Apple vs the Radio Industry? Not Quite

November 24, 2010 Apple, Apps, Opinion http://yourtechlife.com/?p=1358">View Comments

Over the last 24-48 hours there has been some concern within the Radio industry about the apparent rejection of single radio station apps from the Apple App store.

Reading this post – http://radiomagonline.com/currents/news/apple_rejects_radio_apps_1122/ – by Jim Barcus the President of the company who’s apps are being rejected, you get the sense there is an issue for the entire industry.

However, that may not be the case.The next week will be the testing time, however it seems apparent that the apps in question all come from the same developer and are, in simple terms just the same app, redeployed with a different logo and a different live stream URL.

There are many many apps developed by this company which are essentially identical, except for that logo, stream and perhaps a feedback link.

I have to say, I’m not to fussed if Apple really have chosen to ban this type of thing.  The Apple App store thrives and is popular because of the rich apps that exist.  Yes there are many ‘flashlight apps’, but there are not 10 flashlight apps identical with different logos.

The Android Market on the other hand is full of simple, unimaginative apps because there are really simple tools available to make the apps without any knowledge of programming.

So, if this issue is in fact a message from Apple for Radio stations to submit apps that are more than just a live stream – good.  Bring it on.  We need to see Apps with rich content, cameras, podcasts, listen again, localised weather and news, streams, now playing – anything new, specific and innovative.

While ever there are apps being churned out that are essentially the same as each other, I don’t see any advantage to the radio industry or the stations themselves.

Imagine someone else brought out Angry Cats – and it was exactly the same game as Angry Birds, same levels same everything – More and more of those would just be spam and boring.

Here’s hoping for some clarity from Apple very soon..

UPDATE: 2.30pm: I’ve spoken with Apple, as have several developers and the situation,  while not crystal clear, is certainly very clear on principal.  There is no ‘ban’ on Single station Apps.

My own summary is that App developers submitting identical apps with just a logo/stream change under their own developer accounts are not looked well upon. (and if you take the time to download a few of this chap’s apps, you’ll see how uninspiring they are, and similar too)

However, if a station has an app developed, and submitted under their own name, it should breeze through.

Likewise, if an individual or group create an app that links to a single station stream or show, it might face some hurdles.

From a station owner perspective I think that’s a good thing – but, from Apples point of view, good on them for ‘encouraging’ the development of rich apps with a user experience that is more than ‘just a stream’ – in the end, if it was ‘just a stream’ the industry won’t survive!

Moral of this story for Radio stations – be creative, own the rights, own the application submission.

UK streaming music service we7 has shifted its focus, launching a Pandora-esque Internet Radio Plus feature.

Yes, that means personalised radio, rather than its current model of on-demand streaming of songs and albums. However, we7 is stressing that one isn’t replacing the other: it intends to integrate both.

“We are not removing any of the great features that we7 already has but changing the focus and entry to we7 to reflect the way people want to access music,” says CEO Steve Purdham.

So how will it work? Users will be able to fire up Internet Radio Plus on the we7 site by entering an artist, song, album or genre and pressing the play button, to create a personalised radio channel based on that initial choice.

However, the on-demand aspect will be incorporated with the idea of ‘requests’ – deliberate use of radio lingo. While listening to their personal channel, users will be able to request a specific song or album, and have it played there and then.

Users will also mark artists, songs, albums and playlists as ‘Loved’ to build their profile, and will be able to share their personalised channel of Loved music with friends via Facebook, Twitter and email.

we7 plans to add in news, entertainment sport and weather elements to make its new service feel even more like radio. And that’s the comparison Purdham is keen to make.

“Music consumption is moving rapidly to an Internet base but in the world of radio there has been little or no innovation to capitalise on this new potential,” he says.

“The Internet has been viewed as just another traditional radio device. Great pioneering work done by Last.fm in the UK and Pandora in the US has shown that the potential is much bigger and we7 intend to go further to deliver real benefits to the next generation of Internet radio listeners.”

Radio isn’t a new idea for we7. The site introduced a basic radio feature in January this year, and hasn’t promoted it heavily.

However, Purdham says that by September, more than 55% of tracks listened to on we7 were being accessed through the radio feature, rather than on-demand.

This is good for we7 for other reasons than simply serving its users’ demands, of course.

“I have to admit that this positive consumer shift to Radio streams does benefit the economics of the we7 financial model,” says Purdham. “It’s brilliant when the needs of the business and consumer demand align in this way.”

Pandora famously pulled out of the UK in January 2008, claiming the per-track performance minima rates demanded by PPL and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (now PRS for Music) were “far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate”.

we7 clearly feels things have changed enough to make the model – tweaked with a built-in on-demand element – workable in 2011 and beyond.

It may well be more workable than pure on-demand ad-supported music. we7’s most recent set of financial results revealed a £3.66 million loss for 2009, based on turnover of £361,081, cost of sales of £1.51 million and administrative expenses of £2.52 million.

At the time, the company claimed that it was on course to be “cash-positive” by the end of 2011. It’s clear that we7 sees Internet Radio Plus as a step in that direction.

Music Ally will be exploring the implications of we7’s move in greater detail in our Music Ally Report this week, which is sent to paying subscribers. Click here to register for a free trial.

Tags: we7

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 10th, 2010 at 12:01 am and is filed under Digital Music News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Jelli, a startup that’s a mix between Pandora and Digg (with old-school terrestrial radio stations thrown in), has gone mobile: the company has just launched a native iPhone application. Now, this wouldn’t be especially interesting news (who doesn’t have an iPhone app these days?), but it fills in one major gap in Jelli’s functionality. Because while the service has been around for a while, there’s never been a good way to use Jelli on the go — and, as the folks over at Pandora can tell you, that mobile experience is key when it comes to streaming music. You can download the new iPhone app right here.

For those that haven’t used it, Jelli gives users the ability to listen to — and help control — crowdsourced radio stations. Users get to choose from a library of songs available on a given station (if you’re listening to a pop station you probably aren’t going to see Metallica as an option, but there will be hundreds of other choices). Songs are displayed in a list based on the order they’re going to play, but users can quickly adjust the order by voting (Digg-style) or employing special powerups.

Every day users are given a handful of ‘rockets’ and ‘bombs’: use a Rocket on a song that’s toward the bottom of the playlist and it will shoot toward the top; use a bomb and you’ll knock off a song that was going to play soon. These sound effects are actually part of the radio broadcast (if enough people don’t like a song you’ll hear it “explode” mid-stream and the next song will start playing).

The service was initially online-only, but it’s now branching out to strike deals with terrestrial radio stations, which still have 239 million listeners a week in the United States (you may not listen to ‘old school’ radio any more, but plenty of people still do).  The company is up to over 20 station partnerships, with more in the works.

Now, Jelli doesn’t take over these radio stations entirely — instead, it offers them a server box that they hook up to their radio tower for a few hours (or more) per day. That server box is linked to the web, which lets listeners vote on which songs they want to hear next. For the radio station, the whole thing is pretty hands off, which is one reason why it’s appealing.

Obviously it’s been possible to listen to these terrestrial radio stations without Jelli’s iPhone app (you could just hit the FM button in your car) but until now you’d only be able to interact with Jelli’s voting system via a computer. And that presents a problem, because people primarily listen to radio while they’re on the go. The iPhone app fixes this; it lets users vote up songs that they want to listen to, both for terrestrial stations that are using Jelli and online-only streaming radio stations that run 24/7.

Jelli still has a long road ahead, both of dealing with existing radio stations, and, eventually, launching standalone Jelli broadcasts of its own (it’s talking about having terrestrial, 24/7 Jelli stations one day). The company has raised a total of $7 million, including a $5 million round earlier this year.

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Jelli

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