IMPORTANT: Project group formation info

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As I told you at the seminar today, we will form the project groups next week, on Tuesday.

I have asked our guest lecturer to shorten his talk, so we will form the project groups that you will work in from October to December immediately following his (shortened) lecture.

I hope we can do this quickly, but please take into account that there is a high chance that we will not be finished by 15.00 but rather a bit later. If you can't come to this lecture, please ask a friend of yours to represent you and your interests at the group formation exercise.

After the last two seminars (seminars 3 & 4), we now have 23 suggestions for topics for the project group. I would once again like you to VOTE on Doodle and indicated which three ideas/project groups (listed below) you could consider working with for the rest of the term!

We do this vote for several reasons, but the main benefit is not primarily for me, but rather for you to learn which topics seem more likely to attract enough interest to form groups around. It will also help us to speed up the process on Tuesday by not bothering to try to form groups around less popular topics. DO NOTE that you can go back to the Doodle page and edit your selections after you see what other people have voted for. Also please note that you are not bound by your Doodle-selections - this is just a way to reveal and coordinate your interests and preferences.

We are aiming for project groups with 5-6 persons in each group. It is possible to form two groups working on the same topic, but it is then crucial that these group find a way to divide the topic up and coordinate their work (loosely) so that that they don't overlap too much!

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Here are the suggested topics in order of popularity (number of votes) and with those topics that attracted two groups first.

1. School radio/podcasts

Some teachers have made experiments with using podcasts in education (for example Björn Hedin, some of you have taken his (Swedish-language) course on "Interactive media technology"). What is state of the art and what is the (future) role of radio broadcasts (in different countries) and/or of podcasts (or "enhanced podcasts" with powerpoint slides?) in (higher) education?

2. HCI challenges: always-present radio

How could technological/human-computer interaction (HCI) solutions allow us to always bring radio with us? How about tapping the phone against the computer to continue to play the podcast when you leave the office and tapping it against the car stereo to switch to the speakers when you sit down in the car and later to your home stereo? Sharing a podcast by tapping on someone else's phone? What other HCI ideas and challenges could make radio more useful in and fun?

3. The audio pool

Intelligent algorithms monitor your choices and add (similar) stuff to your "audio pool" based on your previous selections and feedback ("I like this", tags etc.) You can affect and alter the flow with a few "dials" and "buttons" (?); the proportion of talk/music, different "modes" (at-work, in-the-car, walking-the-dog, moods etc.). Perhaps people will subscribe to your audio pool or you to theirs?

4. Radio advertising of the future

Single advertisers (companies) could "own" whole shows at the birth of commercial radio, now they just buy time on popular channels. What is the history, the present and the future of radio ad formats, radio ad trends and the radio ad business? What kind of ads, or ad for what kind of products "work" on the radio? Could we see the return (development) of older radio ad practices with single advertisers owning or sponsoring a web radio channel or a podcast show?

5. Economic models of (future) radio

Skip the part about defining what radio is and what it will become (above) and jump right in to a discussion of how economic factors affect current and future changes in (the business of) radio! What new business models could/are arising? What formats will thrive in the future and which will be in decline (due to economic pressures of varying kinds)? What is the future of public service (license fees)?

6. Important message to the public - handling crises in a post-radio age

Radio/broadcast has and still does play an important role in times of crisis. How can the government reach citizens and a whole nation in a post-radio age? The hurricane "Gudrun" hit Sweden in January 2005. Around 75 million cubic meters of trees were felled by the storm and 100 000 persons had no electricity four days later (it took 40 days to restore electricity to everyone and it was fortunately a relatively warm winter). What is the role of radio in times of crisis and what will happen if radio itself will go through crises in the coming decades?

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7. Finding a balance between active and passive listening

Some people want to have total control and might spend a lot of time deciding content they will listen to on the radio. Others prefer to press one button once and then lean back and let others do the selection (filtering). How can these two modes of listening to radio be combined; what are the ways of finding a "balance" between "active" and "passive" listening?

8. Glocal radio

Mass radio mixed with extremely local content, for example customized/personalized information about the traffic flow on the road or the subway line you use when you travel to work (but not other roads or subway lines), about the weather where you are /will be during the day (but not other parts of the country), about stuff that has happened nearby where you live, or related to the sports team you cheer for (etc.). How would such radio come true?

9. Radio channels in an age of abundance

If there is an infinite number of radio channels (or an infinite number of podcast shows), how do listeners find their favorites and how do radio channels (or podcasts) find their listeners? How can you create meaning and find/form a taste of your own in the flood of content that washes over us? Can radio channels or podcasts be "tamed", classified, organized, clustered, tied to specific interests ("user who like this podcast usually also listen to...")?

10. Niche podcasts

What is the future of (amateur, zero-budget) producers of niche podcasts and their audiences? Who spends their leisure time doing weekly 90 minute long podcasts about recent events in World of Warcraft or about the Electric Vehicle scene (and why)? Who listens and how does producers and audiences find each other? What are the options to commercialize such podcasts as a supplement to or as a main source of income for producers? What does the world of (niche, amateur) podcasts look like, and what will the future bring?

11. Music radio and talk radio

What is the relationship between music and talk on the radio? What is the role of talkaboutmusic (for example in-between songs) on radio? Is it a nuisance, or is the talk, the point of view and the contextualization of music ("that was a great song from X and here is the latest from upcoming Norwegian trash metal band Y...") something that adds value (and that makes radio different (better?) than Spotify playlists)? Does talk about music bridge music and talk radio? Is there a role for music on the radio in the future? If so, which?

12. Listening habits of the young generation

Commercial radio forces public service to mind their quality, to not lean back and take it easy. Commercial radio also fosters a new generation of radio listeners to develop radio habits. These radio listeners might at a later point develop public service habits - so public service "loves" commercial radio. But what happens if/when young people stop listening to radio? Is that, or how is that a loss for society, democracy etc.? Could (or how could) radio become more popular among young listeners in today's saturated media landscape?

13. The death of radio

Radio is dead, long live radio! Radio as we know it (broadcast of electromagnetic signals through the ether - be they analog or digital) will soon be dead and it will be replaced by [please specify]. What will a post-radio world look like? Where (how) will we listen to music and talk formats (news, weather, documentaries, radio theater, sports etc)?

14. The comeback of the radio set

Radio was one furniture and later smaller (portable) radio sets. Now radio is everywhere, in our cell phones, in our iPods and in our cars. But could the radio set as a stand-alone gadget be revived, perhaps combing super-easy and convenient access to "long audio" podcasts, web radio and other sorts of "non-traditional" radio content and distribution channels (preset/programmable buttons? automatic subscriptions to favorite podcasts? - think of the audio equivalent of a digital photo frame)? Could it be customized in the manufacturing process according to different users' varying needs? What would such a radio set look like and what functionality would it encompass?

15. Pay for performances

Daniel Johansson indicated a shift when it comes to music from paying for recordings (a CD) to paying for performances or actual music "use" (concert, Spotify). In Spotify, a flat fee is divided into small pieces and sent off to the artists you listen to (although, as we have heard, most of the money stops at the record company). Flatter ("flatter" + "flat rate") allows you to donate an amount of money that you decide and divide it evenly among all the great content providers on the Internet that you like. What would a payment model that rewards "performances" on the radio (or podcasts or web radio) look like? This topic is related to the seminar 3 topic "economic models of (future) radio".

16. Future radio defined?

What is radio today? What will radio be in the future? A combination of distributions channels (FM, podcast, streaming, satellite etc.) and formats/genres (sport, news, weather, music, documentaries)? Is an editor (a filter) that/who chooses content for you important (excludes Spotify)? Does it make sense to talk about "radio" any longer, or should more fine-grained and specialized terms be used? Which distribution channels (transmission of signals through the air and/or Internet convergence) and formats will thrive in the future and which are doomed?

17. The future of digital radio

Is digital radio broadcasting dead before arrival? DAB+ (ongoing experiments being conducted in Sweden) is technically superior to both DAB and FM, but will that matter? Will digital radio make inroads and eventually take over, will FM broadcasting be terminated, or will we just stay with FM and go for Internet radio instead?

18. Bringing the Internet to radio

There is a lot of talk about bringing radio to the Internet, but little talk about bringing the Internet to radio. Blogs, Facebook and Twitter create "waves" of information cascading across the Internet. How can dispersed and potentially unreliable information be vetted/audited and broadcasted, bringing the latest Arabian spring news or the latest political chatter to a truly mass media channel by monitoring, summarizing and reporting on what is happening on the Internet right now?

19. Social networks and radio

Radio reached the masses (before). Today social networks reaches the masses. How can/might social networks + radio become a hit in the future?

20. Place-bound glocal radio

There was a glocal radio topic last week, but what if glocal radio was not something that just customized the radio content according to where you are at the moment and your personal habits, but rather tied to "places" that you could actively subscribe to? Perhaps people could subscribe to different geographic places or areas in different parts of the world to follow what is happening there?

21. Public service of the future

What is the role of public service in the future? More important than ever? A relic, a dinosaur looming towards its extinction? What is public service? Radio and TV, or, using available media/tools (including blogs and the Internet) in order to do [something important]?

22. Radiotwitter

Should they be 10 seconds long, or 20? Who should manage them (if not SR)? What connections to other existing networks, big or/and small, could attract meaningful soundbites? What kind of limitations would help keep quality high?

23. Radio for the deaf?

People who are deaf should not be excluded. Also deaf people want objective news and information about a crisis. Is there some way of bringing, or creating radio for people who can't hear? How can everyone be part of the community of radio listeners?

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Guest Lecture 17 - Oct 6 (10-12) - Fredrik Stiernstedt

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Time and place: Thursday October 6, 10-12 in seminar room Q31

Title: "The 'future of radio' as a discourse in radio production"

Guest: Fredrik Stiernstedt, Ph.D. candidate in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University"

Talk: Music radio, especially formatted background radio, has faced new competition during the last decade. Digital distribution of music (filesharing and audio-streaming) have made music in general more available. Actors such as Spotify and Last FM have challenged the role previously played by music format radio: delivering playlists for background consumption. At the same time, social media in general, such as Facebook and Twitter, has been perceived as challenges to music radio. The ways in which they facilitate sociality, presence and "being-togetherness" is seen as posing a threat to the one of the central social functions of music format radio. How have these new forms of competition been handled by actors in the Swedish music radio industry? In my talk, I will give some examples drawing on ongoing fieldwork, of how the producers of MTG-radio (Rix FM, Lugna Favioriter, Bandit Rock, NRJ) have made sense of this new competitive situation. More generally, how has the organization and labour processes been transformed and challenged by new digital and social media? I will also give a brief history of Swedish music radio and a short overview of the current situation of Swedish music radio in relation to industry structure, production practices and audiences.

About: Fredrik Stiernstedt has a long experience as a broadcaster and DJ. He is currently working on a dissertation about creative labor and new media technologies in the Swedish music radio industry.

Literature: Fredrik suggests you have a look at (the Swedish-language) Sveriges Radios Framtidsutredning [Swedish Radio's Future Inquiry]. It projects different scenarios for the future for public service radio 5-10 years into the future (2015-2020).

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Guest Lecture 16 - Oct 4 (13-15) - Lars Jonsson

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Time and place: Tuesday October 4, 13-15 in lecture hall L1

Title: "Digital radio - future trends"

Guest: Lars Jonsson, Technical strategist at Swedish Radio (SR)

Talk: This presentation covers the alternatives for Digital Radio now used in Europe and world wide. Streaming live services - web radio over the Internet to cell phones and PCs are now gaining momentum as compared to Digital Radio via transmitters. Different options and technical systems such as DAB, DAB+ etc. will be examined. Radio DNS is a new international standardization initiative which can link FM, DAB+ and web radio to for the benefit of listeners, irrespective of which technical system they use. The current situation in Sweden for the roll-out of Digital Radio is wait and see from politicians, Public Service and commercial radio. Other countries, such as the UK, Norway and Denmark have millions of DAB receivers and now consider the time scale for the close-down of their FM services.

About: Lars Jonsson was born in 1949 and received an M.Sc. in Electronic Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in 1972. He has worked with developments in Swedish Public Service TV and Radio broadcasting since then. During the last decades, Lars has worked on digital radio, archiving, audio computer infrastructure and network projects within Swedish Radio. He has been active in many standards working groups with the Audio Engineering Society and European Broadcasting Union (EBU). He currently chairs the EBU Audio Contribution over IP working group, and is also the vice chair of the EBU strategic group of Future Networks and Storage.

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The executive group

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I usually don't publish reminders here, but I do notice that so much has happened and so much has been published on the blog since last week that some of you might need a reminder about the executive group. Today is the last day to hand in an application (1 page) if you want to be in the executive group!

Read more about it in the previous blog post.

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Doodle-vote for seminar 4 topics

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I think we are all tired after a long afternoon of lectures. I did add only one more suggestion for a topic. See all 23 topic here and VOTE for your three favorites here today (Wednesday) or tomorrow!

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23. Radio as the master storyteller medium

Nancy Updike passionately argued that human being are hardwired to listen to stories, and that radio isn't old-fashioned, but rather a timeless medium for telling stories. Radio is intimate; the reporter is right next the person being interviewed in the sofa and radio is right in the listeners ear. Radio is also inexpensive both in terms of time and money, so you can afford to throw out and redo something, or try something that would be much more expensive on TV. This group will describe the future of radio and why radio rules!

Visit to Swedish Radio Mon Oct 3

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The "lecture" on Monday is not really a lecture, but rather a visit to Swedish Radio.

Our contact person at SR is very busy with organizing the Radio Day (Thursday), so I don't have a lot of info about our visit at the moment beyond the fact that will probably meet someone who will talk about "future strategies", someone else who will talk about "business intelligence" [omvärldsbevakning] and perhaps someone who will talk about SR's presence in mobile phones.

I do have some practical information though:

- The program starts at 13.00 for a duration of two hours (at the most).

- We will be in the "Radio House" [Radiohuset] - Oxenstiernsgatan 20. You can walk there in 30 minutes at a brisk pace (see map below) or you can take bus number 4 from KTH to the bus station "Radiohuset". The trip takes 10 minutes and there are buses every 5 minutes.

- We don't have to go to the reception, but will rather go directly to "Studio 5". This studio is the studio furtherest away from the entrance/near the reception.

That's the practical information you need, I will get back with some supplementary info (probably on Friday) when I know more about our visit.

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On attendance

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As you all hopefully know, what is primarily examined during the start-up phase of the course is attendance - presence at lectures and at seminars. The requirement is 75% attendance (see further below).

Me and Åke are a little bit unhappy about many students' habits of dropping in 5, 10 or 15 minutes after a lecture has begun, or sometimes even after the break. Some of you probably have really good reasons at times, but for others it seems to be a bad habit. As a direct consequence, if you turn up after half the lecture you'll only get credit for half the lecture and we'll give you a harder time in general when you turn up late.

Just as mass media is selling eyeballs to advertisers, your eyeballs (or rather your attention) is what we "sell" (offer) to our guest who have graciously taken time off their busy schedules to come visit us. This week we will have the opportunity to hear lectures by four International "superstars" who have been flown in to Sweden for the Radio Day event. Be on time and do remember that you are KTH in the eyes of our guests.

There have been 14 activities this far (1 introductory lecture, 10 guest lectures and 3 seminars). Two of these were Swedish-speaking guests so we discount these. Almost all of you have met the requirements this far (75% of 12 activities = 9).

When I look at the schedule, I see 6 activities planned for this week, 3 activities next week and 2 activities the week after that for a total of 23 activities. That means you should attend a total of (at least) 17 activities in order to fulfill the requirements. Some of you are almost there after tomorrow, others have a longer way to go.

If you fail to meet the 75% attendance requirement, you will have a second chance by meeting two other requirements;

- Meeting a 60% attendance requirement (14 activities) and

- Giving a mini-lecture in front of the class at the very last occasion (Thu Oct 13).

The mini-lecture will consist of a 15-minute and will require you to do some independent research on a radio-related topic. Which topic? Well, after the last seminar this Friday, the class will have worked on ~25 topics during the last two seminars. Half of these will be picked by project groups. You can select any of the "remaining" topics that we leave behind. By looking into one of these topics, you learn more yourself and by presenting it you do the class a favor.

Post questions about this or any other blog post in the form of comments if you think your question and the answer is of interest to the class in general.

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