Five Companies That Will Define Future of Radio
Radio will never be the same. Like books, magazines, music and just about every other mass medium you can think of, the age-old format is being transformed by the Internet, mobile technology and a few very smart organizations.
Who’s forging this future is still early to know—and this space will undoubtedly be occupied by a few now-unfamiliar names—but there are a handful of organizations already busy chiseling out that future. Keep an ear on these five.
Stitcher Radio
Stitcher Radio is amazing. The company blends terrestrial broadcasts with popular podcasts to let users build a highly personalized, lean-back radio experience.
Like Pandora does with music, Stitcher builds smart radio stations based on your preferences, which are based on your listening history and the familiar thumbs updown tapping. Stitcher features content from CNN, NPR, BBC, Fox News and a host of providers large and small.
Stitcher Radio announced a partnership with Ford, who built the service (along with Pandora) directly into its new cars. Smart.
Pandora
This one might seem obvious, but Pandora has stayed on top of the personalized internet radio market for years, despite challenges by everyone from Last.fm to Spotify.
Pandora’s Music Genome Project provides some of the smartest semi-automated music recommendations out there. It doesn’t yet rival the brain of a real music tastemaker, but it’s getting there, thanks in large part to the human intelligence that heavily fuels Pandora’s algorithm.
Like Stitcher Radio, Pandora has found its way into new cars. It’s also begging Congress to rethink the unbalanced artist royalty payments that internet radio providers pay.
Spotify
Not so long ago, you wouldn’t have associated Spotify with internet radio. That all changed, when the Swedish startup launched Spotify Radio, which emulates Pandora’s functionality using the Echo Nest, a competing music recommendation engine. Any doubts that Spotify was serious about this push were cast aside, when Spotify Radio was made available for free in the service’s mobile apps.(https://www.daowen.com)
Spotify’s most promising feature is its third-party app platform. The store now boasts more than 60 apps focusing on discovery, social music, promoting individual artists and whatever else developers can cook up.
National Public Radio
If old media are supposed to be crusty and slow-to-innovate, you couldn’t tell it by looking at NPR. The public radio nonprofit first went on the air in 1971, but unlike some of its counterparts in print media, it hasn’t been sitting out the digital revolution. NPR’s digital services team has been busy creating application interfaces, Wordpress plugins and experimental web radio products. Its social media presence is impressive and its podcasts are some of the most popular on iTunes.
By maintaining this spirit—especially when it comes to mobile devices—it pretty much guarantees itself a prominent role in radio’s future. And NPR also knows the importance of partnering with car makers.
Clear Channel
NPR isn’t the only industry incumbent that’s thinking ahead. Terrestrial radio conglomerate Clear Channel sees the threat posed by innovative startups and has responded accordingly. Its iHeartRadio service combines 15,000 live broadcast stations with personalized channels.
By putting its massive weight behind Pandora’s quest to reduce internet royalty rates, Clear Channel helps make change more likely. It also provides its own API that developers can use to bake iHeartRadio into other products, including cars.
Other players forging radio’s future
Narrowing this list down to five organizations was tough. So many technology and media companies are working on things that will make up the future of what we today call radio.
When we prop up our iPads stream contents from NPR, Stitcher or Spotify, it’s a bit like using a futuristic radio. On our iPhones, smaller versions of those same apps let us bring the content with us in the car or when we’re walking down the street. Along with Samsung, Nokia and others, Apple is already building much of the hardware from which we stream audio content.
It’s not just giants that are jockeying for a spot in radio’s future. Under-the-radar upstarts like Shuffler.fm and the Hype Machine turn music blogs into lean-back, mobile-friendly listening experiences. Even Sound Cloud is growing more radio-like. Meanwhile, The Echo Nest’s complex music recommendation algorithm is woven throughout a long list of internet radio products, each of them aiming squarely at Pandora.
Words & Expressions
chisel：雕刻
tastemaker：创造时髦风尚的人
emulate：仿效
plugin：插件
incumbent：在职者，现任者
jockey：操作，驾驭，欺诈