ASIA

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.” […]

The Recording Industry Association of Malaysia (RIM) has launched its Chart shows on Astro Radio stations for the first time.RIM is a non-profit trade association which represents 300+ recording businesses and companies registered in Malaysia. Its members are involved in the production, manufacturing, and distribution of local and international sound, music video and karaoke recordings.Every week, the RIM Charts, compiled by global music technology leader, BMAT, list top local and international songs that Malaysians are listening to, based on verified data submitted by major digital music service providers including Spotify and Apple Music.So far, the RIM charts were only listed on RIM’s website and social media. Now, they will also be available on Hitz FM, ERA and MY on air and on SYOK app.According to Astro Radio CEO Kenny Ong, through Astro Radio platforms, the charts will now be accessible to 15.6 million weekly listeners.On the Hitz RIM Chart Show, listeners can enjoy a countdown of top 20 local and international English songs comprising Top 10 local English songs from the RIM charts, and an additional 10 songs from various Hitz FM segments including Hitz Throwbacks, featuring first throwback local song on Hitz FM; Hitz Rising, featuring upcoming local and South East Asian songs; Hitz Chart Request, songs requested by listeners; Hitz TikTok Viral, featuring viral songs on TikTok, and Hitz Worldwide, showcasing trending international English songs.On RIM Chart ERA and MY RIM Chart shows, listeners can enjoy top 10 local Malay songs and top 10 local Chinese songs respectively based on the RIM charts. […]

According to a study by Rephonic, YouTube continues to rise as a platform for podcast discovery and consumption.YouTube searches for the term ‘podcast’, which were steadily growing since 2012, increased dramatically with the Covid 19 pandemic.Google Trends data over the past year for certain countries suggests that searches in Japanese surged at the start of 2022. While searches for English term ‘podcast’ are increasing at a steady rate, they remain pretty stable in Korean.The average number of estimated weekly listeners for podcasts with a YouTube account have a slightly smaller audience on average than those without one. However, this could change in the future with YouTube reportedly offering podcasters grants of up to $300,000 to produce videos.Rephonic also calculated that for each weekly listener of a podcast with a YouTube account, there are 15 YouTube subscribers.But this could change in the near future with YouTube incentivizing podcasts by offering podcasters grants of up to $300,000 to produce videos.Across categories, Wilderness comes out on top with 19 percent of all podcasts in this category having a YouTube channel. This is closely followed by Video Games at 17 percent.On the other hand, only 2 percent of podcasts in the Chemistry, Mathematics, and Education for Kids categories have YouTube channels. […]

Selling Radio Direct with Pat BrysonI was on a market visit with one of my stations a couple of weeks ago. We were discussing how to sell a sports team whose games we carry. Traditional sponsorship offered the choice of day games or night games. Take your pick or buy both. There are many more night games than day games. But, guess what? More people bought day games thinking that “everyone will watch the night games on TV.”Since the night games are only carried on cable in that area, my first thought was,“How many people have access to the night games on TV?” No one knew the cable penetration in their market. My second thought was, “Why give a choice? Why not package both day and night games into one sponsorship?” You have to buy both. The answer was, “We’ve always done it this way.” In further discussion, I discovered the derivation: the games were carried on an AM daytimer. Until the advent of the translator, they could not carry night games. When the translator made night games viable, they simply added another package instead of integrating night games with the day games.I was reminded of the old story about roasting a turkey. The daughter watched her mother prepare the turkey for the oven all during her childhood. The first step was to cut the end off the turkey. When the daughter grew up and began to roast her own Thanksgiving bird, she began by cutting the end off the turkey. Finally, her husband asked her why she did that? She said, “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.” When his in laws came for Thanksgiving dinner, her husband asked her mom why she cut the end off the turkey. The answer: because that’s the only way it would fit in the roasting pan she had.Maybe it’s time we examine how we sell our products. When was the last time you evaluated all your sponsorships, rate cards, programs, and events to see if they make you money? Is there a better way to sell them? Do the rates need to be increased? Decreased? Do certain shows/programs/events even need to be continued? Let’s make sure that we aren’t cutting the end off the turkey simply because “we’ve always done it that way.” Business evolves and changes for our clients. It evolves and changes for us too. 2022 is the year to rebuild, to recover, to move forward. Evaluating our structures may be a good place to start. […]