One of the most important assets to a radio stations website is the one thing that is most often overlooked, the player people listen to the station on. It’s not easy to design a good player, as you want it to be small so it doesn’t get in the way while also allowing listeners to interact with the station. Because of that, when Erewash Sound started broadcasting full time on FM, I knew the player is something that would have to be closely looked at.
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Category Archives: Radio
Manic March
It’s been one of those non stop months for me, kicking off with the launch of Erewash Sound on the 6th. The launch was an all round success, aided by special guest Robert Lindsay of My Family fame, with a lot of listeners since tuning in and showing their support. Work has now also started on a new building for the station, intended to be complete by September, hosting new high tech studios and other facilities.
A few days after that I was off to New York for the FIRST NYC Regional, in which Systemetric ranked 47th out of 63 teams following an issue with the power supply to the robot’s Wi-Fi adapter in one match, and a drive code bug in another match. We were however first out of the crate and running, and the robot did perform well in other matches so overall we are satisfied with the robots performance.
Since coming back I have been working on a new radio player for Erewash Sound, to go live in the upcoming weeks, containing visual updates to incorporate information about the on air presenter and links to other pages of interest. The update comes with a revamped backend to allow easier expansion in the future and better mobile support, bringing a better mobile player as part of the update, in particular for the iPhone which will act like a native application when saved to the home screen.
Keeping Up With The Times
The great thing about working as a developer for a radio station at the moment is the influx of new technologies that being adopted. The challenge is implementing them, particularly given the rapidly changing nature of them. For example we’ve recently seen the announcement of services such as RadioDNS, the UK Radio Player and iTunes Tagging as included on the FM receiver on the iPod nano.
On top of this we’re also seeing a revival of existing technology, such as RDS RadioText which is now being included on many portable and table-top radios. With the large numbers of listeners with access to these technologies, it’s becoming more important for stations to jump on the bandwagon to be able to compete. Simply sending out the station slogan on the RadioText is no longer sufficient, listeners expect to be able to look at their radio and see which song is playing.
I’m particularly looking forward to the launch of UK Radio Player, designed by the BBC to be the first central radio player for British radio stations. Not only will it provide a simple platform for listeners to find their favourite radio stations online, it will also provide new opportunities for us to interact with listeners and easily promote the station. No doubt I intend on getting Erewash Sound on UK Radio Player as soon as the details are firmed by the BBC and made available to radio stations.