Order videos

Radio in the connected home

Jack Wetherill (Futuresource, UK), Nick Hathan (Google, UK), Michael Hill (Radioplayer, UK) and Mark Vellinga (Sonos, NL) discuss the opportunities for radio to work with connected home devices.

Connected home devices are great but do they just reinforce the radio
stations you know? How will listeners hear about your radio station
for the very first time?

At the moment, connected home devices aren’t great for discovery.
Instead they are getting better with new products and technologies, as
demonstrated by Michael Hill from Radioplayer. The main challenge is
getting new listeners to stick around. With connected devices there is
the potential to switch between apps very quickly and easily.

Google Home is coming later this year. Whilst details are still to be
confirmed, there is a lot of potential for radio stations. As
technology develops and Google Home learns more about the user, it
will become much easier for listeners to discover content from their
favourite radio stations and to be served recommendations relevant to
them.

Sonos have analysed data and found that, in the UK, there is a 50/50
split. 50% of usage is radio listening, 50% is music streaming. In
many other countries, such as the Netherlands, proportion of radio
listening is even higher. Essentially, millions of new ‘radios’ have
been sold in recent years and have broadened potential audience for
radio stations.