Category: media blog

Late yesterday I blogged about the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair survey which has radio “dominant” at 49%..

Deeper down in that survey was a question “Who would you most want to see with your daughter?”  (Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, One Direction, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus).

In the college class I teach on Monday night we were having a lively discussion about the survey and then I got to that question.  It effectively stopped the class.

THE PASSION that came out of the students.  Everyone talking, talking over each other, ARGUING about how Tayolr Swift is boring and Miley Cyrus is slutty and Bieber needs to go back to Canada.

A full 15 minutes until I hooked it and took the break.  Then after the break one of the students mentioned Taylor and it started up again.

Now be honest, what got you to click on this post?  Was it because you are a fan of John McDermott and all his media insights?  Was it your interest in Ukraine?  Nope…the picture caught your eye and the headline was OK enough that you clicked.

That’s how you approach topics on the radio.  Yes we’d all like to be our best selves.  There are some really important ISSUES out there.  The reality is that most people are busy and your job is to entertain them until they get to and from the salt mines.

I imagine the latest unemployment figures are important.  I’m unemployed and I can’t even be bothered to hold a one minute conversation about them.

But the non-story of bringing your kids to see Taylor Swift of Miley Cyrus?  That lit up the room.  That will light up the phones.

Don’t overthink the topics.  Now I’m not saying be boring and bland….but don’t overthink the topics.  Sometimes they are as stupid as this one.

I follow lots of radio trades, and one thing circulation is that radio is a new 60 Minutes study detailing radio’s “dominant” position.

Now as a radio veteran I don’t want “radio” to die.  Of course not.  I’m not here to bury “radio.”  But I think saying it is “dominant” at 49% (down from what, 98%) and ignoring the factoid below is naive.

 

 

Instead, the top choice among Americans aged 18-34 is some form of digital music service (35%) followed by iPhones, iPods, and mp3 players (29%).

via Inside Radio, The Most Trusted News in Radio.

Oh yeah those 18-34’s.  The ones that are 28-44 in ten years.  You remember ten tears ago, we called in 2004.  Does ten years seem so far away now?

The keys here continues to be content and distribution.  You can have awesome content but if nobody can find you it does you no good.  Also, as we are seeing, you can have a fancy FM stick that is heard “everywhere” and the next generation doesn’t care.  Grab a Howard Stern and folks will go out of their way to find you.

Commercial-free/commercial-lite music?  There’s an app for that and the next generation has it.

Very interesting times. Check out the survey which I’ll dive in on more tomorrow.

The future is becoming quite clear to me.  I don’t yet know who is going to win, but I know where the battle will be lost.

Jump to 3:36 for the radio part.

You can read more about Windows in the Car on Gizmodo.

I thought I’d mix it up today since it’s Friday.

Doing comedy for SiriusXM for ten years I got to know a lot of comics well before the mainstream.  One guy that I got to know, and I love his material is Hannibal Buress.

I’m glad to see he was on Fallon (so maybe you do know him now).  Keep an eye on Hannibal, you will start to notice him on various sitcoms…and he’s a rising star.

And I love his aside in this clip about the “rule of three” – I mention that to people when I write copy and they think I am nuts.

Good insight from The Verge…always look at the complete picture of why someone is doing something.

If the device gets to scale (it’s already number one on the best-seller list), Amazon will make money by using the Fire TV to sell everything else. That’s how it’s always done things. “We have a philosophy that we try to price our devices as close to break-even as we possibly can,” says Kindle VP Dave Limp. “If they put it in a drawer, we’ve not benefited at all.” Once the consumer has a Fire TV in their living room, he says, “somebody might by à la carte content, movies, TV shows. Somebody might sign up for Prime… we want to be really aligned with the customer that we only make money when they use our products, not when they buy them.”

via The playbook: why Amazon’s Fire TV is a guaranteed hit | The Verge.

One aspect of my life is that I teach radio at a college on Monday nights, and I didn’t need this study to tell me what you all now know:   The kids like “free.”

From Edison Research’s Infinite Dial Study, this is making the rounds today

Somerville, New Jersey — April 1, 2014 — Over a third of Americans age 12-and-up used YouTube to watch music videos or listen to music in the last week. For listeners to most current-based formats, those numbers are significantly higher. 57% of CHR P1s have used YouTube for music in the last week, followed by 53% of Urban P1s and 48% of Rock P1s.

And legal or not, don’t put your head in the sand about the websites that allow folks to make mp3’s from the YouTube videos.  That’s not just the kids.  I recently told my friend he would like the new U2 song and he should drop the $1.29 on it.  He told me he’d go to (website) and convert it.

Some of the other data is interesting and seems quite logical to me.

Yes the streaming services are being used for music.  Nobody has gone in hard on talk yet, and nobody has gone in for real on comedy yet (oh hi, feel free to check out my resume/portfolio if you want to get serious about your comedy offerings.)

Yes people in the car like spoken word, they have satellite radio, they are older.  Yep – all makes sense.  My college students don’t have cars and they don’t have money.  (Slide 37)

And don’t ignore slide 18.  That’s the one that tells you that iTunes radio has general awareness.  They have the reach.  Once they go all-in on content watch out.  Watch. Out.

The survey is here if you’d like to take a look.

On Monday nights I teach a radio management course to college students at FDU.  This week’s homework was to tell me who they thought would win in the streaming audio wars.

Half the class went with Pandora.  The Pandorans like the market share lead that Pandora has.  They like the product.  They like free.  They don’t mind the ads.  They wouldn’t mind super-targetted ads.  They like Pandora and their generation isn’t going to change to another service.

The other half of the class went with Apple.  They have seen what Apple has done in other spaces.  They think Apple hangs back and watches what others do then they come in and do it better.  They like the advantage iTunes Radio has of being on the phone.

So I jumped in and asked if anyone has heard of Galaxy.  Oh yeah that.

Milk isn’t on their radar (yet?).  This particular set of students all have iPhones, so factor that into the conversation.  But the “it’s on my phone” argument will hold for both services.  My two cents is it is kind of impossible/not-smart to ignore the amount of units Samsung is selling.

Nobody picked Beats Audio.  Beats is perceived as having way cool headphones.  They’ll even spend the extra buck to get Beats headphones over my hypothetical “Walmart headphones that sound better.”  But as far as paying for Beats Audio…non-starter.

So I called their bluff and told them Spotify was now $5 for college students.  In previous classes they told me that $5 was the price-point they would go for.  Now that it’s a reality they still aren’t interested.

I don’t think they understand Spotify – but that’s Spotify’s problem, right?  Pandora is the perceived cool with the college kids.

Now, I wouldn’t go making any billion dollar bets based upon an adjunct-professor and 12 college kids, but I do really really enjoy these discussions every week.  We throw things around and play in the hypothetical sandbox.  And in that sandbox, here’s one…

What if Apple decides (because it is cash-rich) to throw money at Howard Stern when he is a free agent.  What if they just want to own the space…and go grab the biggest fish.  Would “free” Howard on iTunes radio get people to the service?  Would it move phones?  Would it increase use of CarPlay?

I’m not ready to make a half-billion dollar bet on a college class vamping…but it’s an interesting hypothetical discussion to have.

This will be interesting to discuss with my students on Monday.  Every week they tell me that they don’t want to pay for things, then I ask for suggestions on how to monetize these services.  Their response is usually “lower the price.”

Spotify has launched a US student program that lets you pay just $5 per month for Premium access (half of the usual price) as long as you’re attending a post-secondary school that qualifies for federal aid, whether it’s a college or a vocational outlet.

via Spotify now offers US college students half-price music streaming (updated).

Your move students.