What is the future of radio
July 17, 2013 7:32 AM   Subscribe

I have been asked to do some research on radio and podcasting. With the advent of bluetooth / smartphones / in-dash apps / cloud, it seems there's a lot of room for innovation in both content, advertising, and interactivity. Pandora, Stitcher, and Umano all seem to be ahead of the curve here. My question is: As a radio / podcast listener, what features would you like to see in Radio 2.0? As a commuter, does on-demand weather or traffic appeal to you? As a listener, what kind of content are you looking for. Would you like to interact by making audio comments, voting, answering questions? What would be the killer app to listen to while you run, cook, work, drive?
posted by kaizen to Technology (3 answers total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, no biggie but this reads a little more like poll-the-audience market research than a concrete "help me solve my problem" Ask Metafilter sort of thing. -- cortex

 
As a commuter, does on-demand weather or traffic appeal to you?
Yes, absolutely - but I get the weather on my phone, including severe weather alerts, plus I use its navigation app which also provides real-time traffic updates and re-routing. In-dash and standalone GPS units already provide similar functionality (or will in the near future) so this is not a feature I would specifically look for in radio.

As a listener, what kind of content are you looking for.
For me at least, I want radio to be a little more passive than interactive. Whether I'm driving, or playing it in the background at home while I'm doing chores, or at the gym, I don't want to be making comments, voting, answering questions, etc. I'm not big into podcasts, so I can't provide much in that regard.

What would be the killer app to listen to while you run, cook, work, drive?
For me, I would love for my "radio" (app/cloud/etc) to know my music preferences and adjust accordingly. Many music services already let you rate songs to learn your preferences, but I would love to take it a step further. Let's say I'm driving to work and listening to my radio (FM, satellite, whatever). I'm listening to an actual morning show, but during the break they play a song I hate. I'd love to push a button and have the radio substitute a song it knows I will like that is more or less the same play length, and spit me back to the live radio when the song ends. That would be killer. (Especially since I happen to love the Elvis Duran show. I like most top 40 music, but I hate how short and overplayed the playlists are on those stations. Only so many times I can hear Katy Perry or that Cups song before I'm just over it.)
posted by trivia genius at 8:01 AM on July 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm not really sure if I should answer this. I do listen to some radio apps (Last.fm) and I stream youtube or podcasts all day long. But 95% of the time it is from home and if I don't like the format or content, at this point I can find it from another part of the world.

But these are topline things that I thought that would or would not be useful from your list. Also added a few things that you did not have on your list.

Nthing trivia genius on the "there are already local GPS apps that do this" for weather alerts, disruptions in modes of transportation, etc.

Would you like to interact by making audio comments, voting, answering questions? I may not be the listener that you are targeting for this, so take it with a grain of salt. I hate comments on most sites (go look at a news story or a youtube video). I don't want to hear the audio version of that at all and I would be done with a station if I had to listen to it. Instead, what I have learned to really enjoy is the "most viewed" and "most emailed" stories from my podcasts and news websites.So I like the option of clicking on "favorite news stories" or having an opt in email that sends me this info. NPR already does this if you are looking for an example.An added bonus to me would be the ability to remove certain types of stories (i.e. removing editorials or whatever major topic that you don't want to hear about).

Commercial free This was not on your list but this is why I pick Last.fm over Pandora. There are ad blockers and/or other options at this point (there may be a listener base that doesn't care).

Local calender with summaries of gallery, museum exhibitions, plays, lectures This was actually an ask meta question yesterday, too. It is hard to keep track of all the art exhibits, plays, lectures, etc., and by the time that I read about some of them they are gone. I would love to be able to subscribe to hear about interesting exhibits/plays/whatever that are local and also have a calendar type app or notification that would be sent to me to see "this exhibit here from X to Y dates" or "this exhibit leaving." I think it would be hard to get my attention with new podcasts, but something like this would potentially get my attention.
posted by Wolfster at 8:37 AM on July 17, 2013


...what features would you like to see in Radio 2.0?

That it remain free, OTA and not requiring an app.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:39 AM on July 17, 2013


« Older Papercuts on my labia?   |   Recipes For Stale Bread Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.