadows, intimations and rhetoric. Here is the latest example, in the form of Harker Research's claim that PPM has cost the radio industry seven billion dollars.

In the search engine optimization world, they call these sorts of posts "link bait"; outrageous and calculated to drive publicity and ultimately traffic. The more sites that link to the link bait in question, the higher the "baiter" will rank for relevant keywords. (Ask your webmaster/Internet guru about "nofollow" links, which I've employed here.)

The crux of this particular FUD is that there is a gap between what Arbitron's PPM says and what Nielsen's diary methodology says, and that this gap has cost radio seven billion dollars. That's "billion," with a B. What is certainly true over the PPM years is that radio has declined about 6 billion dollars, and that PPM is one of many variables in play during that span. Ask yourself this, however: how has print done over that same span? Yellow Pages? Classifieds? Billboards? Direct Mail? Does PPM have anything to do with any of that?

More troublingly, this is a time when radio looks to those who provide it with valuable inputs like research and consultation for guidance, truth and to shine a light for the industry. This particular FUD was cooked up as a "back of the envelope" calculation. Yet, it could so easily be proven or disproven with actual existing data. How have radio's fortunes fared in the Nielsen diary markets? Are they flat? Up? Or are they, as in the PPM markets, also down considerably? This is a company with "research" in its very name; yet, in a time where the radio industry needs cold hard facts the most, Harker Research has turned its back on truth in favor of FUD.

Obviously the authors of this FUD know that some people want to believe this is true, because it's a convenient untruth, and that it will thus linger around as a canard, a nagging doubt, and a dangerous distraction. In short, pure unmitigated FUD. Let's work to make PPM the best it can be, of course. But let's all keep our eyes on the prize: content innovation, sales innovation and relationships. Nothing else matters.

Of course, as with the problem of programmers not listening to their own radio station on its terrestrial feed, knowing there's an issue and knowing what to do about it are two different things. You would think that with the work that some major groups have done in improving the creative of their sponsors that there would be some in-house resource for the streams. But until then, may we suggest . . .

"Chickenman"!

It's still funny (to me, anyway). Creator Dick Orkin's skewed sense of humor is still all over radio, thanks to the ubiquitous Regional Help Wanted spots. And anything is better than a PSA reminding you that your kids are in mortal peril three times an hour on what was supposed to be your stress-free, refreshing at work choice.

Okay, now some equal time: At Conclave, I actually had somebody tell me that their mother had liked the ambient music that used to run as fill on KLOS Los Angeles. And a few weeks ago, I had a listener of a Gospel station in Atlanta e-mail me to ask where she could hunt down that rappin' Scruff McGruff PSA--having seemingly Googled one of my many jibes about it. But imagine how many calls the Great White-Winged Warrior would generate!

Cochrane notes on his blog that quality - and quantity - have been the keys to their success, with over 5,500 shows available at Blubrry alone (they operate a few additional, smaller networks) for advertising placements. While he also is quick to talk about their multi-platform distribution strategy, it's that big number - 5,500 - that I want to point out here. That's not only a lot of raw inventory, it's also essentially a portfolio strategy, for you armchair investors out there. With a number like that, the chances are high that no matter what advertiser they call on, or what agency they talk to, they have a number of suitable podcasts to offer them in a package. Quantity does matter.

The lesson for broadcasters is pretty clear. You may not approach RawVoice's millions of avails for your own podcasting efforts, but in your local community your goal should not be to just podcast your morning show, but to create a portfolio of downloadable content - something for everyone - which you can use either for a reach buy or something more targeted. You may not have the resources in house to produce all that content, but hey - neither does RawVoice. You just have to provide a platform for interested folks in your community to add their own voices, with your station providing the hosting and acting as sales reps for the whole shebang. Some of your portfolio might be your original content, some of it might be recordings of local town council meetings, and some of it might be shows about local high school sports, local restaurants and local music - all the stuff that you might not put on the air but still engages passionate pockets of your audience.

Any one of these is a hobby. Put them all together? You got a business.

And, for my friends in commercial radio, there is no reason why you can't fill the role here of a public broadcaster. On the web, you have every bit as much of a right to leave deeper local footprints as anyone else, and with the amount of syndicated content on local public radio stations, perhaps more of an opportunity to get there. And for our public radio readers, offering targeted vehicles for underwriting and sponsorships opens up not only some creative ways to serve the community, but some creative revenue opportunities as well. The key, for both entities, is to learn from the success of RawVoice and don't think about home runs. Think about singles. Lots of them.

But if I were radio, I wouldn't give up the on-air battle just yet. Even as an industry person with access to music, I still discover music all the time over-the-air. WXRK (92.3 Now) New York rushed Eminem & Rihanna's "Love The Way You Lie"--easily one of the most talked-about songs of the summer--on to the air before I got access to it anywhere else. Crosstown WRXP was the first place I heard OneEskimO's "Kandi," a song that I'm ashamed to say had been at arm's length on my desk for weeks.

And I still have a lot of over-the-air destinations for music discovery, particularly now that I have streaming radio on-the-go: Juice FM Liverpool and FM 107.9 Oxford, U.K., will play more songs that I haven't heard than their more recurrent UK Top 40 counterparts. Hungary's M2 Petofi is a reliable showcase for the hipper records that get European pop airplay but rarely make it to any U.S. radio besides the handful of true-Alternative outlets. Similarly, Tom Leykis' online indie rocker, New Normal Music, sold me at least four songs in the hour I listened last week.

On the Top 40 side, there are a handful of stations I can count on from KLJT (The Breeze) Tyler, Texas, to WKSE (Kiss FM) Buffalo, N.Y., that won't necessarily give me my first listen to a song, but will be the first place I hear it in a radio context and remember what it sounds like. Almost any European or Australian Oldies/Greatest Hits/Classic Hits station can send me looking for a song; so can a half hour with non-comm Oldies treasure trove WGVU-AM Grand Rapids, Mich.

Even though I earmark a few hours a week for catching up on music and searching it out, there's still something very different about having a song or two put in front of you in the context of other songs you already know and like. Those songs make more of a lasting impression--as opposed to plowing through a pile (or cyberpile) of unfamiliar product.

This morning, the new Usher single, "DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love," went to radio. I did manage to find it posted online when I first heard about it a few weeks ago. Doesn't mean that hearing it on the radio this weekend will be anticlimactic. It's almost like the difference between watching the trailer and seeing the movie.

Again, I'm all in favor of radio offering something more robust than a handful of videos on its Website. But fighting for the music discovery image on-air would reinforce the value of anything you could offer on your Website (just as the Website could eventually bolster any on-air discovery claims). So what could radio do?

For starters, it could actually start talking about music discovery and recommendations instead of just "new music." As much as I've heard those terms bandied about, I don't hear it on the air in conjunction with new music. And I guarantee that for 90% of the people hearing the new Usher this weekend, radio can still credibly claim responsibility for discovery.

And, as has been previously suggested, it could also co-opt listeners and let them be the ones making recommendations on-air. If listeners are going to think they found everything first themselves anyway, using them in your new music stagers kind of allows radio and listeners to share the credit.

Finally, every so often, about the time a song goes No. 1, I'd put listeners on the air to talk about where they were when they heard the song on the radio for the first time. Many people never think of it in those terms like radio people do. But in August, when "California Gurls" is either officially set (or upset) as this year's summer song, there will be enough people who do have memories associated with it to get a great morning show bit.

But three of the most publicized format changes of the weekend are not taking place on terrestrial radio. Early this morning, Buckley unveiled a New York-targeted Country stream, WOR Country (The Elephant); their announcement of the pending station prompted the owners of KKGO (Go Country 105) Los Angeles to launch a similar New York-targeted stream, due to arrive tomorrow morning. And Talk host Tom Leykis has launched Indie rocker New Normal Music--promising music from only the last 12 months.

So despite Leykis' protestations on New Normal's Website that his stream shouldn't be compared to anything as mundane as radio, it is interesting to see Webcasters (even those with connections to terrestrial radio) opting to launch on what has traditionally been radio's biggest format change holiday. Then again, part of what made July 4 such a big changeover date was the promotional opportunities it represented. So how long do we have before somebody flies a banner over the beach telling listeners to tune their smartphone to the new pureplay?