[cma-l] Eddie on DAB v FM

Sat Sep 5 20:47:01 BST 2015

I use TuneIn's app too.

Radioplayer provides:
1. A web player that actually works, and that lets people find your station
from BBC Radio 2!
2. A capable app that surfaces your station - first - for people in your
transmission area on iOS and Android, Amazon and Windows.
3. Logos, schedules and broadcast details for your station for a variety of
uses including Radioplayer Car, RadioDNS-enabled tuners, and other things
4. A Chrome app (which I wrote <- disclosure) that puts your station onto
everyone's desktop
5. An app that puts your station onto Ford Sync, Apple CarPlay and Android
Auto (and lets you control it from Apple Watch and Android Wear)
6. Liason on behalf of the entire radio industry to set-top box
manufacturers, car manufacturers and other organisations that you don't
talk to nor have the clout to
7. Usage data
...and is run on behalf of the radio industry with your goals in mind.

Even for #1 on that list, it's worth the £99. I appreciate it isn't free;
but then, it isn't slotting ads in front of your streams or making you
compete with 100,000 other stations, either.

//j

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 8:32 PM Two Lochs Radio <tlr at gairloch.co.uk> wrote:

> *Your fee for Radioplayer is £99. “A more proportionate fee”?!*
>
>
> Just so, but Michael originally asked £300, which we negotiated down to
> £90 (that was at launch, it has increased 10% since).
>
>
> TuneIn's app provides more advanced facilities than Radioplayer and the
> service is entirely free to originating stations. They also provide a
> schedule and 'On now' without us having to lift a finger - they scrape our
> own published schedule periodically (I must ask them to update it as it
> seems to be slightly out of date).
>
>
> Alex
>
>
> On 05 September 2015 at 20:03 James Cridland <james at cridland.net> wrote:
>
> Your fee for Radioplayer is £99. "A more proportionate fee"?!
>
> On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 19:47 Two Lochs Radio <tlr at gairloch.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Yes, of course I'm aware of the other variants of FM, my point was that
> there seems ot be alarge enough market for RDS for set makers, even
> portables and some phones, such as HTC, to judge it worthwhile supporting
> RDS.
>
>
> *And you need to be continuously scanning the FM and DAB bands to populate
> this station list name, otherwise when travelling you'll never find local
> radio.*
>
>
> The radio does that for itself unbidden. I routinely use the radio's
> station list to see what stations are in range.
>
>
> *Incidentally, I cannot comprehend why anyone wouldn't be on Radioplayer,
> I must say: its the R&D department for the whole of UK radio.*
>
>
> The main reason for not being on RadioPlayer would be the cost and the
> fact that ithey won't allow you to be on mobiles if you don't provide a
> low-rate bitstream. We joined it when the BBC was on it and didn't have its
> own radioplayer which rather undermined  UK Radioplayer's proposition. But
> we did first have to negotiate a more proportionate fee!
>
>
> As a user, I still prefer to use TuneIn. It has far more facilities.
>
>
> Alex
>
>
> On 05 September 2015 at 18:45 James Cridland <james at cridland.net> wrote:
>
> Hi, Alex,
>
> The UK market is a tiny and inconsequential one to most manufacturers. The
> Digital Radio tickmark thing is actually deliberately set to mirror similar
> accreditation systems in Europe and Australia. Further, the radio industry
> is uninterested in how radio sets operate, and not big or united enough to
> talk to most manufacturers in a coherent manner.
>
> Really, we have a "North America vs rest-of-world" thing going on in radio
> receivers. You are correct that AM is different - so is FM, in fact, with
> different deemphasis values used as well as different frequency spacing.
> Pedants: Japan's different still, with FM from 76 to 108MHz. And parts of
> ex Soviet countries use something different again.
>
> "Animated and dynamic RDS names do not break tuning by name" - I bow to
> your obvious knowledge. I'd only observe that scrolling now-playing info,
> in place in many parts of the world, means that you end up with station
> names like "TY PERRY" or even "LE NOW O" which really isn't the sort of
> user experience any one wants to give, and certainly isn't recognisable.
>
> Tuning by station name doesn't work on AM - but I'd argue that AM isn't
> part of radio's future anyway. (Pedants: it does, if you use AMSS, a kind
> of RDS for AM. Nobody does).
>
> Further, the ideal is tuning by station name irrespective of waveband - so
> you'd get "BBC 6 Music" in the same list as "TwoLochs". (You want that,
> right?) The issue here is that de-duping the list isn't simple; "BBC R
> Scot" on FM in your part of the world could be different to "BBC Radio
> Scotland" on an available local multiplex, because of local optouts. The
> BBC have deliberately broken service-following between FM and DAB, which
> has the side effect of also breaking any way that your radio can de-dupe
> Radio 4 FM from Radio 4 DAB. And so on.
>
> And you need to be continuously scanning the FM and DAB bands to populate
> this station list name, otherwise when travelling you'll never find local
> radio.
>
> The "Radioplayer Car" unit, currently in test, does all you have asked for
> and more - linking to IP as well (and more importantly linking back), and
> letting you tune by station name and logo.
> https://media.info/radio/stations/two-lochs-radio tells me that you are
> on Radioplayer, so you'll benefit when that is available for sale later
> this year.
>
> Incidentally, I cannot comprehend why anyone wouldn't be on Radioplayer, I
> must say: its the R&D department for the whole of UK radio.
>
> James
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 18:17 Two Lochs Radio <tlr at gairloch.co.uk> wrote:
>
> *The reason RDS names aren't used as a method of tuning is that RDS isn't
> ubiquitous in the US, and in Europe many stations use animated and dynamic
> RDS names, which breaks this stuff.*
>
>
> I can't see any great force in that as a reason for not using station name
> tuning by default. The RDS radio market is clearly big enough to support it
> as an option perfectly economically in the rest of world without needing to
> work in the US. More to the point, I don't think DAB is exactly ubiquitous
> in the US either is it? And yet we have a market full of DAB sets!
>
>
> Same sort of thing applies to push button tuning on AM - the US uses 10kHz
> channel spacing and we use 9kHz, so radio circuits/chipsets in portables
> have to support both. Anyway, a radio that can tune by station list can
> still be operated by frequency if it finds itself in a non-RDS region, so
> it can only be a gain or neutral, not negative.
>
>
> Animated and dynamic RDS names do not break tuning by name - as I said, my
> car can tune by station list, and it works perfectly well in continental
> countries that use more advanced techniques - the station list shows a
> static shot of the 8 character name which is usually perfectly
> recognizable. And again, if not, you can fall back to frequency tuning.
> Tuning by station name doesn't have to be the only mode available, but it
> should (IMO) be available and the default option for a radio to get the
> tick mark.
>
>
> The IP stuff is a further argument, and perfectly fine, but no bearing on
> my suggestion that for DAB/FM radios sold for the UK market should have
> been required to offer tuning by station name across FM & DAB.
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>
> On 05 September 2015 at 15:59 James Cridland <james at cridland.net> wrote:
>
> The reason RDS names aren't used as a method of tuning is that RDS isn't
> ubiquitous in the US, and in Europe many stations use animated and dynamic
> RDS names, which breaks this stuff.
>
> Neither RDS nor DAB offer handoff to IP, nor direct links to other
> IP-based resources either, so they're not, by themselves, future-proof.
>
> RadioDNS provides that mapping, which makes radio receivers significantly
> more user friendly.
>
> IP is four times smaller than DAB use here in the UK, and is growing
> slower as well. (Indeed, growth appears to have stagnated for most.)
>
> The future is multi-platform, and better sets. Sadly, existing
> broadcasters aren't entirely on-board.
>
> James
>
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