Matt Deegan blogs on getting the most out of Radioplayer

Matt Deegan, Creative Director of Folder Media, represents Radiocentre members on the Radioplayer Tech Group. At a time of fast-paced innovation and growth for Radioplayer in the UK and worldwide, he’s got some updates and advice for stations to get the most out of Radioplayer.

Last year, Radiocentre asked me to represent their members on the UK Radioplayer technical committee. Radioplayer provides the technology, infrastructure and apps that power most radio station’s pop-up web consoles, alongside mobile apps, and integrations with things like Amazon’s Echo.

Its main members are the BBC, Global, Bauer and Radiocentre, it has two people who work on it full time and it works with 7digital, All In Media and other suppliers to deliver the technology.

Our little tech group has Mike and Leo from Radioplayer alongside a rep from the BBC, Bauer and Global and me for Radiocentre. The job of the group is to help align Radioplayer’s plans with the thoughts and technical desires of the groups that support it.

I look at my role as speaking up for the kinds of issues that affect smaller radio stations – that’s small groups, independents and community/student radio. I, myself, run an independent station in Fun Kids and am a trustee of a community station, so I hope I have a bit of an idea of the issues smaller stations face and how Radioplayer can support them.

The main things we discussed were around developments for cars, smart devices, infrastructure development and product development around the apps.

Radioplayer’s upcoming car product and the initial launch of an Amazon Echo product has highlighted the importance of voice and adapting Radioplayer systems to better support voice. The team has spent a significant amount of time creating ‘phonemes’ for stations and voice mark-up to help this. Amazon itself also alters voice algorithms each week which can affect how it decodes the kind of phrases that UK Radioplayer users use. The team is working to extend the Self Service Portal so that stations themselves can add extra data about how people reference their stations so these devices get better.

Radioplayer’s central metadata systems are already quite significant. As well as taking names, descriptions and logos, stations can also provide ‘now playing’ and ‘schedule’ data to enhance the service. Whilst this info is surfaced on Radioplayer apps, more and more it’s going to be provided to third parties who may ingest it into in-car dashboards, or devices like Sonos. Clearly the more data that you’re able to provide the better these systems will be, which should enhance how your station is perceived and used.

If you use a technology platform like Aiir or have playout from people like RCS or PSquared, quite a rich seam of data can be provided to Radioplayer automatically. Radioplayer can also take feeds of on-demand content into the system. This can be as simple as a podcast channel RSS feed or complex listen again with broadcast rules attached.

I’d encourage stations to explore what data they have that they can already provide as it’s likely to enhance two new upgrades to the product. The first is Chromecast. If people Chromecast your station from the Radioplayer app to a telly, the view will be enhanced using data in the system. The other, which you may have already seen, is the default view for a station on many of the mobile apps.

If you haven’t provided a bespoke web view for the Radioplayer mobile app, there’s always been a simple default view. This was improved last year, so if you haven’t seen it recently, open the app and have a look at Radio 1 or Fun Kids to see it in action. I think the view is an excellent default for the app, so there have been discussions about rolling it out as an option in the web pop-up.

Many small stations just use a static image in their web pop-up player, so this more enhanced view can provide a much better experience. Even if you’re only able to add Twitter and Facebook it’ll create a nice experience for your listeners.

From speaking to stations there’s also been a desire to have better analytics about streaming use from their systems. There was an initial stats dashboard that provided some data, but based on feedback from stations, that’s currently being re-tooled to provide more accurate information. I think as Radioplayer is deployed in more devices this is going to be much more important as we look to see how listeners are consuming our stations.

The other project the team are working on are some experiments in providing a light login (through Facebook and Twitter) so Radioplayer users that use different apps can synchronise favourites or pick up listening from one device to another. It’s still in the early stages but I’ll report back as the project develops.

Having been updated on the team’s progress, my main suggestion for small stations would be to check whether they’re providing as much metadata as possible to the system. The more data in the system the better opportunities you’ll have for appearing in search and giving users a great experience.

If you log in to the management tool have a look to see if easy things are in there – like your Facebook and Twitter account details. Also think about whether your existing systems can send programme and music information. There’s info on how to do this here.

This is only getting to get more important as Radioplayer appears on more devices.

If you have any questions for the Radioplayer team, you can email station.support@radioplayer.co.uk

If there’s anything you want me to raise with the team you can email me via matt@foldermedia.co.uk

Matt’s the Creative Director at Folder Media, a radio and new media consultancy that helps people do things they wouldn’t normally do. He blogs at mattdeegan.com, is part of the management team of MuxCo and runs the children’s radio station Fun Kids. Follow him on Twitter @matt