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Robert Maccini

INTERNET RADIO SOCIAL BUZZ

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Social Media is a key indicator of audience engagement and what is resonating in the social media ecosphere.  While there are a number of social media channels for purposes of this analysis I chose Twitter.  I utilized the services of Socialping, a company that specializes in Twitter audience metrics. Socialping provides twitter analysis including monitoring key words.  I decided that I would apply Socialping measurement to Internet Radio.   I created watch lists for key words for the following;, iHeartradio, Pandora, TuneIn, KROQ, Rdio, WBLS and Spotify.  The measurement period is for one week beginning 2/25 – 3/3.

         

Unique Reach
Service

Followers

Tweets

Retweets

ALL

Average
Iheart

154,957

9,993

6,553

16,546

2,909,856
KROQ

68,570

1,554

2,128

3,682

1,248,637
Pandora

148,716

521,263

118,693

639,956

35,760,075
Rdio

90,145

10,403

7,905

18,308

3,768,454
Slacker

41,270

20,952

481

21,433

1,430,976
Spotify

436,545

275,878

38,230

314,108

35,500,325
Tunein

42,649

68,691

18,147

86,838

7,000,918
WBLS

7,096

2,107

413

2,520

679,258

The above data reveals several key findings;

1) Spotify is the leader in followers with almost 3x that of Pandora.  This is probably due to its more international offerings.  However, Pandora and Spotify have approximately the same reach.

2) iHeart radio has more followers than Pandora.  However, the # of tweets is only 3% of that for Pandora (Note: iHeart’s radio audience as reported by Triton Digital is 15.9% of Pandora’s).  Has Clear Channel driven people to follow but they are not engaging with the service?

3) One of the top single stations in the country, KROQ has roughly half the followers of iHeart Radio.

4)  While Tunein has less than one third the number of followers as iHeart they have 3x the reach.

Robert Maccini

CES- RADIO DASHBOARD FRAGMENTATION (PART II)

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As discussed in my prior post the technical side of car integration for Internet radio is difficult due to the many car companies, their suppliers and in dash systems.  Pandora, Tunein, NPR and iHeart radio have an amazing lead on the terrestrial radio industry for real estate on the car entertainment systems.  Pandora was integrated with every car company we visited at CES and claims to be integrated with 1,000 different devices.  These integrated applications appear prominently as listening options.  The rest of terrestrial radio streaming is for the  most part not represented except as embedded in Tunein, Aha or iHeart.  This is a major factor as to why many other radio stations have agreed to be included in the Tunein and iHeart platforms as it give them access to these distribution systems which also have in car access.  However, in a point I made in an earlier post they are lost in a multitude of options.

Yes there is still a radio button in the car and this will not disappear any time soon.  However, it is now just one of a multitude of choices.  As we know people typically have about 6 presets (their favorites) and scroll among them.  How will terrestrial radio compete in a fragmented dashboard.  In my view it will not be based on music but other unique and local content.  Unfortunately radio has reduced its investment over the last several years in its product.  Very little programming is local and unique.  Competition for other information such as news and weather is readily available from other sources.  Those that do invest and have a multi-pronged distribution approach will be the winners.

Robert Maccini

Tunein – Developing a Revenue Model

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  Tunein is perhaps one of the largest directories of Internet radio stations with over 50,000 stations listed with most available to be      streamed.  The company has been signing up stations to be part of their directory although we do not know the business terms of these deals.  I think it is safe to assume that they are not exclusive.  Tunein was created by the merger of RadioTime (on line station guide) and TuneIn (mobile Internet radio app).  While Tunein provides information about radio programs and can stream your favorite station, for many years they allowed users to connect to a station’s stream through their guide without having the station’s explicit approval.  Some radio station companies such as CBS have asked Tunein not to carry their streams.  Although obtaining a $6 Million investment from Sequoia, they struggled for many years on how to monetize the service.  Since they did not have a relationship with the underlying station they had no way to insert audio ads.  The revenue component could only come from preroll ads (audio or video), display ads, and featured listings.  Even preroll ads are questionable as many stations insert preroll video so Tunein would have to insert a preroll video ad in front of another preroll video ad,  something that would not make for a great user experience.  They appear to be running only ad network display ads.  There were preroll videos in front of some streams but again these are most likely the ones inserted by the stations themselves.

While no public data exists on the size of the Tunein network in a press release dated 3/22/12 announcing the carriage of The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, Tunein claimed to have 30 million listeners and be in the top five in Apple’s App Store’s music category.  It would be great if Tunein would release more audience metrics but I can only surmise that they need to develop their business model first by entering into an agreement with stations whereby they can obtain part of the ad inventory or solidify premium placement for accessing streams.  Any measurement would a duplicate of that also measured at the individual station level but at least we would have a better feeling for the use of the Tunein platform.  Tunein is a great service and one that we watched the founder, Bill Moore, develop and where we came close to investing on several occasions.  Whether we made the right decision or not remains to be seen.