dabbl

Curation and the paradox of user-generated radio

May 25, 2011 By Dan Thornton

I’ve been having a quick play with Turntable.fm since signing up last night and it’s got me thinking about user-generated and user-controlled radio, which is something I was involved with at Absolute Radio with the dabbl project.

Internet radio listening is a pretty small proportion of overall radio listening, and I wouldn’t suggest otherwise in the near future, even if just to escape the wrath of James Cridland. So then you have user-generated radio as a niche within that area, and yet there are a number of services which have been joined by Turntable FM…

Blip FM
Mixcloud
Jelli

Those are the immediate ones which spring to mind, and you could possible include the likes of Spotify (Although the social playlist sharing really takes place outside of it) or mFlow. And there are an increasing number of social sharing music apps for smartphones.

In an age of democratisation of content creation and particularly at the moment, content curation, it seems as if simple and easy user-generated radio is an obvious desire and fit. Make it quick, simple and easy, and you don’t have to worry about on-air talent or programme managers. And at the same time, everyone will love and share the service because they’re involved, engaged and that’s what social networks are all about.

So you’ve got Blip.fm, which has been around for ages, and is in effect a musical microblogging service which produces an effect of crowdsourcing John Peel as you follow a network of users all ‘blipping’ individual tracks.

You’ve got Jelli which has the benefit of pretty quick and simple ways to vote for tracks which may get played with enough votes, and the added incentive of hearing your choices actually play on a number of U.S radio stations. This was also the model for dabbl, although the track selection was more controlled by the Absolute Radio team to enable a more consistent listening experience.

And you’ve got Mixcloud, which is probably my favourite for actually relaxing and listening to great music – particularly the soul and funk mixes of the user HeavySoulBrutha.

Increasingly all of those services are interlinked with Facebook and Twitter, allowing for a high level of integration where the people are.

And yet, something just never quites fit right from a purely consumer point of view (I’m not going to go into the problems of licensing and running a UGC music service).

I’m struggling to define it accurately, but for me it’s almost impossible to find the right sweet spot between involvement and the listening experience.

Blip.fm can be hugely fun for a while, but also massively jarring when random songs are played after each other. Jelli and dabbl both did a reasonable job of allowing you to have an input into station output, but always with caveats over how much impact you have as an individual – and that impact will always lessen the more popular the service becomes, meaning that your aim to be able to play and get respect for the music you love is always slightly at odds with that of the service to become massively popular and afford the server costs.

Mixcloud actually has the best listening experience, and I think that’s because the perceived barrier to entry is higher – you need to actually create a decent mix of tunes and upload it yourself, meaning that a higher level of curation and DJ ability goes on. That compares with Turntable which allows for recognition and point scoring, but the impressive speed of track selection and playing tends to mean that you get a more random listening experience. Turntable is still in limited access at the moment, but unless it gets really popular, it’s still going to be easy for someone to jump onto the decks and play something completely out of kilter with the rest of the room.

The reason I struggle is that open democratisation and curation of text, images and video services has been a great thing. I read a lot of sources I wouldn’t ordinarily discover and the quality ratio is pretty high. The same goes for photos and videos. And in my network, I should benefit from knowing a higher-than-average number of musical experts, but it never seems to play out like that.

So why do you think user-generated and user-curated music services struggle so much in comparison with other art forms? Is it something inherent in music itself? Is it that the skill of curating a selection of music is less attainable?

Or is it the lack of human interactivity which is missing? With a traditional DJ on the radio, you get their opinions and entertainment in between records. With dance and club DJs, you get to see the human behind the turntables or laptop. But with user-generated radio online that element is a lot more subdued, and hasn’t really been brought out by any service yet, without a lot more effort on the part of the listener.

Could it be true that human-generated radio is actually just missing essential elements of humanity?

One week, two new services…

December 5, 2009 By Dan Thornton

It’s been a bit of a busy week at work, with not one, but two major projects launching on Friday night.

One is Absolute 80s, a new station which does what it says on the tin online, on DAB in London, and on your TV, mobile, etc.

The other is dabbl, the user-controlled station which was originally launched in beta as part of One Golden Square Labs. As a beta it broadcast 7pm -6am online and on DAB in London, but to coincide with the launch of Absolute 80s, it now has a much larger music library as an evolution of what was Absolute Xtreme. It’s also 24/7 online, as well as on DAB across Swindon, Bristol and Essex.

What’s been immediately interesting is how for me, dabbl combines some of the benefits of radio (not having to make an individual playlist, hearing new tracks, sharing with people who aren’t online etc), with some of the benefits of playlist-based services (being able to pick music I like).

And also looking at initial traffic, Facebook page support and Twitter messages for both stations. Obviously it’s incredibly early to draw any conclusions, but so far the response has been really positive, which is fantastic.

If you want to be supportive:

Absolute 80s on Facebook

Absolute 80s on Twitter

dabbl on Facebook

dabbl on Twitter

Oh, and if you want to listen to both stations while you’re out of the house, they’ve joined Absolute Radio and Absolute Classic Rock in the freshly-updated Absolute Radio iAmp for the iPhone and for Android Phones, available on iTunes and in the Android Marketplace now.

Not bad a bad week, especially when you consider there’s also been a load of other stuff going on (for instance 3 special Christmas sessions in a church in London), plus there are a load of other projects and plans which will be revealed in the near future.

And behind the scenes, it’s been continual proof of how talented the people are in the building. And the thing is this combination of talent and innovation continually means raising the game, which is fantastic (if a little scary at times!).

Right, time to go and do some voting on dabbl…

Find the best radio stations – online

October 19, 2009 By Dan Thornton

Finding the best radio station is obviously a subjective experience. Are you looking for a particular band or genre? Do you want somewhere with variety? And how on earth do you find the station that’s right for you as an individual without going through every stop on the dial and noting down what they play for a whole day or more?

CompareMyRadio.com is the newest project to launch from One Golden Square Labs (Disclosure: One Golden Square Labs is from the team behind Absolute Radio, where I’m Digital Marketing Manager)

And it’s an incredibly simple and effective way to find and compare radio stations (I can say that honestly as it wasn’t my idea, sadly). All you need to do is enter the name of your favourite artist, track or station, and you’ll be presented with which stations play the most of your favourite music, or which music your station plays the most.

It also gives you a guide to how many tracks a station plays over a set period of time, and how much variety there is.

And best of all, the results are completely down to you as an individual – so there can’t be any implied bias. In fact, picking three bands at random from my collection, Metallica, The Lemonheads, and The Charlatans, Absolute Radio wasn’t the top result for the three, although it was in the running every time.

As with the recent launch of a user-controlled radio station, Dabbl, it’s currently in Beta and there are plenty of plans for the future, so give it a go and share your feedback…

Two great new projects launch at Absolute Radio

October 1, 2009 By Dan Thornton

If it seems like I’m blogging less at the moment, you can blame my colleagues at Absolute Radio – not content with a huge live gig on Regent Street and relaunching the One Golden Square blog as part of the celebrations of the first birthday of the station, two really cool projects are launching today.

Dabbl is our experiment in user-controlled radio. You can vote for your favourite tracks, and then from 7pm every evening, hear them online or on DAB. It’s currently themed around great live tracks, so check it out and get voting:

And if that wasn’t enough, the launch of Dabbl is also tied into the launch of the new One Golden Square Labs which is where we can unveil and test our new and experimental projects.

Not a bad week, and it’s not even Friday yet.