We were treated to how a lot of internet radio stations were essentially using Audioboo to generate snack-sized content (to use a new term, ‘legobricking’, ie making a richer experience from small bits) – this led us to some deal with Radioplayer where we can become a very economical and a very social listen-again service for the air.
A radio station can have one of our pro accounts and then very simply turn it on to a feature on Radioplayer which allows people not only to listen to their live stream but to seize content the station has produced. The scaling prices are very small so it means that it’s not just big stations that can manage to have that kind of listen-again functionality – sometimes it can go all the way down to community and student radio. We’re pumped up about it and we’re excited that if the Radioplayer goes international, we’re hooked into that initiative also.
What’s the backdrop to this boom in tech startups?
I do believe what’s exciting about the technology sector may be the massive growth of the open source movement. Going from my time at Playjam, we raised enough money to spend L1m on databases and servers and God knows what else. These days you can download a bunch of that stuff at no cost – you can hire services very simply in a physical location or in the cloud, and so i think the barriers to entry in terms of trying new technology are tiny in comparison with what there were and now they’re affordable. It’s created a whole host of tries to create new businesses.
I think the downside of that is that the UK doesn’t appreciate how transformational the internet is compared to the US. I think we’re a lot more focused on the physicality of an investment, maybe it’s a factory, pharmacy or IP – a thing that we can see and hold. In the US, it’s very much about an opportunity. Investors will be at a business or start-up, they’ll sense the opportunity and then fund it to aid realise that opportunity. I don’t think we’re particularly proficient at that.
Given where we were in the UK ten years ago, I do believe it’s an amazing time to be described as a tech startup – we simply need to be a bit better in internet marketing.
Silicon Valley has been looking for 50 years and has built some very close connections with the universities out there – it is usually got a lot of the ex-employees from all the large companies of the last 5-10 years who be aware of tricks of the trade and we lack that cultural side of investment in technology. We have some big funds, nevertheless they don’t necessarily come in around the first round.
Two and a half years back the thing that we heard was that we’re prematurily . and I think that’s the part of the jigsaw that must change in the UK. A lot of it is cultural and it’ll take years.
How might digital media still evolve and how does Audioboo see itself evolving by using it?
I’m terrible at predictions; if you look at the last two years around the Guardian you’ll know that, however think on the tech front connected TVs shall be massive before next Christmas. The ability of a TV to have an internet connection which can then allow you free access to services is huge. I was on the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) a couple of weeks ago and everything was about connected TVs and tablets but it’ll be a fundamental shift from both paid TV services along with a set-top box to people coming up with interesting new models to essentially attach different kinds of data to traditional TV.
I do believe privacy is going to be a huge issue too, whether that’s in terms of social giants like Facebook or the Leveson enquiry and intrusion by traditional media into people’s lives. I do believe we haven’t begun to see the real ramifications of that yet.
I’ve got an open mind on Nokia – a lot of things have been said about Nokia located on their last legs however think that if they can harness their still immensely strong and powerful distribution network they’re able to turn that around. We’ll must wait and see on Blackberry.
And in terms of Audioboo, we’ve pretty much spent the past 6 months working on partnerships. We’ve never witnessed ourselves as a massive disrupter, more of a companion for traditional media to begin to explore these new mobile, social and native platforms. Hopefully a lot of those will come to fruition in the next 6 months, writes tagza.
