O principal problema da rádio é o excesso de publicidade

O guru Al Ries acha que «Radio is a powerful medium with great selectivity at relatively low costs, but Radiado threatens the very existence of the medium. Too much is too much»: O problema, diz, é que a rádio tem excesso de publicidade. Por isso diz que «For every ad that radio stations used to run, it now seems like they run two. Radio, in my opinion, has become Radiado, an extra "ad" inserted at every possible point in the programming». E no seu dia a dia, «My favorite radio personality is Neal Boortz, a nationally syndicated talk-show host who broadcasts out of Atlanta on 171 stations. I listen to Boortz every morning during the commute to my office in Roswell. Yet at the top of the hour, I turn off my radio and don't turn it back on until 8 minutes after the hour. Why? Because that's radio's black hole. Eight solid minutes of commercials, traffic, weather, news and more commercials. The second black hole occurs at the bottom of the hour, but it's not quite as bad. I turn off my radio for only 6 minutes». Por isso conclui que «The biggest health problem in America today is obesity. The biggest advertising problem in America today is obesity, too»

fonte: «How Radio Is Becoming RadiADo», AL Ries, Advertising Age, 4/03/07 

Mark Ramsey já comentou: «(...) ask the deeper question: If radio featured significantly less advertising, would that keep listeners away from their CD's and iPods and satellite radios and TV's and video games? Indeed, would that make the radio industry a healthier one? Less is not more unless less is zero. Then less is called "subscription."»
 

KUSEK, David e LEONHARD, Gerd (2005). The Future of Music. Berklee Press, Boston

Sobre o Pandora

«So we have companies like Pandora, seeking to, as its founder, Tim Westergren, puts it, "understand the DNA of music'. His company, which now contracts with Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, AOL, and Tower Records to make music recommendations for their custamers, employs thirty "music analysts" with a minimum requirement of a four-year degree in music theory. Every time a song arrives in this musical DNA shop, an analyst will devote twenty to thirty minutes of intense concentration to identifying as many as our hundred distinct variables, or "genes". Just to capture the emotional metrics of the singing voice, there are thirty-two variables: things like timbre, vibrato, pitch, and range. "Any voice can be understood as the combination of these genes", says Westergren. When this system is applied to all the instruments as well as the traits of the song - tempo, amplitude, etc. - the analyst produces a précis. If done right, says Westergren, another analyst can look at and virtually play the whole song in his or her head. More to the point, using this Music Genome Project, you can automate what a disk jockey does to customize a set according to your tastes» (levy, 2006: 252) 

«And for people who don't have the time to go out and find music? There's Pandora, an online streaming music service that suggests new songs based on ones you already like. "We would like to be the best radio station in the world for everybody," claims Tim Westergren, the founder. Professional musicians at Pandora have spent the last six years analyzing songs based on 400 different musical attributes called the music genome project. "We have this DNA of music and when you come to Pandora you type in the name of a song you like. Pandora takes a looks at that song's DNA and tried to find musical neighbours."» (http://www.cbc.ca/theend/radio.html)

«É como um iPod, só que as baterias nunca se esgotam» (programar como um...)

«Radio industry consultants, explicitly pandering to the millions of people perpetually zoned into the permanent shuffle of their own music collections, have tried to answer this challenge with the first major new broadcast format in years. It is dubbed "Jack'. The name comes from the buddy-buddy moniker assigned to the ocasional voice-over interspersed between tunes - though some staions call their voices Bob or Hank or Dave or Max. Instead of ticking to a playlist of a couple of dozen carefully chosen songs, a Jack station draws on a selection of hundreds, spanning several decades and multiple genres. The unofficial motto of Jack is «If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. "The almost anything - goes eclecticism of the format, sometimes called adult hits, seems to appeal to listeners accustomed to scanning through thousands of MP3s at a time", explains a New York Times reporter. WCBS, the New York City station that adopted the format, puts it more blatantly in one of its promos: "It's like an iPod, only the batteries never run out". But why accept someone else's version of your iPod when you have the real thing?» (Levy, 2006: 248) 

As (limitações da) rádio e o (segredo do) iPod

«Years ago, radio had abandoned the idea of providing variety to listeners and instead concentrated on putting just a few well-tested songs on "heavy rotation" so the most popular tunes at the moment (generally the lowest artistic common denominator, catchy and forgettable stuff) would dominate the airwaves. Who could tolerate such unimaginative programming when there were iPods, which could shuffle thousands of songs that had passed the ultimate focus group - you, the sole listener, endorsing every cut because you consciously ripped it into the system?» (levy, 2006: 248)

As previsões sobre a Internet

«Twenty years later, the Internet became the communications trend du jour, and even wilder predictions were made about its future. We know now that every optimistic prognostication made during the early nineties about the Internet, no matter how outlandish, underestimated what actually happened. No one back then dared to claim that within a decade a billion people would be connected, that many times more e-mails than letter would be sent, that the biggest stores in the world would have no walls (...)» (Levy, 2006: 121)

 

O que significa «geração iPod»

«Headline writers and cultural critics talk of an 'iPod Generation.' This can mean a number of things - sometimes it's just a shorthand way of saying "young people" - but generally it's used to depict a mind-set that demands choice and the means to scroll through ideas and ideologies as easily as a finger circles the wheel on the iconic front panel of an iPod. "It seems to me that a lot of younger listeners think the way the iPod the iPod thinks;' wrote Alex Ross in The New Yorker. "They are no longer so invested in a single way of seeing the world". (Levy, 2006: 4) 

Alex Ross: «I have seen the future, and it is called Shuffle—the setting on the iPod that skips randomly from one track to another. (...) It seems to me that a lot of younger listeners think the way the iPod thinks. They are no longer so invested in a single genre, one that promises to mold their being or save the world.» («LISTEN TO THIS»,by ALEX ROSS, New Yorker, Issue of 2004-02-16 and 23)

O que é que o iPod tem (uma rádio pessoal)

Uma mistura de coisas: «Digital technology gathers, shreds, and empowers, all at once. Mix, mash, rip, burn, plunder, and discover: these are the things that the digital world can do much more easily than before- or for the first time. The iPod, and the download dollar-store that accompanies it, makes sense of those things without making our brains hurt.» (Levy, 2006: 4) 

A escolha aleatória: «(...)the best way, I discovered, was to find the setting that said "shuffle", click through the menus till you got to a list of all your songs, pick a starting place, and go. From that point, your whole collection would resequence itself in glorious chaos. It was like my own private radio station that played only songs that I liked - after all, I had put them there» (Levy, 2006: 18)

Moda: «Most emphatically, the iPod has taken on that adjective almost as a birthright. What is the link between coolness and iPods? Is trendiness a significant component of the iPod's success? Why has the world of fashion embraced the iPod? Why won't your kids accept a generic substitute, which plays the same damn songs an iPod does?» (Levy, 2006: 59) 

Capacidade de armazenagem: «In fact, in 2005, a Solutions Research Group study showed that the average iPod owner has 504 songs; a different survey found that the average was 900. Apple Executive Vice President Phil Schiller says that Apple has concluded that a limit of 1,000 songs turns out to be the "sweet spot" for most people, the number that sticks in most people's minds as the most they'll need. (A 2004 Jupiter Research study backs him up further: it found that only 23 percent of consumers said that they'd ever need more than 1,000 songs on their player at one time.)» (Levy, 2006: 84)

Blogues e iPods: «Blogging and iPods were a great match, two innovations that had enjoyed a parallel run to glory in the early 2000s. Many people blogged about their iPods - what they were listening to on the iPod, what color they ad chosen for their boyfriend, how they slept with the iPod under their pillow, and how pissed they were that they had bought a new iPod just before Apple released a newer, cooler iteration. ("iPod" as, in fact, the most popular 'tag' or category, in the massive blog massive search engine Technorati.) (Levy, 2006: 129-130)

Números sobre o iPod

«By the end of 2005, Apple Computer had sold more than 42 million iPods, at prices ranging from $99 to $599 (most sold in the middle range). What's more, at that time the iPod had about 75 percent market share of the entire category of digital music players. Its online digital music emporium, the iTunes Music Store, has sold more than a billion songs at 99 cents each, representing about 85 percent of all legal paid downloads, a market that barely existed before Steve Jobs (...)» (Levy, 2006: 3) 

Uma opinião sobre o iPod

«it is the most familiar, and certainly the most desirable, new object of the twenty-first century» (Levy, 2006: 1) 

Podcast e a rádio

«But music is not the only thing the iPod, and its retail-business brother, the iTunes Music Store, shuffles. Downloading podcasts- of commercial and public radio shows or home-brew audio concoctions - adds the intimacy of old fashioned radio to the mix.» (Levy, 2006: xi) 

LEVY, Steven (2006). The Perfect Thing. Nova Iorque: Simon & Schuster

Franceses confiam mais na rádio

«(...) Para lá das dúvidas face ao trabalho da comunicação social, aos olhos de 57% dos entrevistados "as coisas passaram-se tal e qual ou, pelo menos, de modo muito aproximado" aos relatos radiofónicos, afirma o vigésimo barómetro La Croix-TNS Sofres - realizado com base num universo de mil inquiridos e particularmente aguardado por todos devido ao actual contexto político do país. A rádio, desde sempre considerada como o media mais fiável, ganha assim um pouco mais de terreno na consideração dos franceses.
O mesmo estudo avança ainda ser a imprensa escrita a segunda posicionada no ranking da credibilidade mediática (com 51%), seguida pela televisão (que ganha, contudo, quatro pontos relativamente ao ano passado) e pela Internet, a conquistar a confiança de 30% dos franceses, contra os 24% anotados em 2006.» (fonte: DN, 'Verdade' da rádio aligeira desconfiança nos media, Ana Pago, 21/02/07) 

«Download de vídeos cresce fortemente»

«BOSTON - Os gastos anuais com filmes baixados pela web chegarão a US$ 4 bilhões em 2011, frente aos autais US$ 111 milhões/ano. Os dados são de pesquisa da Adams Media Research. "A Internet vai revolucionar a distribuição de vídeos", afirmou o presidente da empresa de pesquisas, Tom Adams. O crescimento vai ser alimentado pelo surgimento de equipamentos como a Apple TV, um decodificador de 299 dólares que converte vídeos baixados da Internet em sinais que são exibidos em TVs de alta-definição. A Apple já está vendendo esse produto no site e vai iniciar as entregas no final do mês. A Adams Media Research aposta que os downloads vão crescer gradualmente à medida que os novos equipamentos obtiverem mais aceitação no mercado. A evolução desse mercado prevista pela pesquisa é de alcançar 472 milhões de dólares em 2007, 1,2 bilhão de dólares em 2008, 2 bilhões de dólares em 2009, 3,1 bilhões de dólares em 2010 e 4,1 bilhões de dólares em 2011. Nesse período, a propaganda em sistemas de transmissão de vídeos para PCs e TVs deve chegar a 1,7 bilhão de dólares.»

fonte: Info online, Abrim.com, «Download de vídeos cresce fortemente», 21 de fevereiro de 2007

(Castells, Manuel e Ince, Martin (2004), Conversas com Manuel Castells; Porto: Campo das Letras

Algumas experiências mediáticas com jovens

«Some examples include Radio Arte in Mexico, an all-youth-produced bilingual community radio station that trains and encourages youth to develop self-expression through the broadcast medium (see http://radioarte.org); the South African show Youth Network Television (YNTV), created in 1995 by Ubuntu Television; Blast, a British Broadcasting Corporation initiative encouraging 13- to 19-year olds throughout the United Kingdom to get involved in media production, and Chat the Planet, a television show and Internet community that connects groups of young Americans aged 15 to 25 years with their peers around the world, via satellite, for honest dialogue (see http://www.chattheplanet.com).» http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/documents/wyr05part2.pdf

 

Caracterização da geração iPod

«Global youth culture is created, adapted, accessed and disseminated largely through worldwide telecommunications networks that are rapidly expanding to reach many different parts of the world. The Internet, local and satellite television and radio, and other popular media are the channels through which youth-oriented cultural influences are transferred using music, direct advertising, websites and other means. Defined within this context, the current youth culture is clearly international in nature, as the consumption habits associated with it are to be found wherever young people have purchasing power».

Sobre a geração iPod (digital divides)

Terá de se ter em atenção que estamos a falar de sociedades industrializadas, onde as taxas de penetração dos meios de comunicação de social são elevadas. De acordo com as Nações Unidas, «For example, 331 out of every 1,000 people in Europe use the Internet, but the same is true for only around 92 per 1,000 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 37 per 1,000 in the Middle East and North Africa, and 15 per 1,000 in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Although these data are not age-specific, young people are among the principal users of computers and are likely highly represented in these figures. It is important to note that the disparities are not as great for the use of older forms of technology such as radio and television, which makes these media extremely useful for information distribution. For xample, rates of radio ownership are 813 per 1,000 in Europe, 410 per 1,000 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 277 per 1,000 in the Middle East and North Africa, and 198 per 1,000 in sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2004)».

Distinções entre novos e velhos médias

«The distinctions between old and new technologies may soon disappear as radio, television, satellite technologies and the Internet are combined in innovative ways to reach a wide range of target audiences» (youth in civil society; UN)

Acesso e propriedade convergem?

«The big opportunity of the future is in finding a way to unobtrusively and effortlessly present new music. Radio as we know it will be replaced by digital music services that tie seamlessly into music distribution systems. Access and ownership will ultimately converge. If my digital “radio station” delivers my favorite playlists on demand—anytime and anywhere—the only reason I would accept another service would be that the service is more personal. It is likely that the very term “radio” will go the way of the word “record”—into the dustbin, or on to the digerati-wordsmiths to morph into the future.»

Leonhard; Kusek, the future of music, pág 27