Radiodays North America (RDNA) has packed up after a week’s worth of panels, discussions, showcases and musical highlights that have shed some useful insights into where radio, audio and music are heading on the next couple of years.
David Rogerson was there for Radioinfo and has selected the stand outs from all of the topics and issues discussed:
Radio Futurologist James Cridland with David Rogerson at RDNA 2024
First, it has to be Radio AI. But maybe not what you’d expect though on the subject. I came away with the insight that AI is not the scary voice monster hiding under the studio desk that many in the industry may be painting it as.
Dig deep to learn and see opportunities to use AI as an enormously powerful information provision tool inside your audio operations.
What do I mean by information provision tool? Think of your AI tool box that you drop information into to gain more insight about things that impact your listeners to your podcasts, or streaming audio, on air shows and the list goes on. And heaps more.
Who is more likely to listen to your station podcasts, when do they like to listen, how can you engage with them, what is their psychographic profile?
For your revenue team – Input your sales data into your own information provision tool. Or even your own GFK, Xtra Insights or Australian Bureau of Statistics listening data, streaming info, music research and more. Your custom AI will analyse it for you.
Does Radio AI sound Orwellian?
Well, no. No coding, no heavy lifting with data. Even better than a Google search because you provide the parameters within the info you feed into your AI radio tool. I’ll be writing more about this in coming weeks. AI is not a fun fad to fool with. It’s a wave of innovation.
Keep this in mind – it took Chat GPT just 2 months to achieve 100 million users. A third version update has just been released. It’s even more finessed and intuitive. Rather than knock it and block it, ask yourself, “how will we use AI to resolve the issues that have been challenging us?” Human emotion and judgement will still be required.
The latest on Podcasts – you can make money from the smallest collection of audio listeners, but you must have a strategy in place and be super focused on your target.
What is it you do that is unique?
What is it you do that no one else can do?
Look for unique stories from people who can articulate their world and their life. In short, podcasts are about the ability to scale a personal brand. AI can also help you to discover consumer insights that listeners find compelling.
Our challenge is to move radio’s tools away from software that was built for Windows 95 into the current audio and business eco system of tools. The end game on all of these RDNA audio discussions for me was this. AI is one of these current audio and business eco system tools . But it still needs strategic critical analysis and creative people to make this happen.
Regardless of where they are in the global world of audio access we now live in; Audio listeners don’t worry about what is powering the change – they just want an authentic experience.
With a background covering over 40 years in Media and Communications, David Rogerson is experienced in nearly every facet of the radio and media communications industries from Group Content Director, to National Marketing Manager and Company Director. He is currently a lecturer and mentor at the Australian Institute of Music in the Masters and Bachelor degrees.
In 1997 he founded media and communications consulting company “Strategic Media Solutions”. David’s professional consulting career has seen him sought-after for his insights and client solutions in more than 15 countries around the world.
As a published author of media related books and entertainment journal articles David has personally mentored a wide range of media company directors, industry managers and entertainment executives. In the music field David’s experience covers marketing and digital content development for a range of artists including INXS and is part of the judging panel for the Australian Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.