Let It All Flow

It has to be said, I’m a bit of a sucker for new gadgets or innovations, especially when they have something to do with music, music production or radio. So I was quite excited to hear about the launch of FlowSongs from the manufacturers PURE, who make lots of lovely radios, including the rather splendid Sensia.

If you haven’t read about it yet, FlowSongs is a new service which you can use to identify tracks playing on any radio station and buy them in high-quality MP3 format directly from any PURE radio with the Flow technology firmware installed.

The neat thing is that FlowSongs works on any digital, FM, or internet radio station you happen to be listening to. If you hear a song you like, just press the ‘FlowSongs’ option on your radio. For me, owning a Sensia, I press the little icon on the touch screen. FlowSongs the identifies the track (using the technology rented from Shazam) and then shows you the artist, and price etc. You can then buy the song if you’ve set up your account and loaded it with some credit.

So it was with some eagerness that I tried the Beta version of the service, which went live in the UK this week.

I was quite sceptical beforehand. Would it actually work and how difficult would it be to set up?

After I’d updated my Sensia with the new firmware, I eagerly tuned in to a station on DAB, and waited for a song and hit the little FlowSongs icon. Sure enough, it whizzed away and within about 10 seconds it told me that the song playing was Synchronicity II by The Police. (It was BBC Radio 2 playing it, for the record).

However, my radio then told me that this track was not available for purchase. OK – as PURE say, not all tracks you hear on the radio you’ll be able to buy. FlowSongs uses 7Digital’s ‘backend’ to sell the songs legally and the catalogue’s pretty good. It even sells Synchronicity II by The Police, so something didn't work perfectly there. But hey - giving them the benefit of the doubt, it's still in Beta I guess!

So I tagged a few more songs on a range of DAB and stations streaming online. And sure enough, the tagging worked every time and when I fancied some Hip-Hop, I was reliably informed that I was now listening to NAS and ‘Made you Look’ on New York’s ‘HOT 97’.

When I tried the ‘purchase’ function it was actually really easy and within seconds whilst listening to Kiss 100, I’d tagged and downloaded ‘Stereo Love’ by Vika Jigulina and Edward Maya, and was playing it directly on my Sensia. The track was also available to download onto my laptop, and pull across to any portable device that I wanted.

So, all in all... so far so good. It seems to work pretty well and for the occasions that I hear a track that I like and don’t know, I can tag it and buy it. Or as the marketing says “Hear It, Buy It, Love It”.

The real question is, will it replace iTunes as my default choice for legally purchasing all my music online? Well... no it won’t.

Despite being a cool bit of technology, it’s still a bit fiddly to work with the Sensia screen. Plus there’s an annual subscription of £2.99 just for privilege of tagging and ID’ing songs (which is to apparently to pay for the Shazam licence). Will I pay that after my 90 day trial period is up? Not sure yet!

Also, I’d prefer to ‘pay per song’ downloaded instead of pre-loading the account with multiples of £10. Likewise, I have to wait for a song to come on the radio in order to tag it and then buy it. I can’t just go to their online store to use my credit up. Finally, as I use an iPhone the integration is seamless, and that’s the one big advantage it has.

Will it encourage me to purchase the odd song spontaneously whist listening to the radio? Probably, yes.

Is it a clever use of radio and IP. Certainly.

Will the whole country be rushing out to get a PURE radio equipped with Flow technology this weekend?

We shall see!

A Converging World

I was discussing the rather small topic of ‘convergence of technologies’ with a client this week, and we were talking about how ‘audio entertainment’, including radio, may be consumed in future. There have already been several good posts about the timely launch of the new ‘Pure Sensia’ radio yesterday. It feels to me, that this is a real step forward and places traditional radio at the centre of audio entertainment, which includes downloaded music and personal music databases, internet radio, DAB and more traditional FM services. Combine this with a great user friendly touch screen with possibilities for great visualisation, and an intuitive interface... and you know you’re looking at a big step forward in ‘radio’ hardware.

It make the ‘iPod with radio’ look a little passé really doesn’t it?

However, the point of radio needing to be included in a 'Digital Future' is something that more and more stations are cottoning on to across the world. We all know that different markets are at different stages of adoption of new technologies... but it really is only a matter of time before it comes to your country if it isn't there already. There is a march of inevitability about it, and ensuring stations are prepared to take advantage of the possibilities and monetise them successfully is something I’ll be focusing a lot of my energies on in 2010.

Here’s a great ‘short’ that is very popular at the moment. It puts into perspective the theme of a changing media landscape. If you were unsure about the necessity to adopt and integrate new technologies into your radio business, you won’t be after watching this!