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Goodbye, radio via 3G – we can’t afford you
Posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 6:51pm. #
The typical refrain of poor journalists and sub-grade radio consultants is that broadcast radio’s days are numbered. Talk to them and they’ll tell you not to bother with DAB, or HD, or whatever: because “the internet is the future of radio”.
In the US, 50% of total hours (TSL) is spent in a mobile situation, like in a car. In the UK, the figures are rather lower, but at least 25% of all total hours is spent listening to radio in a car. Yet, to my disbelief, they claim that the internet is the future even in a mobile environment.
Now, it seems, even the mobile operators are beginning to smell the coffee.
A while back, I linked to a French report that said that listening over mobile phones could be an impossibly costly broadcast medium for radio broadcasters.
Last week, AT&T, the US mobile phone network, removed its unlimited iPhone data tarrif. And yesterday, O2 removed unlimited data here in the UK. (Vodafone has never even offered it.)
New contracts – or upgrades to iPhone 4 – will limit your data usage. My 35-quid tarrif will only offer me 500MB of data a month, instead of unlimited data.
So, let’s do some maths. (Warning: maths isn’t always my strong point).
A 64kbps stream accounts for 8kB a second, or 480kB a minute – or, if you like it better, almost 5MB every ten minutes. (The rounding up’s fair when you assume radio is accompanied by additional metadata).
So, assuming I use my mobile phone’s data for NOTHING ELSE other than listening to the radio, I’ll get a thousand minutes – 16 hours – of radio listening a month out of it over 3G before having to pay extra.
The average amount of radio listened-to in the UK is 21.8 hours a week – 96 hours a month. The average amount of radio listened-to in the UK in a mobile environment is 24 hours a month: easily more than the 500MB cap on the new iPhone data contract. (And I believe people use their smartphones for other things, too).
Listening to radio over 3G will now cost our listeners money: or cost us our listeners.
It’s always been clear that radio via 3G has never been able to replace broadcast radio in terms of technical quality: the coverage and contention levels simply aren’t adequate in most parts of the UK (or, I discovered last week, most parts of San Francisco either). But now it’s clear that we’ll not be able to afford to listen to radio in this way either.
While the internet’s great for niche listening or for on-demand programming, BROADCAST radio – whether FM, DAB, satellite or HD – is the best way to reach hundreds of thousands of people at the same time. This doesn’t mean a lack of a back-channel – technologies like RadioDNS allow you to connect broadcast radio with IP – so you can upgrade a listening experience when listening to FM radio on your mobile phone, for example.
The future of radio is a multiplatform future. But as we watch journalists or so-called ‘radio consultants’ trying to tell us that the internet is the only valid future platform for radio, AT&T and O2 have both now given us more reasons to point out that at best this is simply wrong, and at worst this is deeply misleading and dangerous to our industry’s future.
Tags: 3g, mobile, radio | Permalink | Comments RSS
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35 comments
gcn1 said at June 11th, 2010 at 7:00pm
Goodbye, radio over 3G… we can’t afford you any more — http://muk.fm/nto /by @jamescridland
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
darthvader007 said at June 11th, 2010 at 7:01pm
so true RT @jamescridland: (I just blogged:) Goodbye, radio over 3G… we can’t afford you any more http://muk.fm/nto
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
chagota said at June 11th, 2010 at 7:04pm
Sadly,v. true. RT @jamescridland Goodbye, radio over 3G… we can’t afford you any more http://muk.fm/nto
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
mdumais said at June 11th, 2010 at 7:04pm
Malheureusement… RT @jamescridland: (I just blogged:) Goodbye, radio over 3G… we can’t afford you any more http://muk.fm/nto
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Andreaeday said at June 11th, 2010 at 8:06pm
Agreed. Streaming can’t be the ONLY solution. RT @jamescridland: Goodbye, radio over 3G… we can’t afford you any more http://muk.fm/nto
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
JamesOBrienAU said at June 11th, 2010 at 8:07pm
Good post by @jamescridland about the current prohibitive costs of internet radio compared with broadcast transmission http://muk.fm/nto
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James said at June 11th, 2010 at 7:18pm
Great article James. Enjoyed it very much. Recently bought a new micro home system, though with wifi connection, and LOVING the experience over listening via PC etc.
RADIOSZENE said at June 11th, 2010 at 8:41pm
Radio über UMTS hat keine große Zukunft. AT&T und O2 bieten ab #iPhone 4 keine unlimiterten Datentarife mehr an. http://ow.ly/1Xo0j
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
callummay said at June 11th, 2010 at 8:47pm
This feels like a massively important point by @jamescridland: http://muk.fm/nto. In other news: off to work in a minute. Oh goody.
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Sarah said at June 11th, 2010 at 9:38pm
Wifi?
medienticker said at June 11th, 2010 at 9:51pm
“Goodbye, radio over 3G…” @jamescridland hat nachgerechnet & meint: “the future of radio is a multiplatform future”: http://ow.ly/1XpSf
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
James Cridland said at June 11th, 2010 at 11:32pm
@Sarah – absolutely, wifi. Great platform. However, not while you’re in a car… a typical wifi hotspot is only a few hundred metres across (if you’re lucky), and hand-off between wifi points is not an entirely transparent operation.
Wifi also doesn’t get rid of the issue that actually, you’re trying to use a one-to-one medium to reach hundreds of thousands of people. It’s still a really bad way to do that. It is, however, excellent for niche content, on-demand stuff, and other things; it certainly fits into radio’s multiplatform future.
robert said at June 11th, 2010 at 11:55pm
Due to the exponential increase in bandwidth and usage, due to stuff like video, it is the idea of content limits that are unsustainable. Eventually, they’ll have to allow greater limits or be overtaken by some other provider who recognises a different, non-punitive charging model is the future. Alternatively, increasing deployment of community wifi, like WiMAX, is possible.
Internet gives me the choice of thousands of stations. It’s considerably cheaper and easier to start an internet radio station than to get on DAB, which is near impossible unless you’re very rich and you’re lucky enough that there’s spare capacity.
BTW If you want ‘misleading and dangerous’ it’s the industry’s ‘radio amnesty’ campaign which is designed to scare people in to switching over to DAB.
Nick said at June 12th, 2010 at 6:55am
James, I’m sure your above points are correct – now.
But what about in 10 years time? Think how far we’ve come in the last 10.
Briantist said at June 12th, 2010 at 7:39am
Ah, look, I was right again, we DO need a digital *broadcast* system.
Nick Piggott said at June 12th, 2010 at 8:03am
@Robert – to my knowledge, only 1 mobile WiMax network has even been fully consumer launched – Xohm – and that is struggling under poor performance and high infrastructure costs. Sometimes the enormous hype that these new technologies create is not matched by real life deployments. I would suggest many existing would be and wanna be wireless access providers are quietly relegating WiMAX to niche tasks, and hoping that LTE lives up to its promises.
In any case, bidirectional wireless technologies come at a hugely increased infrastructure cost because of the network density required to support hand held mobile devices with limited power availability. If you’re going to build a very expensive bidirectional network, you only get the costs back by charging at a rate consummate with bidirectional traffic flows and interactive applications. *Broadcast* radio will always be cheaper to distribute, because of fundamental physics.
Peter Wilkinson said at June 12th, 2010 at 2:13pm
Despite being a highend HiFi/AV fanatic (i.e. Not a techno luddite), when I am outside my house I listen out for the birds, the mugger coming up behind me, the cyclist on the pavement, somebody saying good morning, an emergency services siren !!
I have watched kids walking along country lanes with ipods earpeices whilst texting on their mobiles – oblivious to what is going on in front of them, let alone behind them – and I wonder where all this commercially driven hardware is taking us (more debt, accidents or bankrupt C5?)
And as for DAB – what a joke – the signal is non existent where I live in Cornwall and when heard elsewhere it is a poor quality compared to my cheap FM tuner (with a roof top aerial) connected to the HiFi. Whatever happened to the principle of QUALITY NOT QUANTITY – not commercially viable I hear you say – sad.
My point being – forget about 3G, WiMax networks etc; just get the DAB coverage and transmitted bit rate into the land of the living (i.e. Outside the PR world of SE England) before switching off good old analogue FM (which seems the inevitable intention – no doubt for yet another HiTech/revenue generating reuse of the FM bandwidth.
Yes Victor Meldrew is alive and well, and living in Cornwall!
Brent Noorda said at June 12th, 2010 at 4:06pm
Your math is good. My real-world testing using our RadioWeave service shows that your 500MB limit would deliver about 18 hours of listening per month (almost double that in lofi mode, but who wants to get lower quality audio?)
Here in the US AT&T is rolling out a lower price plan where $15/month gets just 200MB data per month, and $25/month caps at 2GB (where the old plan was $30/month for basically unlimited data).
dvice.com ran some good numbers on those AT&T plans here: http://bit.ly/boIGf2
The dvice numbers come out lower than yours or mine for Pandroa because Pandora usually streams at a very high bit rate (whereas my test was a mixture of hifi music and lower-fidelity talk radio). That article is also interesting for reminding us tremendously how much data is involved in downloading web pages.
The real world has its limitations and set backs, don’t it?
timpage001 said at June 12th, 2010 at 6:45pm
For those dreaming of unlimited worldwide mobile broadcasting, listen to @jamescridland http://bit.ly/bTg0qE
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
timpage001 said at June 12th, 2010 at 7:49pm
@West4MP @lilcazzi ‘Cos it’s too pricey and demand will only increase with better phones. Happened with broadband too http://bit.ly/bTg0qE
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
dustyrhodes said at June 13th, 2010 at 4:33am
Internet is future of radio? Read further proof that this is balls. RT @jamescridland: http://muk.fm/nto
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Terry Purvis said at June 13th, 2010 at 12:04pm
James, you are jumping up and down here proclaiming “I was right, radio distributed on the internet will not replace AM/FM/DAB”. Of course it won’t. But your argument is based on onerous conventional wisdoms which state that commercial media institutions (print, radio and TV) can use the Internet as a distribution method (and make money from doing so somewhere along the line).
But the very idea that is possible is a fantasy.
The Internet is the Internet. It has rules, advantages and dis-advantages, like everything else.
The number one rule is that it’s not compatible with traditional media production and distribution methods, nor with existing media business models.
In reality the Internet is an alien environment for any form of commercial media institution and is not for the likes of traditional radio companies to use as part of a “multi-platform” environment.
The quicker everyone leaves the conventional wisdom fantasies about media and the Internet behind the better.
Nick said at June 13th, 2010 at 12:18pm
@Terry_Purvis although of course, “the Internet” is only a distribution platform, but one that uses routed packets rather than circuit switching or broadcast. You need a business model that can leverage profit out of a different form of distribution/access. To date, the number of truly profitable companies achieving this with the Internet alone is very very small.
A significant number of respected commentators note that the Internet is more visibly helping incumbent businesses (of all forms) improve their products for existing customers. Amazon, after all, is only a mail-order catalogue on-line. I suspect Argos is a better company for having an e-tail website.
Should not the same apply to media businesses?
Terry Purvis said at June 13th, 2010 at 1:15pm
@Nick – No, the same does not apply to the media business which is, again, one of the conventional wisdoms.
Internet distribution is more than about routed packets.
Only Clay Shirky has got the problems every and any type of media institution faces with the Internet correctly formulated. I suggest anybody who works in the media business starts taking what that man says very seriously and acts upon his conclusions if they feel the Internet is for them, or leave it well alone.
They create a very different scenario for media to that for companies like Amazon, Google or Argos on the Internet.
Yes, it is possible for a “media business” to be profitable on the Internet, but it doesn’t naturally follow that that business can be, or operate like, a “traditional” commercial media institution.
That’s why, despite all the hype, the “new media” institutions are not proving to be profitable.
The idea that a successful Internet media business requires heavy investment in infrastructure, technology and systems is the most common mistake.
In essence Internet is the domain of the individual, not the institution. And it is possible for the individual, either working alone or in a cooperative collective of individuals to compete and beat the biggest media giant on the Internet with no more hardware than a PC and an Internet connection.
The real problem with this though is convincing the individual, who has become blinkered by conventional wisdoms which say otherwise, that this is really the case, so I don’t expect anyone else to agree with either me or Clay Shirky. But it’s correct none the less.
Nick said at June 13th, 2010 at 1:28pm
@Terry Apologies – the point I was trying to make was that the Internet is only a distribution technology, albeit one that opens up the potential for new business models.
Ultimately the “traditionalness” or otherwise of a successful business model is governed by what its customers will pay for, and not necessarily what the technology can enable. It may be that subset of the whole market *will* demand something only and solely achieved using IP distribution, but whether or not that is a *profitable* business segment in isolation has yet to be proven. (Indeed, my examples earlier were intended to demonstrate that there are currently few businesses requiring a pure IP-only model that are operating profitably).
Of course, with speculation comes much diversity of opinion, and those diverse opinions should be respected.
Terry Purvis said at June 13th, 2010 at 4:04pm
@Nick – no apology necessary. The only comments I have to make about your last remarks is that of course for commercial any media company those customers you talk about are the advertisers, because in the media business the product is and has always been the audience.
And there’s no speculation or debate as far as I’m concerned surrounding what it takes to be profitable in the “media” business on the Internet, it’s crystal clear.
David Board said at June 13th, 2010 at 7:22pm
A common argument people make in favour of ditching broadcast radio and going for an IP only solution is that is the ‘future’.
Of course this is true, but we need solutions for the present, and broadcast radio is currently the only realistic way to reach a large audience without the broadcasters (and listeners) paying huge sums of money to get the hours they want (as this excellent article demonstrates).
Broadcast radio is the solution for NOW, even if it is not the solution that will be used in 10 years.
Peter Wilkinson said at June 13th, 2010 at 11:06pm
@David – Spot on.
But alas bridges have been burnt by the failure that is currently DAB; the very low level of DAB radio sales (allegedly in the low 20% take-up)is evidence of an entrenched resistance by the public at large. And the reasons are not solely the poor quality / coverage. The average household may have as many as 3 or more AM/FM analogue radios (not just portables)and thus the reluctance to replace all of these for no real gain other than perhaps more choice of channels (certainly not quality) is understandable.
If the future in 10 years is so uncertain and the date for analogue switch-off is already on the back foot, then why not stick with FM until the wheels fall off or something considerably better comes along. Not forgetting there is still a recession apparently (so Mr.Osbourne would now have us believe)!
Next time round perhaps someone might realise that Avertising Revenue is not a bottomless pit and there is a finite amount of income that can be spread across a myriad of commercial channels. And as for “Pay as you Listen” god help us!!
rynobi said at June 14th, 2010 at 1:21pm
Reading @jamescridland blogpost: Goodbye, radio via 3G – we can’t afford you http://bit.ly/bna1fs
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
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