Our Proposition to Carmakers Should Be Consistent – Radio World

Radio should provide to listeners at least what the music streamers do

A new Radio World ebook explores “Recipes for Visual Display.” This is an excerpt.

Nick Piggott is project director of RadioDNS.

RW: How well do you think the message about the importance of visual display and good metadata has sunk in with broadcasters?

Nick Piggott: Not as widely and deeply as I think it needs to. The nature of radio tends to be quite reactive, responding to things when they’re not right, or not as good as the competition. In the case of the connected car, the competition for prominence isn’t just against the other radio stations, so don’t benchmark against just your competitors. It takes time to change things in vehicles, so there’s quite a time lag between setting things up and seeing the effect at scale. And finally, we need to be acting in a coordinated and standardized way, so that the proposition to the automotive industry is consistent, not just from station to station, but country to country as well. Standards like FM, RDS, DAB and RadioDNS enable radio’s universality.

RW: What’s an example of a feature or capability that broadcasters may not be taking full advantage of?

Piggott: We deal with a large number of broadcasters frustrated with seeing their station branding or logo incorrect in cars. The single most helpful thing a station can do for itself is to create a metadata definition — “service information” — in the standard format and advertise it. It immediately makes it possible for vehicle manufacturers to get authoritative and timely information on that station, rather than scrape it out of websites and old databases. Our first question to stations who tell us their logo is wrong is: “But are you providing it correctly in the standard?”

Beyond that, I’m surprised more stations aren’t providing more visual support for their radio stations. So many drivers are used to immediately seeing artist, title and image when they’re listening to music streaming services, they should be getting the same alongside broadcast radio. All that available screen space not being optimally used. 

RW: What resources would you recommend?

Piggott: Clearly I’m biased here, but I think RadioDNS, WorldDAB, NAB and EBU all produce information that is informed by discussions with automotive manufacturers of their expectations of broadcast radio, and isn’t targeted at selling a specific product or service.

RW: What is the most common error that broadcasters make?

Piggott: You have monitor speakers in the office to hear when the radio station screws up on-air. You have brand managers who check that your outdoor presence looks right. You have an online team who check the website and the app every day. You need to be paying that level of attention to your metadata as well. Don’t wait for a listener to complain to their car manufacturer that it’s wrong to become aware of it.  

RW: Do you have a favorite tip or best practice?

Piggott: In the hybrid radio model, a lot of the metadata is provided using IP alongside broadcast radio. You might not be able to measure the broadcast radio, but you can measure the IP activity. Your servers have server logs, and it’s well worth setting up your metadata to drop markers into those logs when it’s being requested for. It’s audience insight by proxy. 

RW: What else should we know?

Piggott: There are so many opportunities for radio to defend or expand its presence in the dashboard, but it needs a level of R&D and investment we’ve not been used to making before. The next big opportunity is to seamlessly link live broadcast radio with on-demand listening via a broadcasters’ own apps, but it’ll take some work by broadcasters to achieve it.

[Read more stories about metadata]