Absolute Radio begins tomorrow morning at 7.45am, and all weekend the station’s been on the ‘Road from V to A‘.

If the past few days are anything to go by, I’ve got a feeling I’ll be listening to the new station a lot. And despite living over 250 miles from Oxford, I’ll be migrating from the one I’ve listened to the most for months - another Absolute Radio station.

(And the Song Search confirms it… this morning at 5.50am Absolute played Bob Dylan’s Hurricane. Wow!)

Something getting blanket coverage in the media today is last nights earthquake. Whilst it was really very small in terms of damage, and thankfully a minimal number of injuries, it’s a rare occurrence here in the UK and quite exciting.

At around three minutes to midnight I was listening to BBC Radio Suffolk in bed just before the switch into Up All Night on Five Live. I felt the shaking - and thought it might just be a HGV, although it was a little long for that, and very quiet outside. In the first minute of the programme, the host asked the others in the studio if they just felt the earth move. They hadn’t, but within minutes over 50 text messages had been sent and after the news it became very clear that it was some sort of earthquake or tremor.

The programme continued with normal stories and text messages about the quake, and by half past had interviewed someone from the US Geological Survey about the location, severity and other interesting details - the guest explained that it was felt as far north as Consett, about 20 miles north of here. It was a really interesting hour on the radio, and quite amusing to hear that the first thing many did was login to Facebook and update their status. (Yeah - ok - I did the same).

It seems that BBC News 24 were a little slow off the mark - however Five Live, just meters away, were covering it from 01:00, with guests from BBC Radio in Lincoln. Whether it was just an editorial decision or not having the information, I don’t know - if they did, and Five Live is still the first outlet to get breaking news stories and correspondents, it certainly showed.

The comments about the earthquake on The Guardian and Digg are especially amusing. There’s also some interesting stuff on various blogs, and an analysis of how much quicker Twitter was at breaking the news. I half agree with this - I’d class this more as information, rather than news - especially given the policies at various mainstream media outlets of reporting a breaking story.

It’s interesting reading the comments on Read Write Web - especially those which mention that Sky News broke the story after 15 minutes, and the BBC 10 minutes later. It was being reported/discussed on Five Live within a few minutes, which isn’t too bad - but no-one is really talking about radio coverage. Whilst the internet and social media might have beat television on this occasion, I feel radio was pretty quick off the mark too.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the closure of some stations on DAB Digital Radio, and over the past week there’s been a lot of speculation on what GCap might do about their stake in Digital One, who operate a digital radio multiplex which carries stations like Planet Rock, theJazz, Virgin Radio and Birdsong. Fru Hazlitt (who I’ve stood next to - go me) has today announced that GCap will be closing Planet Rock and theJazz. She said;

“DAB with its current cost structure and slow consumer response is not an economically viable platform for the group.” - Fru Hazlitt

There’s plenty of analysis at Media Guardian, as well as comment from folk including James Cridland and Nick Piggot.

I know some people who bought digital radio just for Planet Rock, and I don’t imagine that they’ll be best pleased. On a personal level, DAB feels quite different to how it did back in 2004 when I bought my first set. It was a fairly heavy and robust thing bought after lots of saving up - really just to listen to Virgin Radio in the evenings where AM reception was poor and to get more choice during the day than FM offered.

Having moved to the North East, I can’t move for FM stations. There’s Alpha, Durham FM and Sun FM from TLRC alone, three BBC locals (Tees, Newcastle and York), Metro, Galaxy, TFM, Century and others - all on my cheap DAB/FM radio. But this isn’t the same everywhere and the loss of another two or three DAB stations will be noticable to real fans.

GCap also announced that they’re trying out streaming radio on the iPhone and iPod touch. This would be a “killer app” for me, especially having seen what my Reciva set can do with listen again content and podcasts. It’s not the first time that streaming radio has been done on the iPhone, but it does look good and easier for the consumer.

I turned on my DAB set this morning and had a flick through. It’s one of those ones with the knob that goes through the stations as you turn it, and I landed on Core which immediately changed its name to BFBS Radio. I knew it was closing (the last presenter-led show was a while ago), but the addition of BFBS was interesting. Oneword has also closed and whilst it retains the same name and a scrolling message about the closure, Birdsong has made a return.

Thinking about closures, I remember listening to the last few hours of Capital Disney on DAB last year, and the set still has “SMASH HITS!” in the list, although there’s nowt there. In London, Virgin Radio Groove has gone, and digital station The Arrow is dropping presenters. Sky News Radio has lost a partner, and Virgin Radio Viva will now not launch. Capital Gold and Classic Gold are now one. Life is also set to close.

It’s not like the services aren’t being replaced, though - I’ve noticed one or two additions here, including Traffic Radio. Personally I think it’s a shame for listeners - Capital Gold and Classic Gold felt distinctively different to me, and Sophie Bruce on Core was always great to listen to. A rolling news service on radio would be great - and it would be a shame if this now does not launch. Virgin Classic Rock took on several presenters a while back and made the station far more enjoyable to listen to. Many of those presenters have now gone. The Arrow has always been a haven when you didn’t fancy the heavier Planet Rock, but will also now have less presenters.

At the end of the day, digital radio sets are getting cheaper, more people are buying them and according to Digital One, stations are interested in joining the platform.

Smooth Radio

This week Smooth Radio North East launched, with local presenters Tom Davies and Paul Wappat, with the likes of Mark Goodier doing the morning show. Everyone I’ve spoken to this week is aware of the launch and has listened at some point. The buses passing the flat have their adverts, and the coverage on local TV has been widespread.

I’m not really a ”smooth” listener - but I have to admit the station sounds excellent. The local news in the evening is superb (especially CSI: Crook running this week), and the number of calls and texts being fielded by local presenters is immense. Everyone absolutely loves the music - well done them for pulling off a great launch.

Last week Aldi had a £50 internet radio and media player on offer. I’ve been looking at a Squeezebox for a while, but that still requires an amplifier of some sort, and it’d be redundant if and when I sorted out a media centre in the main room. Plus it’d be nice to wake up to stations all over the country, even world.

I’ve bought a Tevion product before - a digital radio in July. I keep meaning to finish the review of that, but it’s been brilliant so far. This internet radio uses the same design, and the software is similar. The main difference is the lack of a battery compartment, and it only does FM radio - not DAB. That’s a shame, but it’s easy to see why. I’ll cover the hardware, the Reciva service, listening to stations (and on demand, which is brilliant), adding streams and podcasts and playing your music collection.

The Hardware

On the way out of the store I had a peek in the box - it looked like it had been opened before. Getting home confirmed that, but it was a dream to set up. It feels heavy and well built, and I assume the antenna is for FM radio rather than wifi. There’s not a lot going on in the box - just the radio, the power adaptor, the manual and packing material.

There’s some little rubber feet, and it feels sturdy when you use it. Earlier in the year I looked at a few internet radios and they shot across the surface when you tried to press a button. Not so with this Tevion model. The buttons are a little clunky and you don’t always get a response.

The speakers / overall sound is very average, but no different from my clock radio which this is replacing. Fine for kitchen/bedroom environments.

Switching on the first time

On turning it on there’s an FM radio, which is simple enough. It defaulted to 108.00FM, and going down a few steps to Durham FM confirmed it was working fine.

On pressing the IR button, it’ll switch to internet radio, search for networks and come back with a list. I confirmed the network, then put in the WEP key. After a little while it changed to ‘Network OK’. On pressing select you can go down the stations menu, at which time it connects to the Reciva service to download a list of stations.

This was suprisingly quick. You can then browse by Genre or Country. The selection is impressive, and I’ve not yet not been able to find a station I listen to missing.

Reciva

What’s been really interesting is the Reciva service. Reciva supplies the database of stations, an area for users to login and add streams, favourite stations and podcasts and the actual brains of the radio to the manufacturer. I signed up to Reciva last night and set up some stations and podcasts, and then followed the manual to get the registration code and serial number from the radio.

Add this to the members area on the Reciva site, power off the radio at the wall and back on (to force the radio to download a list of stations again) and the information is automatically pulled down. Once this was done I played a few stations and streams with no problem, and was especially impressed with the podcasts feature. I download a lot of daily news podcasts and never listen to them - this could be really good to go to bed to, especially as you don’t need to download them locally first - the radio picks them up from Reciva and just starts playing them.

Listening to Stations

Tuning into stations is really easy to do. Just press select, choose Genre or Country and keep going until you find a station. Connection is almost instantaneous on some stations, but buffering for 10-15 seconds isn’t uncommon. I listened for a few hours today and didn’t have any stations buffering once the stream started.

On the BBC stations you get an option of Real, WMA and On Demand. Selecting On Demand comes back with a list of programmes available for listen again, and even more impressive is that you can pause them with the play/pause/stop/forward/back buttons. When you select a programme you can even specify the start time, which is a nice touch. These programmes sound about the same as anything else through the speakers.

Listening to a Music Library

The documentation for setting this up is pretty decent. I had some troubles to start with owing to an old LAN configuration, but passed that and through UPnP I was listening to all sorts of music I forgot I had on various hard drives.

Conclusion

This is a brilliant bit of kit. It’s really excited me about what radio can be with the internet, partly for the convenience of listening to podcasts almost as easily as Radio 4 live. I’ve not really found a breakfast show on local DAB or FM that I like waking up to, so am thinking of tuning into a random station every night and letting the radio wake me up at 6am with the internet radio option.

What would really make it brilliant is the ability to set up alarms with a station (say, weekdays, choose Original 106 at 7am, Saturday choose BBC Radio 2 at 6am and Sunday choose Einslive at 8am). I find the internet radio slow to start at times - I understand other models with the Reciva software are much quicker. Overall, I think it’s well worth the £50.

I’ve been using the radio for about a week now, and am still impressed. For a few days it wouldn’t connect to the Wireless network on its own, but this seems to have cleared and it’s now great. Some stations buffer a fair bit, which is annoying, but some not at all. The main drawback is still the slow startup time, but I’d consider a Reciva radio again in the future.

The website of the UK’s most popular radio station has been refreshed. The BBC Radio 2 website had been a little dated for a while now, and I much prefer the new colour scheme. The new logo is less interesting, but works well on the header.

Radio 2 have been changing their image for a while. A new schedule was introduced earlier this year and more TV names (Paul O’Grady, Davina McCall, Kate Thornton) have been presenting on the station. Visiting the website, it’s not where you’d expect to find The Organist Entertains. By appealing to a younger audience they might have grabbed some of the commercial listeners who enjoy the speech from Ken Bruce or Chris Evans, as the playlist feels younger too. At the same time, I don’t know anyone who has deserted the station as a listener. I think the new website reflects this. The internal presenter pages could do with updating now to keep within the new look.

Radio 1 updated their website last year, and it looks very good. Virgin Radio have always had an amazing website, but many in the UK still lag behind. Earlier in the year the BBC local radio stations started getting new look websites, but there appears to be a trend of using a tiny font size for descriptions. In the 100’s of websites I see a week on various forums and CSS gallery sites, there are very few going this way. Infact, try finding a small font on the Virgin Radio website.

I have to say, I think local radio stations are really missing a trick, and I hope the new community stations can find a way around this. With radio, especially BBC locals, there’s hours and hours of useful information and contacts every single day. Whilst you can get this information or a phone number by calling the stations helpline, this is often open from 10am to 4pm and unavailable to many people working.

As I see it, there are two ways around this. Give each show a blog, and at the end of every show simply list what happened, with links, guest names and phone numbers. This is extremely simple to put into place and easy for presenters or producers to manage. The other is to use a CMS and create an archive of information about every show. This might seem overkill but so many station websites are plastered in banners for the local shopping centre and dealership, with very limited information about the shows themselves, apart from a presenter Q & A.

I’ll be writing about this again soon - I think the new community stations could really shine with well designed, accessible and informative websites. Personally, I’d be very happy to volunteer a day a week (or few hours a day) on a community radio website.

One of the most interesting evolutions in online music for me is the rise of services last.fm and Pandora. Put simply, both sites take the music you like and find other tracks and artists you may also like, and play them to you as your own internet radio station.

Last.fm came about in 2002 as a social networking site, using AudioScrobbler to build a profile of your music taste. This is done either through the sites own streamed radio stations or by downloading a plugin for your media player. You sign up for a profile, download the plugin and start playing your music as usual. The details of each song played are sent back to last.fm who add it to your profile. After a while a picture builds up of your musical tastes and the social networking portion comes into its own.

You find yourself placed with neighbours who have similar tastes to you. You can play stations to discover music you might also like (neighbourhood radio), based on songs you loved on the last.fm player or launch a station based on similar artists to one you’ve selected. I’ve been using last.fm for over a year and really like the social portion. It’s a great and well focussed community, with the ability to add yourself as an attendee to an upcoming gig or chat with other fans of your favourite bands, as well as show off that you’ve listened to Tom Jones 155 times this week.

Recently I’ve found last.fm to be a little slow and decided to check out Pandora again. Pandora is sort of similar, but instead of recommendations uses the Music Genome Project - a musician listens to the track and analyses the elements to create the genome. When you visit Pandora and give an artist or track it’ll come back with the musical attributes and play similar tracks.

Part of the reason I stuck with last.fm for so long is that there seem to be a few more of my favourite artists there, and the forums which accompany them are mainly English, which is really nice as they’re mainly European artists. I tried them again and they’re still not there, but Oasis, Nerina Pallot and Foreigner came back with some great tracks. The selection seems more varied, and it’s not yet told me it can’t connect or that it’s run out of music.

A song going around in my head at the moment is Chocolate Cake by Crowded House. I stuck this in and for over an hour on two occasions haven’t skipped a single song - I’ve actually noted almost all of them as albums I’d like to find and hear more of.

So now if asked what my favourite music is, it can be summed up with a single released in 1991 that I don’t think even charted in the UK.

Pandora can also be played through a Squeezebox - a wireless device that plays internet stations and music on your PCs. If these devices come down in price like DAB sets and all sorts of Wi-Fi gear maybe they’ll even be on bedside tables and in showers. The future of radio is going to be fascinating, and it’ll be great if services like Pandora can step beyond the desktop and coexist in devices alongside a DAB tuner and MP3 player.

Just a quick post… In protest against the increase in fee’s payable by internet broadcasters numerous stations have gone silent for a day, including Yahoo! However, last.fm didn’t. You can decide for yourself on whether they should have or not - TechCrunch make the argument for, and last.fm against.

The majority of my listening is still via conventional long wave and medium wave, or the online streams of those stations, but internet radio can provide a nice alternative.

Ars Technica: Internet Radio “Day of Silence” hushes thousands of stations

Link: SaveNetRadio