To App or Not To App

During the summer months my traveling is on the slow side.  I work from home on projects with the Bill Scott Group and often find myself on the back deck listening to the radio.  I listen to the radio but never on the radio.  I sit on the back deck with a bluetooth speaker and pull up an app from a radio station that I want to listen too.  The other day I was listening to the Boost in St. Louis, amazing.  All of this to say, I don’t use a radio anymore.  I had to stop and think for a moment but we don’t have a radio in the house.  Actually my 16 year old son has a radio in his closet that has never played a radio station in the last 7 years that he has owned it.

The reason for writing today is to make sure you are embracing the digital age.  If your station doesn’t have a good app, you are missing out.  No longer is having an app for your station the cool thing, the cutting edge thing, the look at me thing, it’s a necessity.  Your listeners expect you to have a good app.  More and more people are listening to you on their phones.  The good news is if you have signal issues, which many stations do, your listeners can listener through their app with no problem.  If a listener moves out of your area, they can take you with them.  You are no longer limited by your signal.  It’s a new day, something to be excited about.

Most people are surprised to realize that there are 70 million unique listeners to internet radio and that is just in the USA.  Every demographic that you can think of is plugged into internet radio.  What we are seeing right now is nothing short of a revolution.  People are migrated to digital consumption at the speed of light.  It’s a new day, the future is here and we need to embrace it.  In the last decade we have seen TV, movies, magazines all push towards digital.  Radio has been slow to embrace this and perhaps one of the last to jump on board.  The last 36 months online radio has begun to embrace the new digital season.  Having broadband everywhere, including your cars and of course all the phones and tablets that are able to steam music has helped to make this possible.  Just about as many people are listening to steaming radio as to regular radio and those numbers will surpass regular radio in the very near future.  As a side note, some internet radio stations are charging more for ads than traditional radio.  With some of the new cars having 4G built into their dashboards, it will begin to change in car listening.  The good news is the content of traditional radio is the same content listeners are looking for online.  Same content but different distribution.  

Eyal Goldwerger CEO of TargetSpot has a lot to say about this subject, check him out if you get the chance at some point.  You can find a great video with Eyal at http://youtu.be/Dmu0q9w25HU . I love the quote from Tony Hsieh, Co-Founder, Zappos – “What you’re thinking…think bigger.”  Wow, what a challenge to radio.  We need to think much bigger and outside of our signal than we have used for years.  We have lost the battle for the new world if we allow ourself to be limited to our signal.

If your station doesn’t have an app, it’s time to buy one.  You’ll need to take your app buying very serious.  Don’t just look for the cheapest one you can grab.  You need to invest in a high end app that includes music titles, album covers, alarm clock, being able to buy a song and even make a donation from the app.  Your online listener is much more active than your traditional radio listener because they are online and can instantly respond to an ad, song etc…

I am going to end with this quote from Eyal Goldwergner, CEO of TargetSpot.  “I don’t think transmitting from an antenna is a long term valuable position.  Just think about the cost of maintaining the real-estate and the assets.  I think delivery can be so much more efficient over the wireless network.  The life span of terrestrial broadcasting is limited.”

Things that make you go uhmmmm.  I’d love to hear your comments.  If you need help in finding a radio app that will work for your station, contact me at the Bill Scott Group at Bill@BillScottGroup.com.