For some reason I missed this Guardian article about digital radio and technology wars at the start of this month. It includes much talking up of the additional features coming to radio (pause, rewind, text and even, whoopee, purchasing opportunities) and some quotes such as “People are impatient — they want someone to do the […]
Month: July 2004
Preliminary sketch for online music listener research
What kind of data do you need to cut a swathe through all the commentators and tell you whether music download services are really going to spell the end of the album? Or whether on-demand features will change the relationship between listening to new music and owning it? Notching up each extra zero on the […]
The Sound of Life
Just started this evening: a series of programmes on BBC Radio 4 called The Sound of Life, which covers the history of sound and hearing. The first programme goes back to the first sounds on earth — all water related: waves, rain, rivers and glaciers — before any ears had evolved to hear them. Here’s […]
Information on the go: an effective publicity stunt
The launch of the pPod software for the iPod has done its job for its makers by being picked up by much more high profile outlets than this, including the BBC News front page. Using a combination of text, spoken word audio, and music it provides a guide to London’s public loos. But loos do […]
Maybe iPods are the end of radio after all?
So there I was, saying that random-play iPods do not a personalised radio station make, and just a few days later someone publishes expensive research saying the opposite (Media Guardian article, requires free registration): “One of radio’s main perceived strengths is its spontaneity… iPod can even emulate that with shuffle technology,” the research company says. […]
BBC 6 Music as a learning resource
Born in the digital era, BBC 6 Music is a radio station at the intersection of traditional ‘wireless’ programming and less linear, on-demand access to audio and supporting material. It’s in the vanguard of mixed (old and new) media and the BBC governors apparently want it to go further and “heighten the level of interactivity, […]
Saluting the Placard London Headphone festival
I’m just back from the 02004 Placard Headphone festival. Attendance seemed to be up on last year’s festival which is a just and gratifying reward for the organisers who make nothing from this free event. As I write, there’s still nearly 4 of the 14 hours left, and 11 of the 39 artists to perform […]
‘Innovative practice’ e-learning article published
There’s an article Innovative practice in the use of ICT in education and training: learning from the winners published in the current issue (Volume 6, Issue 5, 2004) of the journal Education + Training from Emerald. It’s based in part on the successful bid for a National Training Award by the Learning to Teach On-Line […]
Jem Finer on music and creative commons
Jem Finer has an article in today’s Guardian giving his perspective on the history and future of copying music outside the normal bounds of copyright control. He includes reference to Gilberto Gil, who — as Brazil’s culture minister — is adopting Creative Commons for his own work. The Brazilian government has been making lots of […]
The new gatekeepers for discovering music
As the means of accessing and consuming music change, so do the kinds of intermediaries who act as ‘gatekeepers’ controlling how listeners can discover new music. If you’re shopping at the iTunes Music Store, surfing among thousands of online radio stations with Windows Media Player or RealPlayer, or using ‘personalised’ streaming services like Last.FM, then […]