1-30-14
A customizable radio station might not be just a "feature" after all. Building upon the theory that local DJ's are becoming extinct, the company Gracenote has created "Rhythm," which they say is a new radio and discovery platform that will provide the right blend of metadata, algorithms and people-power to create the backbone for the next wave of Internet Radio Apps and services. "Back in the golden age of radio, music was delivered to us by trusted DJs ? people who lived and breathed rock, jazz, and rhythm and blues. These guardians of our airwaves had an emotional connection to what they were spinning and helped us discover new musical loves. Unfortunately, today, many of our music experiences are left solely to machines ? emotionless systems that recommend music from bits of data."
Ben Sisario of the New York Times is reporting that Gracenote is working with the company Next Big Sound on a plan for a customizable Internet radio program that would let consumer brands, car companies, and anyone else have their own music app. (Gracenote is a digital music service and Next Big Sound analyzes social-media chatter around music).
Sisario writes, "Gracenote?s Rhythm, could be used by virtually any company to create a radio service tied to its own product or websites on a global basis." Car companies could develop a system to be used in all of their cars around the world." Sounds like more competition in the DASH might be right around the corner.
Gracenote creates, consumes and analyzes billions of data points every day, touching hundreds of millions of music fans and TV viewers. Gracenote is supported by a large source of music and video metadata, featuring descriptions of more than 180 million tracks and TV listings for 30+ countries. The database receives more than 550 million queries everyday and more than 16 billion every month. If you measured Gracenote against a search engine, it would rank among the world?s biggest.
The Gracenote descriptive music metadata focuses on six main categories:
?Genre of the song (Rock, Hip Hop)
?Mood (Rowdy, Somber)
?Era the song was recorded (1980s, 2000s)
?Tempo (Fast, BPMs)
?Origin or region most associated with the artist (London, New York)
?Artist type (Mixed, Female, Male)
Rhythm will be available next month.
(1/30/2014 6:47:27 AM)
I was born and raised on the radio listening to cats like The WolfMan, Hot Rod, Casey Kasem, Fat Daddy and Larry Dean (to name a few). These were some of radio's golden age local and national icons. And while there are some amazing DJs on radio today, I think the coming extinction of local DJs is probably just an evolutionary reality rooted in the fact that younger listeners just don't care about radio personalities and promotions and commercials. They just want the music the way they want it.
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