Research conducted by Radioplayer shows that people still do want radio in their cars.
81% of car purchasers said they would not buy a car without a radio.
Despite the high recognition in cars, radio will have to keep up with the media offering from smartphones to maintain its relevance in the car. Nick Piggott from RadioDNS and Yaan Legarson from Radioplayer explored the strategies for keeping radio relevant in the car and on other digital platforms.
We start from a position of strength, but what is the threat? asked Nick Piggott.
“The threat is that the radio experience is only very basic information in comparison to the multimedia offering from connected devices, which offers much richer content to the people in a car.
“Once the car is connected to the internet and your dashboard looks like your phone, then radio is at a disadvantage unless we can improve our offering,” said Legarson. In a disconnected vehicle the experience for radio is the same as the experience for anything else, such as the CD player, but once a car is connected the experience is enhanced and so is the expectation of the driver and passengers.
“We cannot allow radio in the car to look worse than Spotify, which can display album name, artist info, song playing and cover art. If we don’t do that, we look terrible compared with the richer offering from Spotify or other audio services. Radio can seem very old fashioned in comparison,” said Legarson.
Nick Piggott made the point that the worldwide automotive industry needs to hear that the whole radio industry is committed to the one solution. The automotive industry IS interested in working with radio, but wants the radio industry “to take the lead to show that we are serious about integrating radio into the car.”
Yann Legarson explained that Radioplayer is one way to achieve what is needed in the car because it is focused on radio and backed only by broadcasters. “We are the broadcaster,” he said.
Radioplayer is proposing that Asian radio companies may like to use the Radioplayer service to “get your radio station everywhere.” Radioplayer can “help you control your distribution into the car… we negotiate with car manufacturers to keep the prominence of radio in all cars,” he said.
In another session, RCS CEO Philippe Generali also addressed the issue of competition for the car dashboard, reinforcing the point that radio stations need to compete more aggressively for prominence in connected cars.
“RCS Audio display using RDS can present album art, pictures, advertiser graphics and logos to allow you to compete with your streaming services competitors… We make you look as good as you sound,” he said.