Category: Audio

  • The Encounter

    The Encounter is a tour de force piece from actor, writer and director Simon McBurney and the Complicite theatre company. I confess that I mostly knew McBurney from his acting roles including the excellent Archdeacon Robert in the wonderful Rev with Tom Hollander, but you soon realise how accomplished he is simply from this one…

  • D2: All Coming Together

    NB. This is not a DAB radio. The picture above is of possibly the most beautiful radio I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the Nocturne, made in 1935 by a US company called Sparton and designed in Art Deco style by Walter Dorwin Teague. This one sits in the Wolfsonian museum in Miami. If…

  • Shock News: Car Drivers Quite Like the Radio

    It has been a bit of a bugbear of mine in recent years that car manufacturers who are busily building their “infotainment” systems (aka the ever more complex multimedia thing that sits where once you found a radio/cassette/CD player), don’t really know what their users want. The speed of consumer technological developments does not align…

  • Sell Me Personal Use Music Rights

    I like making the odd video, and invariable, I prefer to use music on the soundtrack. Given that I’m not about to commission my own music for my little projects, I have two choices. I can either use a music track I already know, or I can go to a music library and for a…

  • RAJAR Q4 2015

    Once again, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I’m delighted to be able to bring you this analysis in association with it. For more details on RALF, contact Deryck Pritchard…

  • Boxing Day 2015 – Radio Times

    You’ve made it this far through. Hopefully Santa has been kind. But it looks like rain in good part of the country, so you may be thinking twice about that walk you were planning. Here are your viewing and listening choices through my ever-so-slightly myopic lens, courtesy of the Radio Times and some Post-Its. Here…

  • Christmas Day 2015 – Radio Times

    Happy Christmas all! You’ll no doubt be unwrapping presents, eating enormous quantities of food, having family arguments, and then perhaps sitting down and trying to decide what telly you should be watching. As ever, I’ve made my own suggestions to help you. You might even want to listen to the radio. Here’s the TV: (Click…

  • Christmas Eve 2015 – Radio Times

    You’re with friends and family. But what to watch or listen to? You know how I love to help out anyone who isn’t sure what’s worth your time. So here is my regular helpful guide to what to watch over the period, presented via the medium of an annotated Radio Times. (Click here to see…

  • The Tow Center Guide to Podcasting

    There’s a terrific new report that the Tow Center for Digital Journalism – an institute within the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. It has published called A Guide to Podcasting. It’s an unashemedly US-centric view of the podcasting market in 2015, detailing the history of the medium, and presenting a series of case studies…

  • Why Doesn’t Audio Go Viral?

    I’m a regular reader of Nick Quah’s Hot Pod newsletter on Podcasts. It’s worth subscribing to if you’re interested in the medium, even if there are slightly too many animated GIFs in the emails! A few weeks ago, Nick addressed something that goes back to a Digg piece from well over a year ago. As…

  • Amazon Prime Music – Filling A Hole

    Back over the summer, Amazon launched its Prime Music offering in the UK. Anybody who pays Amazon £79 a year, for it’s free next day delivery service, and video streaming service, now also has access to more than a million tracks and hundreds of playlists to stream via the web, Fire TV or a mobile…

  • The Sleigh List

    In the last couple of days I’ve read a couple of pieces on when is the right time to start playing Christmas music on the radio. David Lloyd has updated a blog he wrote a couple of years ago, including some research Orion Media conducted on this very matter, alongside various other pieces of research…

  • Google and Podcasts – More Thoughts

    This is a follow up to the post I wrote a few days ago when it was first announced that Google was getting into podcasts. Go away and read that if you’ve not already done so! A few things are worth noting that I hadn’t quite understood initially. Google Serving Podcasts and Metrics It’s very…