Foneshow 'blog - Mobile Radio On Demand - Mobile Talk Radio

Industry Traction

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:16:00 +0000

About halfway through the Saturday sessions at Talkers something occurred to me. Foneshow is already working with many of the talk show hosts up on the dais speaking.

Stepanie Miller
Thom Hartmann
Jack Rice
Lionel
Cenk Uygur
John Gibson

All already have shows up on Foneshow.

Now if you overlay that with the number of providers that we've been working with who are expanding their relationship and adding a second or third program to their Foneshow offerings you start to see a trend.

Talkers New Media Wrap Up

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:49:00 +0000

I attended the Talkers Magazine New Media conference last weekend (Talkers magazine is the trade rag of the talk radio industry). To be honest I wasn't expecting much. The last talk radio conference I attended was Radio and Records (R.I.P.) Talk Radio Seminar out in LA in March and it was like going to a wake. So with low expectations I flew to NYC on Friday afternoon.

I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. Turnout was really strong. The energy in the room great. The industry finally is starting to understand that they are not in the radio business, they're in the media business with a focus on audio, and if they lock their future to terrestrial broadcasters then they'll sink with them.

This is the third time I attended this conference and the change in attitude over that time is quite marked. At Talkers 07 no one even began to understand what we were talking about or why we were there. At Talkers 08 there was a malaise that pervaded everything, everyone clearly knew the game had to change, they just had no idea what that meant. At Talkers 09 the path forward was clear. The internet and mobile are the future of talk media.

Everything always takes longer than you think it will.

Talkers Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:26:00 +0000

I'm headed off to the Talkers Conference in NYC this weekend. I am going to miss many of Friday's sessions but I'll be around all day on Saturday.

Good Luck With That

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:53:00 +0000

I read today in Inside Radio that the HD radio folks are hoping the Zune can help save them. "The HD Digital Radio Alliance plans to promote the Zune HD to consumers." It might be the other way around, maybe the Zune folks want the HD folks to rescue them...

Imagine the Titanic survivors are picked up by the Lusitania...

I wish both sides luck with that.

Smart Phone Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:01:00 +0000

There's this Gartner report floating around about how smart phone sales are strong and cell phone sales as a whole are weak. Several bloggers who are either lazy, bad at math, or have an agenda have made hay of this article. Now anyone who has read this blog regularly knows that I think most "research" reports are self serving crap (I still remember one from 1989 that said 40% of Americans would be using interactive TV by 1994).

Here are the data points from the report:

There were 269.1 million cell phones sold. An 8.6% decrease year over year.
There were 36.4 million smart phones sold. A 12.7 percent increase year over year.

The problem is that comparing percentage changes when the scales are so far disparate is deceiving.

Smart phone sales went from 32,314,000 to 36,404,400. But making a significant percentage jump is easy when you only have relatively small numbers. If I sell 10 of something this month and 20 of it next month I am growing 100% month over month, but I still only sold 20 units.

The relevant statistic is this:

Smart phone sales went from 11% of the cell market to 13.5% of the cell market. Feature phone sales went from 89% of the market to 86.5% of the market.

Despite huge advertising campaigns, and massive free publicity, feature phones still outsell smart phones by about 7 to 1. So the title of the linked article "Smartphones Selling Far Better Than Dumb Ones" is blatantly not true.

BTW, Nokia sold the most smart phones by far:

Nokia 45.1%
Research In Motion 13.3%
Apple 5.3%
HTC 4.0%
Fujitsu 4.1%
Others 28.1%

Edit for clarity

There's a Blogger Who Doesn't like Us

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:25:00 +0000

Apparently Tina Whitfield from econsultancy thinks battery life is a tremendous problem for Foneshow (but apparently not for any other mobile app?).

She never asked us about use cases so she really has no data about how users use Foneshow. She's pretty much she's talking out her ass. She says she's a "consultant", that's usually code for unemployed.

My comment on her blog follows (in case she deletes it)...

Erik from Foneshow here,

Actually we have two principal use cases, in neither of which is battery particularly relevant.

Our primary use case is short form audio, generally 2-5 minutes, in these cases the impact on battery life is de minimis. This is about 75% of our listening.

Our secondary use cases are 30-45 minute listens while people commute, but those listens are in the car where the cell phone is plugged in. In that case the impact on battery is totally moot.

Please feel free to touch base if you actually want facts about how our business works instead of your uninformed opinion.

Thanks,

Erik Schwartz

David Rehr is out at NAB

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:21:00 +0000

David Rehr has resigned as CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters. I don't really see this as a loss for the industry. In fact, his departure is long overdue. He always reminded me of that guy from the movie "Thank You For Smoking". Before coming to the NAB David lobbied for the beer industry (no, I'm not kidding). He was smooth. He was good looking. But I was never convinced he believed (or even cared about) what he was saying.

Radio didn't need a PR focused lobbyist, they needed a leader. I called David out on some things publicly. But he never gave a damn about emerging technology or the things that could really help the industry. He was happier to repeat the praises of sycophants rather than admit there might be a problem. Radio's problems are huge. HD has been a misguided disaster. There have been PR campaigns like "Radio 2020" and "Radio Heard Here" that did nothing. New channels for programming have been growing while the radio industry has been pretending there is nothing wrong. Finally things got bad enough that the pretending had to stop.

But the real problem is the organization itself. The National Association of Broadcasters. It's a trade organization for the owners of FCC spectrum. It's not a trade organization for the creators of programming. Programming has become divorced from delivery channel. Programming has a future. Broadcasting may not. Some channels like mobile and internet have a strong future. Some channels like broadcasting do not.

I wish David well. I'm sure he will be happy lobbying for whoever hires him next.

Foneshow on Maine Biz Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:16:00 +0000

I was on TV this morning talking about venture capital in Maine.

Here's a link. I had embedded the video but it was auto-starting.

Nantucket Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:07:00 +0000

I'm on the ferry to the Nantucket Conference. There seems to be free wifi on the ferry!

The Nantucket Conference is a small entrepreneurship and technology conference. I'm looking forward to a lot of great conversation and networking this weekend.

The iPhone is Not Radio's Savior

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:35:00 +0000

In Q1 2009 there were 258 million cell phones shipped worldwide, 3.8 million of them were iPhones. That is about 1.5%.

There's a lot of things broken in the radio industry. Going niche (what I call narrowcasting) is an important part of radio's journey out of the wilderness. But for niches to be viable they cannot be niches within the 1.5% niche of a single mobile OS platform.

Radio has become as important as it is because of its ubiquity. To remain relevant radio needs a new ubiquitous platform. The cell phone can be that platform, 1.5% of the cell phone market can not. Radio is spending a lot of time, money, and energy chasing the brass ring of the iPhone. It is simply not capable of saving them.

Fantasy Sports

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:09:00 +0000

We've done a deal with Rotowire, one of the leading providers of fantasy sports information. This is one of our first moves into sports news and programming on Foneshow. They'll be quite a few more in the next few weeks.

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Did AT&T Just Kill All the iPhone Radio Apps?

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:34:00 +0000

AT&T Wireless just changed their terms of service.

Here is the relevant paragraph.

Downloading movies using P2P file-sharing services, customer-initiated redirection of television or other video or audio signals via any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device, Web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices is prohibited.

This change in TOS effectively prohibits all the streaming radio iPhone applications (Pandora, Stitcher, Iheartradio, AirKast, AOL Radio, and a host of others). All of these applications rely on streaming audio signals over the AT&T data connection.

So before everyone gets too excited about how the iPhone can save the radio industry they need to realize that they have just become beholden to both Apple (for exclusive distribution of the application) and to AT&T (for the pipe to the user).

Edit: Update on Saturday morning. It appears AT&T has backed off a bit.

"The language added on March 30 to AT&T's wireless data service Terms and Conditions was done in error. It was brought to our attention and we have since removed it. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

But the larger issue remains. It is crazy to build a business based on vendors with which you have no SLA.

Foneshow in BusinessWeek

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Foneshow is featured in an article in BusinessWeek today focusing on competitors to Sirius.

Another option: Foneshow lets any phone with text messaging capabilities to catch custom talk radio programming, like Bill Press and Thom Hartmann. Whenever a new show segment becomes available, your phone receives a short text message with a link. You hit "Send," and your phone starts streaming audio, which you can pause, skip or forward to a friend. Foneshow sells advertising, unlike Sirius.

We're honored to be included with other great companies like Pandora, Stitcher and Slacker.

Talkers Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:44:00 +0000

Talkers Magazine asked me to write a piece recently. It is in the current issue.

Talk Radio and the Mobile Opportunity

Right now, there are 265 million tiny radios being carried around in
America's pockets. And your show isn't on very many of them.

Radio is in the weeds. Stations are slashing payrolls, desperate to
remain solvent under the triple blows of flat listenership, fleeing
advertising revenue, and a struggling economy. Media is changing.
Listeners are changing. Today's TiVo generation wants to customize,
control, and call up new content whenever and wherever they are. They
want it red hot and straight out of the fire.

Mobile radio -- cellphones -- can do that.

Here's how it works: You record a segment. Your subscribers are
instantly notified via text message. They can instantly listen on
their cellphones from the text message. Mobile audio is an
independent channel straight to your audience.

It doesn't require a smartphone, it will work on any cellphone,
anywhere in the US. There's a lot of buzz about smartphones and their
bells and whistles, but smartphones are a small percentage of the
market. You need to reach everyone. When I first came up with the
concept of Yahoo! Games back in 1997, the guiding principle of the
product was that it required the user to install no software. You
want to use the equipment people already have.

I'm already podcasting. Aren't I mobile?

Podcasting is a good first step. Like mobile media, it builds your
brand and listener relationship. If you’re already podcasting making
the jump to mobile is simple.

Metrics?

Real metrics are a huge problem for podcasters. You know how many
subscribers and downloads you have but you have no idea who is
listening or for how long. Terrestrial radio's data collection
methods are worse.

Mobile radio is a live connection. We can tell you who is listening.
We can tell you where in each show they stop listening. We can show
you which shows they forward to friends. This is the power of an
interactive, one-on-one relationship with each listener.

Mobile radio is transformative for advertising. A cellphone can
support "clickable" audio advertising. Mobile radio removes the
hurdle of listener recall and initiation. The ad sounds good, your
listener pushes a button, and the next minute they're getting a quote
from Geico. Even better, mobile offers hard data to your advertisers.
Advertisers are desperately looking for the kind of accountability
supported by online ad models. Mobile provides the concrete ROI
numbers that advertisers now demand.

Any tips?

Be brief.

Mobile media habits are different than traditional radio consumption.
Mobile content should be bite-sized and compact. We call it content
snacking. The late great Paul Harvey understood the power of the
content snack. It's micro-chunked, one topic per chunk. It's easy to
share with your friends. This isn't the platform for an hour-long
discourse. Five minutes is good. Three is better.

Use your micro-chunks however you want. Grab your listeners for an
immediate reaction to a breaking news story. Pull out a feisty
exchange with a caller, or a follow-up to one. Lead up to your show
with an opening rant or a content teaser. Speak your mind in freedom
-- there are no external constraints or guidelines for the voice
channel.

Be timely and reach out regularly.

Mobile has a huge advantage: immediacy. You can get your voice out
there the minute the grit hits the fan. Staying in frequent contact
with your audience builds your brand and strengthens audience loyalty.

Try to use a platform that supports notification. Don't depend on
listeners to call in or check your website for new content. In
today's crowded media landscape, if you don't remind people that
you're there, they'll forget about you.

Label your content.

Let people know what they're about to hear. A platform with SMS
notification allows you to label each show with a headline. The more
user-controllability you offer your listeners, the more they can get
what they want out of the listening experience.

Talk radio is about relationships. Strong brands depend on the
rapport they build with their audiences. Mobile isn't about replacing
your talk show -- it's about growing as a technology, as a
personality, and as a brand.

=================================================
Erik Schwartz is the CEO of Foneshow. Previously he was the founding
head of entertainment products at Yahoo! Inc. where he launched Yahoo!
Radio, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! TV, and Yahoo! Music. He
can be reached at eriks@foneshow.com

Thom Hartmann

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:36:00 +0000

We are thrilled to welcome Dial-Global talk show host Thom Hartmann to the Foneshow family.

You can sign up to get Thom's interviews and opinions on ThomHartmann.com, Foneshow.com, or right here on our blog with this handy subscription widget.

Competitive Update

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:29:00 +0000

Every now and then I like to give a little overview of how we see the competitive landscape at the intersection of mobile and radio.

We've got a new competitor!

Let's All Welcome AudioNow!

AudioNow looks like a fixed number system (similar to CelleCast and Lexy, different than Foneshow) but they associate it with a live stream instead of on demand. So you really do not have a radio on demand system, but a rebroadcasting system over cellular. They have a deal with Red Zebra broadcasting WTEM 980AM in DC which is affiliated with ESPN radio. WTEM is the radio station of the Washington Redskins but I don't imagine AudioNow will have Redskins audio because Sprint is paying the NFL boatloads of dough for exclusive mobile rights to NFL audio.

Lexy Raised $1.25 M

Rock on guys. Raising VC money these days is tough sledding. More power to you. I am looking forward to see what they do next.

CelleCast Goes Social

While CelleCast lost the Dr Laura show they've done a bunch of interesting stuff tying themselves to the Twitter juggernaut. I was expecting to see Andy Deal at R&R Talk Radio Seminar this year but he was not there. It appears their focus is shifting away from radio and more towards podcasters and social media folks.

Foneshow News

We're now working with KGO Radio in San Francisco (R&R news/talk station of the year). We're starting with the Ronn Owens Show (the subscribe widget is already up on their site). We'll be adding more programming over the next week or so.

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Marina del Rey

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:09:00 +0000

I'm in Marina del Rey for Radio and Records Talk Radio Seminar.

I just flew in this morning from New York (where we had some terrific meetings yesterday.

I flew Virgin America, everyone raves about it. It's OK. Certainly better than United or NWA. No where near as good as JetBlue. The plugs in the seats are nice. But the seat pitch seems worse and you have to pay for snacks.

An Anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:19:00 +0000

Sorry posting has been light. I've been traveling a lot.

On March 10, 1876 Alexander Graham Bell did his first successful experiments with the telephone. One can argue whether he was the first, but according to American legend he was.

What would he think of how far it has come?

Google is Leaving Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:36:00 +0000

Google is bailing on radio.

I predicted this in this blog post a few weeks back.

I actually predicted Google would fail with CPM based radio ads exactly two years ago.

XM Sirius Files For Chapter 11

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Satellite radio is in deep trouble. XM Sirius, after finally merging, has just filed for bankruptcy protection.

I'm here at the Radio Ink Convergence conference, the response to the news was a cheer.

A few thoughts...

Debt is what killed XM. Anything that involves spaceships to get up and running has some serious capital expenses.

But debt is what's killing terrestrial radio too, so terrestrial shouldn't get too smug.

Both of them have decent cash flow.

Audio media in trouble is bad for all audio media.

These are just my first thoughts. I'll write more later.

Foneshow in the Boston Sunday Globe

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:39:00 +0000

Foneshow got a pretty big mention in Scott Kirsner's article today on the changing media space and how entrepreneurs are trying to find new ways to create and monetize an audience.

I suppose I should go find a hard copy of the paper.

Cycles and Waves

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:12:00 +0000

There's and article in the Times today about the state of Venture Capital. The gist is the economy is tight and things are bleak. They see a shakeout coming in the VC industry and amongst startups.

There's no question that times are challenging.

I can't even describe the roller coaster week we've had and it's only Wednesday.

But bad times can build great companies that build value for investors. Buy low/sell high is far more lucrative and less risky than buy high/sell higher.

I started in the technology business in 1989. 1989 was a bleak time in the sector, you had to love what you were doing and believe in your product to work for a start up then. Jump forward until the late 1990s, I'm working at Yahoo! in the epicenter of the internet revolution. A different kind of person came to came to work at Y! in '98 and '99. They came not because they believed in what we were doing, but to stick around long enough to vest, flip their shares and cash out a million or two. The same thing happened in the VC industry, in a bubble all kinds of new VC firms show up to try to ride the wave. Most of them fail.

I do a little surfing (funny I write that as we're getting another foot of snow). To get on a wave you need to paddle before the wave starts to break, once a wave is breaking, it's too late to ride.

If you're for real, now is the best time to do a start up. It's a lousy time for wannabes to do a start up. It's also a lousy time for wannabe VCs and investors (and there are as many of them as there are wannabe startups).

This is not the time for a quick flip. This is the time to identify a business problem and solve it. This is a time for patient founders and investors to build important companies.

AT&T SMS Issue for New Subscribers

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:51:00 +0000

It has come to our attention that there are some lookup problems between or SMS provider and AT&T that are effecting new Foneshow subscribers.

If you are on AT&T and you subscribe, but don't get a welcoming SMS immediately, you can activate your account by sending the word "help" to 44636 and that should get you going. This workaround has been quite successful.

Our messaging provider is hard at work fixing this and we hope to have it repaired shortly.

The Radio Industry Needs Your Prayers

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:13:00 +0000

Everyone knows the radio industry is in trouble (except maybe for David Rehr, head of the NAB). But one of our content partners, Allen Hunt has put together a prayer for the industry. See it here, it's pretty funny (although kind of sad).

To get Allen's daily Foneshow just use this widget

iPhone/Blackberry Optimized Playlists

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:40:00 +0000

We released an iPhone and Blackberry optimized version of the Foneshow playlist page. You can find it at http://www.foneshow.com/mobile/.

We've been wrestling with a mobile version for some time now. This limited version has been done for a few months. We have not yet done a full mobile version of the website because we don't like to release crap. There are UI issues that we need to address, and we are not happy enough with our early efforts as far as mobile subscription and management to roll them out.

So if you're already an iPhone or Blackberry user, and you're already a foneshow subscriber (and really, who isn't these days), you can access your playlist and hear programming straight from this page. This is braindead simple, all you do is click on the dynamically allocated phone number and you're hearing the specific show in a series.

If you're not a subscriber You can easily become one. Just enter your cell phone number in our nifty subscribe widget.