LTR Parody’s

“Back to Black” video launched by the Stayfaremayor campaign to support the black cab trade

LTR’s @ParkerCabbie brutally assaulted last nights by an Uber driver. Later arrested pic.twitter.com/1N6ilibFgA

— London Taxi Radio (@LondonTaxiRadio) March 23, 2016

Internet radio has the potential to be the most ubiquitous form of media ever. More commanding of your attention than film, television, or books. This is because listening to music can be enjoyed while doing other activities. Before I go further, let me make an important distinction: there are two types of listeners, lean back and lean forward. Lean back listeners hear music programming via a playlist or radio station (think “set it and forget it”), whereas lean forward listeners actively select individual songs. The majority of people prefer a lean back experience.

In 2014, one third of Americans used their phones to stream music. Young adults (18-24) listened to internet radio more than terrestrial. Two of the top five most popular apps in America (Pandora and Youtube) are used for streaming music. With Americans now spending more time on their phones than watching television, there has never been a more opportune time to maximize internet radio experiences.

Tuning into the radio the old fashion way. ‘On air’ could be every moment of the day. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Let’s consider the potential internet radio landscape. The average person sleeps approximately seven hours a day, meaning there are up to seventeen listening hours per day that one could listen to internet radio. Additionally, it’s expected that in two years 3.5 billion people will be online, bringing the total of possible listening hours worldwide to 59.5 billion per day. With the average revenue per thousand hours amounting to $42.77 (Pandora’s rate in 2014), there is a possible daily cap of approximately $2.5 billion in 2017. Granted, this assumes that the market rate is equal throughout the world, which currently is not the case.

For this potential to be realized, companies will need to provide highly personalized listening experiences that have yet to be fully optimized. Internet radio will need to match every part of your day. Imagine passively being pushed the right music that helps you wake up, motivates you to run faster, work more productively, and more. This type of personalization has already begun in advertising, but hasn’t been well implemented in internet radio.

However, the barriers to this hyperpersonal internet radio are slowly being eliminated. The swath of personal data that comprise our tastes is growing, which in turn means we are also able to better understand the tastes of similar people. With the decreasing costs of streaming, collecting and storing large sums of data, as well as growth of powerful tools to analyze it, our ability to explore and draw inferences from this wealth of information is seemingly endless. Lastly, the vanguard (major record labels) are now willing to make this digital shift. In the last three years, labels have signed deals that make their music libraries legally accessible on-demand, setting the stage for this transformation in digital discovery based on big data.

In particular, location, social, and biometric data streams will provide the most relevant inferences for personalized listening experiences. To date, location information has primarily served to provide music programming experiences reflective of the general tastes in those regions. Within a hyperlocal context, internet radio services could push music reflective of microcultures in neighborhoods, parks, rooms of a house, etc. Listeners that aren’t generally music consumers could still receive personalized experiences if internet radio providers could draw from their social data to find people with similar tastes in other areas such as films, foods, books, etc. and reference those listeners’ music preferences. Finally, leveraging biometric data from fitness bands could enable internet radio providers to push music that reflects the perceived activity or mood of that listener.

It will take time to gain listeners’ trust to connect these types of data streams to music services. In the meantime, music programming that relies on crowdsourced curation, similar to Twitter or Reddit, can surface highly contextual programming (e.g. mood, activity or genre). Within this paradigm, the best content will emerge because the crowd deems that the context provided around the programming meets their expectations. A different approach is accumulating data passively through smart audio devices. One example is the Cone, a speaker that learns a listener’s music preferences based on where that person listens to the speaker. If the listener prefers indie rock music when in their bedroom, the speaker will play that type of music once it realises it’s within that room.

Source: Forbes

London Taxi Radio will be broadcasting LIVE during the United Cabbies Group demo on 10th February 2016 from 1:30pm until the conclusion of the demo.

We aim to keep drivers informed of the events of the day as they unfold, so it would help us to help you if you tweet us your pictures and comments throughout the demo.

You can listen to the live broadcast via the Tune In Radio App http://tunein.com/radio/London-Taxi-Radio-s180775/

You can tweet us http://twitter.com/LondonTaxiRadio

Or leave comments on our Facebook page http://facebook.com/LondonTaxiRadio

Radio DJ Chris Moyles is to go head-to-head with BBC Radio 1’s breakfast host Nick Grimshaw when he returns to the airwaves later this month.

Moyles will present the breakfast show on Radio X – the new name for Xfm.

It will be Moyles’ first radio job since he left Radio 1 in 2012 after eight years hosting the breakfast show.

Vernon Kay, Johnny Vaughan and the Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson will also have their own shows on Radio X, which will launch on 21 September.

Kay will present the weekday mid-morning show, Vaughan will be on air in drivetime and Wilson will appear at weekends.

Xfm’s current breakfast host Jon Holmes will move to weekend breakfasts.

Moyles attracted eight million listeners at the peak of his Radio 1 show. Grimshaw currently attracts an audience of around 5.8 million.

Radio X promises to play the “best fresh rock and guitar-based music across the UK” and be the “first truly male-focused” station, targeted at 25-44 year olds.

Big personality

Ashley Tabor, founder of parent company Global and former flatmate of Moyles, said: “Radio X will focus on fresh rock and guitar-based music alongside huge personalities. And personalities don’t get any bigger than Chris Moyles.

“Chris is a broadcasting genius and as Global makes a multi-million pound investment in launching Radio X on a national scale, I couldn’t think of anyone better to host the station’s breakfast show.

“Along with Vernon Kay, Johnny Vaughan and Ricky Wilson, the UK has never had a radio station like Radio X before.”

The relaunch will mark the demise of Xfm, 23 years after it was launched as an alternative music station.

Xfm had different line-ups in London and Manchester, but broadcasting regulator Ofcom has given permission for Global to stop broadcasting local programmes in those cities.

Instead, Xfm’s old FM frequencies in London and Manchester will both carry Radio X, while the station will also be available nationally on DAB digital radio.

Source: BBC