³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Recently, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a conference run by the . They do a good amount of sharing of knowledge - and this, , was a shining example.

Jonas Woost from and Steve Purdham from discussed digital music business models.

Then, a fascinating few sessions around "introducing your new favourite artists". The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ has "³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Introducing", but the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ isn't the only public service broadcaster introducing their audience to new music. Dominik Born, Project Manager for spoke about their service. It lets new bands upload their songs, but also allows people to grab widgets (and a nice iPhone app) to listen to it - based on music genre (so I could add all new trad-jazz bands to my website for example). What was interesting is that mx3.ch is a separately branded service for many of the public service broadcasters in Switzerland (who don't share any common brand, or, indeed, language). Nicely done.

And then we heard from Steve Pratt from Canada's (strapline: "Breaking New Sound"). CBC Radio 3 is the "worst radio station in the world", he said - it's programmed entirely against the rules. Music you've never heard before, chosen by the audience, and very few big hits - yet it works fantastically well, merged together with a set of podcasts and a great-looking website. CBC Radio 3 allows bands to upload their favourite songs, but then to give them a player for their own websites... a neat idea, giving bands a good incentive to take part (and covering their bandwidth costs). The radio station plays music which isn't owned by a record company, so the programmes are also fully available as a nicely chapterised podcast, too. Users can register and be given recommendations, be able to program their own playlists (some of whom get on-air from what I could tell), and they get their own page on the website too. This is really clever, really far-reaching stuff, and I was hugely impressed at seeing it.

Two more neat things in the final session of the day ("delivering innovative services"). First Henrik Heide, Editor of , showed off their new personalised radio player which goes live in a few weeks. DR offers a bunch of music stations (about 15 from memory), and the idea is that you listen to those non-stop music stations... until one of your favourite programmes is on the air, in which case the non-stop music station gracefully fades out, and it's replaced with the live radio programme. Once your favourite programme has finished, it fades your music stream back up again. Really nicely done.

And then it was the turn of Gerhard Zienczyk, Head of International Relations for the German radio broadcaster . They have a problem - they don't have all the music rights that they need to offer every radio programme on-demand. And they certainly can't supply their programmes for download onto your iPhone. So... they've a novel way round it - they get you to record the programmes yourself. The is a free download from their site, which records WDR radio services (based on the download of an EPG). This records the 128k MP3 stream; imports the resulting full programme into your iTunes, and lets you get the entire thing in a DRM-free file which you can then listen to on your iPhone out and about. A clever (and visually beautiful) way around a legal licensing issue. Neatly done.

Adam Bowie kicked off the second day from the UK's , talking us through the rebrand of the station. This was a similar presentation to Clive Dickens at the 's last year, but with additional information about what the station's done since. I also learnt that their management blog, , is the first thing their staff members see whenever they log into their computers - neat idea.

A nice man from was next, talking about the online research he's done; and discussing some radio drama with a good accompanying website.

Then it was the turn of Brett Spencer from ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 5 Live. Brett showed off the visualised radio trial we ran earlier in the year; showed a nicely put together video about how the station made their Wimbledon coverage an interactive thing; and finally discussed their football player (you'll find this at bbc.co.uk/widgets.

Then, a bit of an odd thing from , lots of exciting French drama, sound effects, odd bouncing eggs, and incomprehensible things; and more mobile apps from Sweden's - including, yes, yet another iPhone app. They're even advertising their podcasts on Spotify, they've paid-for an entire tube train to be coloured in their SR branding too, under the idea that (SR podcasts are) "make getting to work faster". Really nice to see people promoting podcasting, and not simply relying on the radio station and word of mouth. Incidentally, SR's iPhone app took significant time to get agreed - over six months, I believe.

Finally, - another witty and clever presentation. Brilliantly, started his first slide with "Slide 1 of 2,879″ on the bottom-right. Believes that there's a great future for community radio in many areas of the world, but does say, starkly, that radio will die out in Asia. "From shouting to sharing" is his nicely observed theme of how technology is changing things.

Jonathan discussed many of the radio stations that he works for in Africa. Really interesting in terms of funding, and how mobile phone SIM cards are used as currency; indeed, mobile needs to be integrated much closer into radio broadcasters' work. He uses RFID tags to automatically record university lectures for a local radio station ("this is the card that turns the lights on"); and has a novel idea for metadata - "you must say what this lecture is about in the first three sentences otherwise you won't get paid": excellent social behaviour! Says that kids don't like websites of broadcasters - "most broadcasters websites look finished": they'd much rather be involved more.

It was a good couple of days - some very useful new contacts, some inspiring discussions, and some neat ideas for Radio at the Edge later this year (November 9th, mark your diaries now). Particularly interesting was additional monitors showing the @mmradio Twitter account - someone in the audience writing up interesting quotes from the speakers (though no attempt at conversation with the twitterverse).

This is an edited, rather more polite, version from my own blog.