Traditional radio will change. I can’t remember when last I listened to the radio, it doesn’t actually even feature in my list of mediums to entertain. I do however still listen to a streamed music on last.fm and I wish I could get it in my car. I am sure this will be an option soon where I can simply select from a few livecast providers or streaming music providers from in my car, ipod, notebook/desktop or mobile.
This won’t kill the market, it will however kill regional monopolies. It will change how musicians get exposed and how content gets distributed. Much how the internet has changed print media and how it will change visual media. We know this already of course its been the thorn in the sides of these companies for the last few years. However I think this change is creeping up faster and faster.
How do you monetize this? The first logical thing we think is edit it with ads shove ads in between every 10 songs, or 10 minutes of broadcasting. Sure this will work if your ads pertains or ads value to the content that came before it. However what I have seen is few if any advertisers get this right, even if they know everything about their audiences worldview. So advertising will work but will become an annoyance, which brings me to my second way. That is the one I think will work best, until advertising can actually become relevant, will be subscription. Gosh I am even willing to pay for Wikipedia and Google.
There is of course another way, perhaps you could buy a song when it plays. Why would you do this if you can just hear it again later or tomorrow, well you might want to ringtone it, or if you are like me you’d want to have it to listen to over and over until you hate it.
I do think though that this new form of radio will be far more advantageous to marketers who can actually then track duration of listening, and of course derive relevance from the audience based on what they listen to and what location. The latter being very important, imagine a world where you are listening to your favorite station on your iTouch and as you walk into a mall the next ad you hear is from the store 10 feet away. The ad was broadcasted to you for two reasons one it was relevant to your location, two relevant to your current mindset and the persona you fit into.
Obviously the online marketing industry will have to mature a bit more before we can really push right ad at the exact right time but it is getting there. So until then all we know is you like a particular brand of rock at noon, and listen to CNN in the afternoon and would generally be found shopping for groceries in the evening or driving past a particular mall. So even though the marketer knows very little about you he can at least now advertise closer to your persona and also keep it location based.
So the major gain the radio industry would get from this medium change would be trackable actions and linked information through social profiles. As apposed to nothing through analogue mediums.