Digital Radio on Pay TV – radioinfo speaks to SMA’s Greg Solomon

Continuing with our digital radio focus this week, radioinfo spoke to the Chairman of Satellite Music Australia Greg Solomon who, with his brother Rick, owns a company which has been broadcasting digital audio on Pay TV and in-house radio channels for 8 years. We wanted to find out what he has learnt about how consumers are responding.

SMA got a kick along this month as Foxtel announced that its digital expansion would include 30 channels from SMA (as reported here last week).

When radioinfo caught up with him he was on his way home from a Foxtel meeting where he was discussing the price of services. “There will be a big announcement on prices in the next few days,” says Solomon. The audio channels his company provides will be available to all customers on the carrier’s basic package, as they are currently on Austar.

Solomon sees the best thing about working with digital to be the fact that so much information can be stored in the digital format about each item.

“We store everything in 16 bit WAV format. As each track comes in we digitize it and ad 22 – 34 pieces of metadata to each track. This includes licencing information, artist, album, release date, and then we go down more to include track data, tempo, acoustic power, harmonics. We then ad a lot of other info such as biography and other data. Because the platforms we are sending to Austar have been fully interactive the data is useful to consumers in many ways.

“All that data has been available from us for a long time and will now become more required by consumers and transmission agencies. The Foxtel digital program guide will show name and artist and track on each channel now and will work towards being fully interactive.”

Solomon gives examples of interactive Gig Guides which allow consumers to search for a band playing and show performance details. “Soon we will also be able to back end it into a seating plan and show what seats are available at the gig. Eventually consumers will be able to purchase seats using their remote control.”

Other interactive services offered by SMA’s channels include news headlines and music charts. Interactive competitions will also be added.

“We’ve been doing this for 8 years now,” says Solomon. “We now have the largest digital library in the Southern Hemisphere by a country mile. A massive database built over 8 years. Unlike radio stations, we have all genres available which are already digitized in intelligent files. Depending on what platform it has to go to, whether it be pay tv, internet, kiosk or carrier pigeon, we can wrap, pack and ship the data in whatever from a client may want.

“We are not the end interface with consumer, we are the engine for others. There are some internet players with big library databases too, but their libraries are in mp3, which throws one sixth of the data into the garbage bin. That’s fine for internet speakers, but when you’re sending it to 5.1 sound systems and Hi Fis, you want best quality.”

On SMA’s current audio channels the consumer sees the track listening, artist name and record company with a background graphic. SMA is currently sending 24 channels to Austar and will send 30 to Foxtel.

When asked about the services current users most value Solomon says “overwhelmingly it is quality first and then the amazing range of choice.”

The channels are mostly “commercial free and DJ chatter free.”

“If you’re a jazz freak you can tune in to us for your dinner party without getting announcer interruptions. Because we have such a large library the variety is amazing and we program it very intelligently. There’s not a 4-6 hour rotation on our channels except those which are purposely built on high rotation.

“We work on the tempo rate and harmonics and relate that to the surrounding tracks to create a great program for the target consumer. On some stations we change the mood as the day progresses, on the dance channel where listeners want to bounce off the walls after 11pm on Friday and Saturday nights we program the best mix for them.”

1100 tracks are added to the SMA database per week and the company works with record companies to assist them in digitizing their artist releases.

When asked about his thoughts on free-to-air digital radio, Greg Solomon is surprised it hasn’t happened faster. “I think the major operators have baulked at the expense so far and have been trying to work out how they can keep the jump on their competitors because this evens the playing field between AM and FM. That is starting to change now.”

According to Solomon the compelling reasons for a consumer to buy a digital radio will be “quality” and “new services.” He cites US satellite digital radio as an example of this model working for consumers.

In the US, as in Australia and the UK, competition from new sectors has galvanized traditional radio sectors to get over their rivalries and work together to oppose the new players – time will tell if this works for the radio industry as a whole.