What’s the future of audio? And where does radio fit in?
As much as some of the technorati wants us to believe, old-fashioned terrestrial radio is not just alive and well, but it’s remains popular, powerful, and profitable. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not feeling the heat from all the tech advancements that keep coming on a daily basis.
So where does radio, and more broadly, audio entertainment, go from here?
Let’s start with this clip from an event in New Zealand called Power of Audio.
From there, let’s go to an article called “The Radio Connection” that looks at a few other possibilities:
“Yet despite the technological changes making audio available any time and any place, live radio remains, according to Radiocentre, the industry body for commercial radio in the UK, the dominant format, accounting for around three-quarters of all time spent with audio (75.2 percent).
“Perhaps listeners have not caught up with the idea of catch-up radio, that only accounts for 1.1 percent of audio listening, while listening to podcasts surprisingly still only accounts for 2.5 percent, and streamed music (think Spotify) only 8.2 percent, the same as for digital tracks. The remainder (4.8 percent) is accounted for by CD or vinyl.
“’The rise in listening to radio and other audio services on connected devices,’ according to Radiocentre, ‘has created new commercial opportunities, in the form of digital audio advertising, placed into streamed or downloaded audio content, including radio, on-demand music services, and podcasts.’”
