Radio continues to try to be...relevant? Helpful?

And honestly, this may indeed help out.

Here's a story from Radio & Records:


-->
Originally Posted On Sep 8, 2008 5:05 PM ET
Song Tagging Technology Comes To FM Radio

By Mike Stern

A group of nine broadcast companies have announced their commitment to providing electronic data that will enable consumers to tag songs they hear on FM radio for immediate purchase bringing the music discovery and purchase processes closer together than ever. The first device to make use of this data will be the Microsoft Zune as part of a new set of features for the MP3 player.

Stations operated by Beasley, Bonneville, CBS Radio, Citadel, Clear Channel Radio, Cox Radio, Emmis, Entercom and Greater Media will be broadcasting the song tags enabling consumers to purchase music heard on over 450 radio stations across the country at the outset with more rolling out soon.

The impetus to pursue this idea came from radio broadcasters. "We approached Microsoft about this," says executive vice president of distribution development for Clear Channel Radio Jeff Littlejohn who was deeply involved in the project. "But it didn't take much selling."
The technology uses song "tags," unique identifiers for each individual song that are encrypted and sent over an FM radio signal. Consumers with devices that can capture the identifier can either immediately purchase the song via digital download or save the information for purchase later. With the Microsoft’s Zune having an integrated FM tuner and wireless connectivity, the purchase can be essentially immediate if the user is in a Wi-Fi hot spot.

"It's a great way to make a simple radio really interactive," says Littlejohn. "Radio has been interactive through Web sites for a long time, but radio itself has not been interactive before. The idea of linking music discovery in just a couple of clicks to actual purchase is revolutionary."
A recent Microsoft study showed that 61% of respondents say radio is their primary source for discovering new music. “Radio is one of the primary ways people discover new music, which is why we have built an FM tuner into every Zune portable media player,” said Chris Stephenson, general manager of Global Marketing for Zune at Microsoft. “The leadership of these radio broadcasters has played an integral role in enabling millions of Zune users to tag and purchase songs directly from FM radio.”

While Microsoft will be the first to utilize the technology, it is not restricted. "This is able to be more than just Clear Channel, more than just HD Radio, more than just Apple or Microsoft," says Littlejohn. "It is a way for the entire industry to enable interactive music purchasing." He continues, "It can go beyond music as well. There are other things that could be tagged. It could also go beyond MP3 players. It's not a large leap to see FM radios starting to make their way into cell phones which are connected and would enable instant purchasing."
The technology, which uses RDS coding, is similar to that being used for HD Radio tagging which has been heavily promoted recently. The difference is in the wireless connectivity which allows FM tagging to be used without needing a cabled internet of any sort while HD tagging works with a docking station.

"From a radio broadcaster's standpoint this gives listeners a reason to come to my radio station and a reason to come back to my radio station," says Littlejohn. "It gives them an interactive feature they haven't previously had."

Orienting to Volume Changes--More IFS data!!!

Classes start for the Fall Semester tomorrow...well, today for those on a Tuesday/Thursday teaching schedule. And, I've spent the past few days getting syllabi ready for the coming term. One of the fortunate things is that I'm teaching "This is your Brain on Media,", the class I taught for IFS, again this semster as an S105 seminar. I was therefore able to keep what worked during IFS and revise what didn't.


As you may suspect if you've been following this blog lately, one thing that did work well was the student experiments. And, it's time to report on another one.


This was the second "Attention Group." They were interested in abrupt changes in volume in media and whether such a change would result in the automatic allocation of cognitive resources to processing the message. This is a phenomenon known as the orienting response. At first, the group seemed intent upon testing this in movie clips...but they had trouble finding examples...even though they were "sure they had seen them"!

In the end, music was what they selected (which The Audio Prof did not discourage!). The found four songs where the music was very quiet for an extended time and then got very loud. Furthermore, two of the songs were familar (Ironic from Alanis Morrisette and Bring Me to Life from Evanescence) and two of them were unfamiliar local bands that one of the students knew.


The students collected heart rate data during the songs presentations, which were played in random order to 4 other students. Then, they identified the points in each song where the volume change occurred. Here's what they found:

Now an orienting response is identified with a momentary deceleration in heart rate. And, this graph shows changes from the point at which the volume change occurred (the place where both lines are at "0" on the left side of the figure). And, you see that heart rate went down for both types of songs...so, they oriented to the volume changes just like the students thought would happen. Plus, they wondered whether familiarity with the song would have an impact. And, it seems that it did...the orienting responses were larger if the subject didn't know the song. Makes sense, right?

Congratulations to "Attention Group, Music" members:

David Benmen, Michelle Feder, Eliot Suitor-Feld, and Alexandra Wojtal

Bad Guys Music and Good Guys Music

So, my son is all about computer/video games now. Of course, he's only 5...so I know this is likely to be the beginning of many years to come. With a recent visit from Grandma and Grandpa came a Star Wars game that can plug into our TV set.

It's a great game...once we established the 15-minute-a-day-per-kid rule.

Even I like to play it.

Pause to let that sink in to you.

The other day was a son & dad day in our house for who knows what reason.
We were sitting at our dining room table eating lunch.
As usual, he starts telling me about the latest level he's on...he's up to level 4, he says with some pride.

Then he says, "You know dad, when the bad guys are on the screen you hear... dun, dun, du-dun, du, du-dun, du, du-dun..."

"But, when you hear the good guys it's du-du-du-dum du, du-du-du-dum-du, du-du-du-du."

You know the tunes.

Then he pauses for a few seconds and says "And guess what, the good guys' notes are always high notes and the bad guys' notes are always low notes."

They learn that music literacy pretty early.

Emotions Sure Are Peculiar

Many of you know that I study, among other things, emotions and how people respond emotionally to media. But, even though I study them and make predictions about how certain types of media variables will move people emotionally -- doesn't mean I have a clue about how things move me emotionally.

I just got back from our T600 series where today's speaker was a guest from the Singapore MIT Game Lab, whose name was Jesper Juul. The title of his talk was "Games for making friends and enemies: a small theory of games in social contexts." The study of games -- computer games, online games, even boardgames -- has become a big deal here at IU telecom. Since I'm not a gamer, but I have been working with several students who are, I try to attend as many such talks as I can to get a feel for what interests them.

During Juul's talk he was discussing the personal stories that often surround and individuate videogames for people. An example he gave was the game Animal Crossing something which I (of course) had never heard of. But beyond merely talking about the game, he directed us to this website that told a very personal story of Animal Crossing.

Now I'm also a researcher who studies music and its effect on people emotionally. And of course, this animal crossing tragedy has a very touching and emotional soundtrack to it. But there I was in the middle of the T600 meeting room surrounded by a packed house of graduate students and faculty from both IU telecom and SLIS, experiencing a perfect storm of emotional hot buttons. The music. The fact that my wife and kids often circle around the computer monitor at home playing Funkeys. The fact that about a year ago I lost my own mom to MS. Never mind that my mom never played Animal Crossing, never even touched a computer. Didn't matter. Tears came and it took all I could to keep from leaving the room to have a huge cry.

Emotions are peculiar.

Spring Break Storm Reminds Me of Music's Influence

As my friend Sam Bradley wrote in a recent blog posting, one of the things you get by living in the midwest is and unpredictable, cold, and snowy winter. Here's how my family and I spent Saturday...the first full day of Spring Break.

The storm actually came through Friday morning...starting while I was waiting to meet a friend at the Bloomington Bagel Company when the power went out. There were about a dozen or so of us sitting around there...a few of us "regulars" who know each other primarily as faces we recognize we see several mornings a week as we take advantage of their good bagels/muffins/coffee and free wi-fi. Three was the chatter of people making or filling orders and talking amongst themselves. And, as usual, in the background was the music of XM Radio. They usually have The Loft playing.

So, anyway, after a subtle 'pop' sound all the power went off and we sat there in only the natural light and silence. After about 45 seconds the power came back on, allowing the sound of orders being placed and filled. The chatter started up again....but something was wrong. What was it? It was the music. It was absent. And the place just wasn't the same. The energy seemed the drop down about 20 notches! It was amazing. I've recently been thinking more and more about the influence of music. I've published a piece with Francesca Dillman Carpentier in Media Psychology on tempo as a structural feature in music. Plus, I've been reading a great book on the topic recently...a title that I hope to finish over break.

But, this personal experience really drove it home.

Great link forwarded by a former student

Several times a semester I remind my undergrads that, when they are rich and famous and working dutifully in the telecommunications industry, I would certainly appreciate it if they would remember to send me information and articles they come across that I could use in my current classes.

My thanks to Amy Alyward a former T344 student who sent me this terrific blog entry by Paul Grein of Yahoo Music.

It's a reminder of the importance of knowing the CRITERIA researchers base their findings on. In this case, the findings are the top music albums in the land. Turns out, the #2 album last week by numbers was Michael Jackson's 25th Anniversary Album of Thriller. Then, why doesn't it appear in the Billboard 200? Find out by reading Grein's article.

Find it here.

Catch-up Catch-up

Almost 2 weeks since the last post. Lots has happened. I've finished up my tenure dossier...a little thing that encapsulates the work of the last 10 years. That took a little bit of time, and I keep pretty good records! Now the full faculty of The Department meet to discuss my case and vote whether to send it up the line to the next level. It's out of my hands now...I'll keep you updated as things go along.

Also I've been preparing for a new semester. Two classes this semester:

T344--Programming Strategies
and
T511--Research Methods in Audience Analysis

Looking forward to both of them. And, even though I've taught them before, they took time to prepare. Especially since the graduate one is meeting only once a week this semester...and the last time I taught it we met twice a week. Had to shrink everything into have the days.

And, there was a dissertation that I had to read, written by Zheng Wang who is going to join the faculty of Ohio State University. The dissertation was terrific, but as it was dealing with mathematical models of channel-changing behaviors and physiological reactions to media, it was not an easy read. But, the results were very exciting and I would expect to see MANY MANY pieces of research in top-tier journals in years to come. Congratulations to Dr. Wang.

And, last week was orientation week for new graduate students. Always an exciting time, filled with new possibilities. One of the things we do during orientation week is hold Area of Interest Meetings (AIMs). I was involved in one that was actually just a tour of the ICR, and one on the cognitive processing of media (which also included professors Fox, Grabe & Lang).

Another one I was a part of was the All Things Audio meeting. Often, in departments such as this, you are lucky to have even a single faculty member interested in audio issues. Most production AND research people focus primarily on the visual. But, our department is FORTUNATE to have three faculty members who are interested in sound/audio/music in some form or another. Andrew Bucksbarg, Norb Hebert and I hosted the group of students who are also interested in audio in their own ways. It was a blast.

But, busy.

Here's a link to a fascinating site that I actually got from the All Things Audio AIM. You should check it out:

peter chilvers generative music site

Long time comin'

I've been quiet for awhile. A couple of reasons. The first is because I've been working on revising a paper that I've been writing with Francesca Dillmann-Carpentier for a long time. And I mean a LONG TIME.

It's a paper about the impact of tempo and genre of music on physiological arousal. As always, it's a much better paper after we responded to the criticism and concerns of the reviewers. But...it took a long time. It's back in there hands, now. We'll wait and see if they like the improvements we've made.

Although I've gotten better at it...I have never been good a just "writing a little bit here and there, whenever I have a chance." So, toward the end of the revision process...it kind of monopolized all my time.

Antoher thing that took up some time is that I was called to JURY DUTY on Tuesday! I was "on call" all month. I'd have to call every night and see if they needed me. Juror 729. It was almost the end of the month...and then my number came up. I went into the justice building at 8am.

Went through the voir dire process and then about 3 hours later I...wasn't selected as one of the six. Although I'm glad to have seen the process, and reminded of how great a country we live in...flaws and all, that 3 hours set me quite far behind on other stuff.

One of the things I had to catch up on was reading Seungjo Lee's dissertation! Congratulations to Seungjo Lee, Ph.D.!!! He applied motivation activation to discrete emotion processing. It was a very impressive document...and you should be looking for excerpts from it at conferences to come!

I'm also now behind the 8-ball with lots of work on a grant application that's due March 8!

So, might be a while before I check back in again.

Reunions of two 80s bands in the works?

Some interesting news found on a current swing by a website I rarely visit--FMQB.

Apparently there is a very good chance that The Police and Van Halen might be (separately) planning reunions. That would be pretty interesting..especially considering what one of my favorite artists said in a recent New York Times article. Bloomington's own John Mellencamp (who, by the way, I saw coming out of the Dept. of Telecommunications the other day!!!) says that these are difficult days for "old school" rock acts like Tom Petty and himself. Wonder if Sting and Diamond Dave are counting on trying to get airplay for any new material...or will the just stick to reunion tours?

Cool NPR story only gets my hopes up

I mentioned several postings ago about how much I was enjoying my new ipod nano. I don't use it much for music, so far (I keep telling myself that all of that will change once I start working out more...yeah, right). Instead, it use it fo listening to pod casts. A recent one on NPR's Pop Culture
talked about a new audio recognition program that allows you to hum a tune that you can't identify and it will name it for you. If you don't want to listen to the podcast, you can hear the story right here.

So, I've been waiting to try it and have it work as easily as it sounded to during the Scott Simon piece. Unfortunately, it was less than impressive. It may be simply because I'm the Tone Def Prof. But, even songs that I KNOW are in their database I was unable to get it to correctly identify when I hummed them.

With the exception of "Holding Back the Years" by Simply Red. Frightening.

Check out the program yourself...let me know if your humming is more easily identified.