A pair of Crystal balls...

Wondering about the future for Audio

I can’t get the comment from the Head of RTE 2FM, Dan Healy out of my head.

He said in a casual manner recently in an interview, something like “FM radio probably only has about 10 years left”.

Not surprisingly as someone with a fairly firm interest in radio, I’ve been thinking about what radio and indeed audio might look like in 2034, or even 2030.

One of the projects I’m involved with at the moment is looking at the future for Ireland’s radio measurement metrics.

The JNLR Study

The JNLR is the Joint National Listenership Research, which has been running for the best part of 30 years, is the essential currency for radio advertising in Ireland.

Every year 16,500 people are interviewed about their radio listenership habits, and it provides an incredibly detailed pool of data on how Irish people listen to radio. The survey also includes data on how people listen, as well as to which station and for how long.

Every 5 years or so, the survey goes out to tender, and that’s the process that’s currently under consideration.

The most important thing to recall when looking at listenership figures is that there are two distinct audiences for the data. The first is of course the stations and their programming teams, who will adjust, improve or remove presenters based on the data.

The second pool of interested parties though are equally important, and that’s the advertisers, who make decisions everyday on whether or not they should invest in radio.

It’s an ever more cluttered market for advertising with Print, TV, radio and digital all battling for every cent they can get. When you add in new social media platforms, podcast audio and the giant social media and video companies, it’s an incredibly competitive situation.

So what does 2030 look like?

It’s made me think deeply about where audio is going and what it might look like in 5 years time.

For as long as radio has existed, people have been predicting its imminent demise.

Whether it’s our old friend, The Buggles, predicting that “Video killed the Radio Star”, or wise media commentators insisting that social media, that Spotify, that podcasting and so on, would herald the decline of radio, they’ve all been proven wrong.

Radio is in particularly good health at the moment, with the UK and Ireland both reaching 90% of the population every week and proving resistant to the charms of other audio including podcasting.

Larry Rosin’s Edison Research showed through their Infinite Dial study, many years ago, that podcasting, and radio are complementary mediums, and that audio fans are quite happy to include both, and music streaming into their listening repertoire.

There’s been huge pressure too from video, with social platforms like TikTok and Instagram, along with YouTube, all drawing huge audiences, but still not quite fulfilling the same need as audio.

It’s something to do with the sound of the human voice, and it’s something to do with the fact that audio is a complementary medium, that has helped to drive its longevity.

Company is a powerful driver for radio, music, entertainment and the sound of other humans fulfils a basic need to not be alone!

We know from studies like RadioCentre Ireland’s Need States Study, that Radio and Podcasting fulfil different needs, and that Podcasting is a more solitary, headphone driven pursuit.

What would radio look like, if it wasn’t broadcast?

I’ve sat in meetings with engineering types who will argue that FM or DAB transmitters are destined to become obsolete and that stations will just stream, and the world won’t shift too much on it’s axis.

I don’t know if that’s true.

A large part of me still believes that the fact that radio is broadcast, simultaneously, for free, across cities and countries, makes up an important part of radio’s DNA. There’s something totally different in the way we perceive radio, because it’s a medium that exists in the real world, that we hear it in shops, that we hop into a taxi and hear it on.

I’ve seen stations try to turn themselves into MTV, with web streams which insert music videos, and then use studio cameras for the presenters. But, I’ve never seen a station do that and look good.

I’ve trialled in studio cameras where you could stream everything in the studio, watch the presenter making tea and doing links. But it was not compelling viewing, to put it mildly.

The same applies to podcasting, I remain unconvinced about the push to turn podcasts into videocasts, I think there’s definitely a role for video clips, but sitting and watching two presenters in a studio for an hour, or more, just doesn’t work in the same way as audio does.

The future for radio is one of the things that I’m going to be interested to hear more about at Radio Days next week, but I’d love to hear your thoughts?

This has been the 37^th official edition of the RAudio Newsletter.

Apart from writing newsletters, I also consult to radio stations and podcasts, so if you have a question, or a project you need help on, drop me an email – liamathompson@gmail.com

I’m of course attending RadioDays in Munich, so let me know if you’re going and we can catch up.

You can also send feedback, questions or potential topics – you can also get me on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamthompsonconsulting/ or on Twitter @Maxliam