Yesterday, I mentioned the Bob Pittman pro Radio speech. One interesting point he makes is comparing a music Radio station to an audio provider or a music collection service.
An audio service is everything like your iPod playlist to Pandora. The above graph, which I hijacked from Pittman’s presentation, shows the loss of interest in an audio list that is not curated. For example, when you first got your iPod you were thrilled. You immediately downloaded music and made a few playlists. One for your bedroom listening, another for outside on the beach etc. But then you kind of tired of them and like most you shied away from them. Every once and awhile you might actually take the time to edit but rarely. Or perhaps you are a Pandora listener and you simply entered Peter Gabriel and you received a lot of tunes that sounded like Peter Gabriel. Some you actually thought were cool. However, your engagement lasted only a few days maybe weeks. Then your attention waned.
In the world of Radio, the playlists are curated by professionals driven by extensive research. They can determine when a song is too old and magically you stop hearing it and it is replaced by something similar and fresher. Radio playlists change dynamically. That’s why you find yourself pulling your iPod cord out of the car tuner and going back to good old fashion radio every now and then. Well that and the human element which I’ll talk about on another day.