RadioTech Summit: RadioDNS Makes U.S. Debut
June 3, 2010: RadioDNS Chairman Nick Piggott began his talk at Radio Ink's RadioTech Summit with some background on how the project came about, asking, "How can we make radio more effective, measurable, and accountable?"
Piggott explained that the choice isn't between radio or the Internet, since each has advantages and disadvantages: Streaming doesn't scale well while broadcast is economical, but radio has no back channel for revenue. So the RadioDNS project is designed, he said, to "work out how to glue broadcast and the Internet together properly."
RadioDNS uses the metadata already broadcast by radio stations as an identifier that can be mapped to existing DNS services. Piggott said, "It's a really simple system. I'd like to make out that it's complicated, but it's not." Using London's Capital FM as an example, he showed how the metadata can be resolved into an IP address and pull up online content. Piggott also specified that RadioDNS itself "doesn't do anything" other than provide a lookup so an enabled device can match the IP address.
The clearest initial use for the technology, he said, is adding a visual channel, showing a radio running visual content over IP and some real onscreen campaigns that have run in the UK -- and an Audi with a RadioDNS display in "a place where television is not going to be going." The service also has the potential for a radio electronic program guide, based on iBiquity technology for HD Radio, and offers a flexible content tagging framework, with measurement data that can be shown to advertisers.
Piggott then said, "Until now, you may be saying, this is great, it's a wonderful theory, but show me something real."
That "something real" was a Nokia smartphone with a RadioDNS app installed. In a demo with the cooperation of RadioDNS member Clear Channel Radio, Piggott tuned in Classic Rock KUFX (KFOX)/San Francisco on the phone's FM tuner. Within a few seconds of KFOX's beginning to play, station content showed up on the screen, for the Greg Kihn morning show and then a concert calendar.
RadioDNS, Piggott noted, is a nonprofit organization, and there's no licensing or permission required to put the technology in place at a station or a manufacturer.
