WDAV-FM in Davidson, N.C., reported recently that listenership for its online audio stream grew by 40 percent in four months. How did that happen? Folks at the station say being listed in the iTunes directory may have played a part.
Unfortunately, getting listed in the directory (which iTunes users can find by clicking “Radio” in the left-hand sidebar of the application) isn’t always a snap. Rachel Stewart, WDAV’s new-media director, told me how it went:
Well, it took some effort, I must say … and finally, some luck. I tried unsuccessfully, off and on for a couple of years, to find out how to get listed. I couldn’t find anything by Googling or by going to the Apple site. My email inquiries went unanswered. I guess I was just looking in the wrong places. Then last spring Public Interactive got the information and shared it with clients. [Note: Public Interactive is a company now owned by National Public Radio that develops web applications for public broadcasters.] Turns out, they lucked into it. One of their stations had figured it out.
iTunes is very particular about how you communicate, and when they first added us, our streams didn’t work. It took about 6 more weeks of polite emailing to get it right. Our streams first appeared on iTunes in June.
Looking at the list of classical stations available via iTunes, I see roughly 15 broadcast stations listed. Not very many considering how many stations there are out there, and certainly many more than 15 are streaming. If you’re at a station, is yours listed? If not, should it be? Apple does say that they try to keep genres from getting too full, so they do at times weed out stations. I’m not sure whether they’ve done that with the Classical genre, or whether it’s already full.
Rachel forwarded me the instructions for getting listed in iTunes as developed by Public Interactive. Since they’re long, I won’t post them here, but leave a comment or e-mail us and I’ll get them to you.
Many media watchers believe streaming will become increasingly important as mobile devices such as the iPhone, and listening to audio streams on these devices, take off in popularity. The Jacobs Media blog put up a great post last week with tips about streaming. Well worth checking out if you’re at a station.
Jacobs’ examples come mostly from commercial radio but apply equally well to all stations. One tip in particular highlights just how disruptive the growing popularity of online listening could be, as well as the potential all stations have to grab a piece of the pie:
5. The Internet has ushered in a different type of competition. Broadcast radio operators have to stop thinking merely about stations across the street. As we’re seeing with our iPhone app program, the big dogs like The Hog in Milwaukee or WMMR in Philly jumped right in. More big name stations are already signed up. Great stations realize they have to keep pace, and offer their listeners the newest and best access features. But we’re also seeing that the little guys, like The Coast in Mendocino, are on-board, too, earning them parity with the aforementioned major market players. And for the first time ever, they now have the ability to compete head-on with the biggest and the best. As I am finding, their programming is often more than competitive with Top 10 market stations. In addition, Internet stations like KUJO 99 (a streamer out of Dallas that actually plays just about everything) or Hard Radio (another streaming station that lives up to its name) now live right alongside the biggest commercial stations available on iPhones. And by the way, even Internet stations drive tons of downloads, providing them with an equal footing on iPhones. Broadcast radio is going to have to maintain its quality even in these challenging economic times, because the competitive forces have become exponentially more intense.
Music stations need to pay attention to this — it could well be their future.
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Well! This is what I have been screaming about now for only about five years.My interest is only in Public radio, but what I say about steaming for Public Radio is true for all radio: streaming audio has created a global marketplace for ears and, in the case of PubRadio, member dollars. Bit rates, stereo vs mono, it is all part of the4 competition. The first best station was KUSC, with a 96kbit mp3 stream long ago. Now, others have caught up.
In a New York Times article now getting old, it was stated that KCRW, Los Angeles has as its second biggest market New York City. Whether or not those listeners actually join KCRW, clearly it may negatively affect their interest in WNYC.
As regards iTunes, which I only had for a couple of months, it is true that many stations are there. When I chided one major Public Radio outlet for Classical music for not being there, I said they needed to be there simply because everyone else was there. Somehow, they were up and running in 48 hours. But iTunes has no link to a station’s web site, and so the listener needs to act on their own to seek out the station’s web site.Much better, but maybe not as well known is Shoutcast, which also has many station listed, albeit for some reason listed under Jazz|Classical, as opposed to the Classical category which does exist. The important thing about Shoutcast is that they do include links to the stations’ web sites.
So, I am glad to see that this whole subject is finally coming into view .
Stations should definitely plug their websites with an announcement before the stream starts, and they also have an opportunity to do that in the descriptions that accompany the listings in iTunes. They can also appeal for donations in a brief announcement. And, if possible, they can insert such announcements within the stream. The Jacobs Media blog post implies that that can be done, though I admit I know nothing about how to do it.