Month: April 2022

Content from BPRWhen it comes to music streaming it’s a case of “In With the Old, and Out With the New”. A new study of streaming music habits by MRC Data* contains bad news for CHR stations.70% of listening across streaming services are now older songs, while in 2021 the top 200 new songs make up just 5% of all music streaming.This is down from 11% just three years ago, highlighting that we are seeing a rise of the re-current, in the current listening environment.Source: MRC DataThese results highlight that streaming continues to be a weak platform for new music discovery. Where users have control of their own listening it seems they are defaulting to listening to established, older hits they already have a relationship with, rather than trialing music and artists that are unknown or that they’ve only heard a few times.These results also highlight that radio remains the best medium for breaking new songs and artists, with listeners much more willing to sample new music on radio than they are anywhere else. The ‘curated playlist’ nature of radio still has substantial strength, radio is still the medium where new talent can and does emerge.So, what does this mean for radio formats?For CHR stations these results are a concern, highlighting that the new music environment is deteriorating further and there will be a more limited supply of new music that listeners are familiar with.This comes at a concerning time for CHR formats, as fewer younger listeners are invested in radio (as highlighted in BPR’s recent All Audio Study). Stations have to weigh up relying on re-current songs, that have that instant recognition with listeners but potentially undo some of the “New Music” credentials of a station, or attempt to launch new songs and artists, that risk alienating an audience who are already more marginal radio listeners.These results should be a boom for classic hits and classic rock formats, where we could see more listeners switching to stations that offer their old favourites. However, there are also dangers, with more stations reliant on re-currents, along with listeners streaming these songs, it’s likely we’ll see song burn out rising faster than it once did.The traditional life cycle for an older hit is likely to be upended over the coming years.With the top hits being overplayed, expanding the base is a good strategy for these stations to essentially re-break older hits and keep listeners engaged and not reliant on the same old songs that listeners listen to on their streaming services.It also highlights the importance of ongoing music research, not just for CHR stations, but classic hits and classic rock formats as well. Listening more to older hits can result in the listeners opinions on the songs changing more rapidly than before.At BPR we can deliver music research for all formats using a range of platforms – you can contact us at [email protected]Data sourced from MRC Data. Copy of their report available here.By Sam Williams, BPR […]

Asia Radio Concepts (ARC) has announced a working agreement with Liverpool Football Club (LFC) to establish LFC-branded radio stations throughout the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. The multi-year agreement will see the creation of the world’s first football-branded and content-driven “LFC Radio” stations.LFC Radio stations will also carry LFC content, including LFC match reports, LFC news updates, plus player and coach interviews.The introduction of LFC Radio will enhance the sight and sound offering for both football fans and corporate partners around the world.ARC director, Guy Dobson said: “The broadcast industry is highly competitive, and radio networks are always looking for that winning formula and a point of difference, and that’s where ARC and LFC Radio fits the brief perfectly”.“ARC will work closely with interested radio groups to re-programme existing radio stations in terms of both music format and content offering, to maximize audience reach in that respective market, and relaunch those stations as “LFC Radio”.“These stations will not only benefit from the content and sales expertise of the radio executives at ARC but will be associated with one of the most respected and strongest brands in the world, Liverpool Football Club,” concluded Dobson. […]

Streaming and podcast solutions provider StreamGuys has announced SGcontrol, a powerful new managed service that makes it easier for media enterprises to control how audiences access their content. Providing flexible, centralized management of stream access mechanisms including geo-targeting, geo-restriction, and tokenized authorization in a single, unified service, SGcontrol enables broadcasters and content providers to improve their market-based monetization initiatives and ensure compliance with rights restrictions.StreamGuys will showcase SGcontrol alongside other innovations at the upcoming 2022 NAB Show (April 24-27 in Las Vegas), where they will co-exhibit with technology partner ENCO. The event will also be covered by Radioinfo Asia.“In today’s complex media distribution and licensing landscape, enterprise customers increasingly need more than just a single access control mechanism,” said Robert Minnix, product manager, StreamGuys. “SGcontrol lets them flexibly combine multiple control models to ensure their business requirements are fully met and that the right audience members get the right content. Plus, as a managed service backed by StreamGuys’ renowned operational support, SGcontrol frees customers from the time-consuming effort, implementation complexity, and steep learning curve they would face if managing these access control capabilities themselves.”SGcontrol’s geography-based features can improve accuracy beyond IP address lookups with player-provided latitude and longitude. They flexibly support decision models including country, state, city, DMA, zip code, or radius distance from specified coordinates. The latter is ideal for distance-based content licensing arrangements commonly seen with sports that may not align with traditional broadcast boundaries. SGcontrol’s geo-targeting uses audience location to deliver appropriate regionalized stream variants or in- and out-of-market advertising, while geo-restriction blocks audience members outside the defined region from accessing the content for licensing compliance or audience pruning.Leveraging the latest advances in StreamGuys’ SGpasskey technology, SGcontrol’s tokenization controls lock content behind incredibly flexible protections baked into a simple token delivered alongside the stream. Tokenization is the industry-standard way that pay-per-view and subscription-based streaming is offered to consumers, requiring content to first be authenticated before it is allowed to be delivered to the consumer. Ideal for premium content enablement and secure third-party distribution, SGcontrol supports token validation rules including long- or short-term timed expiry, username lists, valid referrers, and IP lockdown.“Due to licensing, we only stream our stations in specific countries. StreamGuys’ geo-restriction capabilities keep us from getting into any legal issues with the royalty companies by preventing our streams from being accessed in unauthorized regions,” said John Whiteside, Technical Director at Houston-based RFC Media. “StreamGuys’ geo-restriction service has given us and our clients peace of mind that our streams will only be accessible in the countries where we have legal rights to allow access. And as a managed service, it is easy for us to set up geo-restriction for new stations and StreamGuys always implements our requests in a timely fashion.” […]