Is Pandora Radio?

While Pandora does clearly deliver music to the people who are logged on to the system are they using the service as a replacement for radio or as a replacement for their MP3/I Pod music player or playing CDs?

Radio has always had competition for music listening from LPs, 8 tracks, cassettes, and now MP3/IPods.  You could always get your music without listening to the radio.  Obviously now it's become a lot more compact and anyone can carry around thousands of songs in the palm of your hand.  Still radio's listening levels have not taken that big of a hit from the evolution of personal music listening.

While it seems that we in the industry, clients/advertisers, investors and industry pundits all seem to be looking at Pandora and other customizable music services we may be forgetting the real role that radio has developed with its audience.  That role has evolved beyond music to entertainment through the personalities and the imaging as well as the local information (traffic, news, weather), the infotainment, and the promotions/community events that we bring to the audience.  Really the music is not designed to be 'your personal favorite music' - it's a collection of the most popular songs in a given style (Rock, Pop, Country, Contemporary).  This is 'Broadcasting' and it is different from individual casting.  

Yes if the individual casters get their product to be more usable in the car and as easy to navigate as broadcast radio they can have more opportunities to take away time spent listening to music on the radio.  But, the Pandora's and Slackers of the world are computer program driven systems to build personal streams and libraries of music for individual listeners.

No doubt they serve a purpose, but it very well could be the ultimate replacement for the CD collection or even the MP3/IPod collection.  Why buy songs on ITunes or carry around your music and have to go through  the task of downloading and categorizing it when you can punch in some artists and create channels around them that you can sculpt to your taste.

Yes, radio should explore the new narrow casting - customizable media.  Clear Channel moving into the Thumb Play world is a good thing as is CBS with Last FM.  Just keep in mind that both CC and CBS will be gaining a lot more by developing the strengths of their long standing broadcast properties.  

The Complex World of Technology

We've all experienced it.  The cell phone that suddenly just shuts down, the computer that won't boot, the program that just died in the middle of an important task.  As we come up with more and more devices and more and more computer applications we may solve lots of problems or amaze ourselves but we also become more and more dependent on the ever increasing world of technology.  

Recently Steve Woznaik (the real inventor of the Apple computer) lamented that even he gets frustrated and concerned about the ever increasing role of computer driven technology in our lives.  His big concern - it all fails sooner or later.   Read more about his concerns here.

And if you want a few laughs (as if you needed any more from Steve after Dancing with the Stars) check out his recent cameo on Big Bang Theory.  




All hail to the Woz!

Grammys and Rock Music/Radio

There were a number of surprises in the Grammys from Arcade Fire winning LP of the year to Esperanza Spalding winning the best new artist, but the one resounding fact was the decline of Hard Rock and Active Rock music.   While the nominations and the results are not really a popular opinion poll in the Grammys (artists, producers and record company execs vote) there is a real message here and its not good for new rock music.

The musical spotlight from a sales, critics and Grammys reflection of this is clearly on 4 generes of music:

• Pop/CHR - And even here the lean is rhythmic. 
• Pop/Rap- When you have the Top Rap Artist (Eminem wins) placed in the prime time spot just before the top song and the top LP of the year you can see how important this genre has become.  
• Pop/Country - You can argue that Lady Antebellum is a pretty pop act - it was still in the Country arena.
• Indie Alt - Arcade Fire, Muse, and Mumford and Sons stole the show. 

Really the only 'traditional' rock moments came from Jagger singing a tribute to a Motown era artist and Bob Dylan with Mumford and Sons pretty much taking over his performance of Maggies Farm.  

Another 'blow' to guitar driven rock came this week from Guitar Hero where Activision announces that they are dropping the game.   The new hot game is Dance Central - a clearly pop and dance with the Kinect motion sensor. 

The message here is clear that Active Rock and traditional rock music in general is not even close to center stage.  If you look at the sales, downloads and other sources we can track the message isn't much different.  The library is still healthy, but the current Rock music scene is rather dark.   

The promised land for rock may lie in the Indie Rock world - not the Stadium Rock power cord world we often hear on today's rock stations.   

Facebook Fan Page Summary Thoughts

The last 'idea' for Facebook Fan pages is Contesting.  There are lots of options here.

• Prizes for becoming a Fan - Got a bunch of tickets to a show that you are not going to use on the air?  Hand them out to new Facebook Fans.  Got a bunch of discount coupons for lunches etc - hand them out to new fans.  Get Fans whenever you can.   
• Photo Contests - Even without prizes this can work well.  Having them post the 'snow photo of the day' or pics of them dressed for Halloween or maybe Mardi Gras.  
• Get into Facebook Games - This can be tricky, but take a look.  Games like Music Challenge might work for some formats like AC or Oldies.   Too bad they don't have this game set up for Alternative, Country, Hard Rock, Classic Rock, 80s etc.    
• Do face offs - Have 2 new songs to debut - link to the videos and the most 'likes' wins.  
• Tips for on-air contests - How about taking a High Low style contest and giving tips on the amounts on the fan page?  Ideas like this could help build fans.   

Summary Thoughts:  We covered a number of tips and steps to making your Facebook Fan Page a hit - here is a quick summary:   

• Basics: Make sure to have a plan with your staff about using the Fan pages, Promote it on the air consistently, keep a log of your postings and promotions to track growth, make sure your name and logo are easy to remember for the audience.    
• Build Fans: Use links, special fan greeting pages, on air promotion and get your fans to spread the news to their friends.  
• Stay Active: Post at least a couple of times a day.  You can overdo it here, but it's more likely that we will not keep as active as we could.  Posting 1-3 times a daypart is about right.  Also make sure that you have a 'big post' of the day that sort of cuts through all dayparts. 

Radio brand have a long ways to go in building friends.  Lots of stations have barely scratched the surface of their real cumes here.   Just make sure you have a good plan, some creative/fun tactics and the strength to execute it everyday.   

Facebook Fan Page Ideas Part 2

Once you have the basics down of an easy to remember address, a good Facebook friendly logo, a plan for pics with regular updating and a healthy system of daily posting it's time to try a few other tricks.

• Links - Yes you should link to your web site and any special show pages (Morning for example).  But, also go beyond - link to artists fan pages, local club/concerts, music reviews, and even cool products.  Getting your audience to link from your page will help you link up to more fans.  The more active the more action.   
• Pics - Invite tagging.  A while back Lenny Kravitz posted a pic of tons of fans at a concert and invited everyone to tag themselves.  Consider a similar tactic with concerts, local events, etc.   Also let the audience post pics and make it a game - remember the old Show Us Your Rock 97 contests where they painted houses, cars and cut fields with the logo.  How about a contest with them posting pics?  Make your pics interactive and get more action.   
• Link you stream - Make sure you link your stream and also look at any other cool audio links you can put in here.  Podcasts, cool bits, best of morning shows, etc.   
• Polls- If you can find FUN and meaningful polls use them.  But avoid the mundane here.  Too often we have polls that are not fun to participate in.   
• Badges - Make a badge for your station and your big personalities and invite fans to share them.  You can also award badges - maybe with some small prizes?
• Interact - The key with everything on your page is to get the audience to interact and watch it show up on their pages.  If you can attract their friends to check out your page you can really build your fan base and that will also help you build your brand and listening potential.   

Later in the week we'll wrap up the Facebook series with a summary and give you a potential action plan.   

Ideas for Your Fan Page Part 1

The Basics:  Some very simple points that many Facebook Fan pages seem to ignore:

• The Address - How do I find your page?  The addresses are often a bit hard to figure out. Especially when you have a brand like 'Kiss' where there are many of them out there.  Try to get a memorable address and also PROMOTE IT A TON ON THE AIR as well as on the web site.   
• Logo - The problem here is that your logo is really a 3X4 picture format on the top of the page and then in all your posts it ends up being cropped to a square format.  The trick here is to get your logo to fit in both formats.  
• Pics - Make them fun, interesting and current. Of often the pics don't look that inviting in radio pages. 
• Link your Stream - Let them dial you up from the fan page with a link.  There are a few stations that have developed Apps for facebook so you can invite the audience to link up their friends from their pages.  Surprised we only see the big internet only streamers using this for the most part.  
• Keep the Posts coming - You should have a status for every day and the air staff should have something on Facebook for every shift.  If you have a hot topic or big developments you can move to hourly contributions from the studio, but watch having a lot more than that.  The key is making it interesting- too many entries just to have entries and too many 'commercials' will hurt.  

The key to making the Wall happen is to set up a real team here that is all on the same page for the Wall  Think of it as if you just let the jocks play whatever - you'd probably end up with less focus and a real confusing product.  The same for the Wall - make sure everyone is together on the guideline for posts and that  you have a method to the madness.   Later in the week we'll look at more ideas including tab tools in Facebook you can add to get the facebookers more involved on your site.   

Tips and Ideas for Your Facebook Fan Pages

Building a real destination for your listeners on a Facebook Fan page is the marketing tool for 2011 and beyond.  We've already looked at the wide spread usage of Facebook and looked at the results from the dabbling we've done in the media.  It's pretty obvious that we need to have a healthy brand presence on Facebook just as we needed to have a station website 15 years ago.

The first step is building a Fan Page where you can gather the audience with their 'likes' and begin to interact with them.  Let's start by looking a few pages that really stand out:  

• First Red Bull : A very active page with over 14 million fans.  They have a pretty active Wall that is mostly controlled by them.  They also have Web TV, Games and a page dedicated to their athletes who endorse the product.    
• Nickleback: Not much here with just the Wikipedia bio on the band and little else.  No wall, no pics, no news on the band, no links to their music.  Gee they have a ways to go here - especially a band that is as plugged in as they are on the web and sporting a full time AOL/CBS artist streaming radio channel.  
• The Beatles: Apple Corps did a nice job with a basic page.  Good links to the music, a wall that has lots of interesting posts about Beatle stuff/artifacts, and with over 12 million fans. 
• 103.5 Kiss Chicago: A very active page with over 75,000 fans which is a lot in the radio world.  But not a lot here?  No ties to the artists or the music, no station events noted, not a lot of updated pics and the wall is pretty out of control here with lots of complaints about their new morning show.   

This should give you some ideas and tips and there are tons more pages to look at.  Over the next 10 days we'll look at 9 specific tips and ideas and some thoughts on developing an effective and comfortable Facebook Fan Page Plan for Radio Brands.  

What Excites Facebook Users?

This is a tough question because there is SO MUCH to look at and new opportunities/ideas are being developed every day.  At the core is DEVELOPING RELATIONSHIPS.  That is foundation for the whole site and has to be kept front and center to help build your brand on the media.  Really the core of radio promotions and brand marketing has always been about developing a strong relationship with the audience.  We've done it on the streets with promotions, over the air with our imaging, personality, and audience interaction, and we also do it through the music formats we build.

As we venture into Facebook we really don't know what works.  Should we be developing games, posting videos, tagging pics, telling jokes, showcasing artists we play, polling, running ads for clients, or letting the audience interact with us?  Maybe we should be doing all of this, but that's a pretty daunting task.  We need to look at what the audience wants in a radio brand relationship?

Maybe the place to start is by looking closely at the pages of your 'friends' or 'fans' on Facebook.  Now you can't access the pages of the people that just 'like' your page, but you can build a panel or 'focus group' of fans.  You can invite people to be 'super fans' of the station and 'friend' them on another site where you perhaps can offer some freebees or other incentives.  Here you can look at up to 1000 people and see what else they like, what topics and features they react to and also learn a little more about them.

Another trick here is to simply keep track of what you do on the page and what the reaction is.  Keep a daily log on a spread sheet and you'll see what moves the 'likes' up and what got the FB audience moving.   Here is a rough example that you can build on with your own tracking fields:

Now you have some data that you can track and see what moves the meter.  Yes it will add a few minutes to the daily Facebook ritual, but now you have some ideas of what is working.   Of course there are a lot of features and ideas to try on Facebook, we'll look at those in the next Blog.