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Radio 1 to launch weekly downloadable playlist feature
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 4 November 2015
Radio 1 will launch a new show in January called ‘Playlist’ in which DJs at the station, and guests, will compile a one-hour playlist around a specific theme, with ‘Daniel P Carter’s Greatest Rock Songs Ever’, ‘Ellie Goulding’s Running Mix’, ‘Annie Mac’s Ibiza Classics’ and ‘Grimmy’s Greatest Big Weekend Performances’ being provided as examples.
Though I don’t know whether those are actual playlists that will feature on the new show. It’s possible someone at the BBC station just had some sort of nightmare vision of the future and wrote down what they saw.
The new programme, which will air at 9pm on Thursday evenings, presumably aims to capitalise on the popularity of themed playlists on the streaming platforms. Radio 1 is making much of the fact each playlist will be available to download to a portable device of your choosing via the BBC iPlayer Radio app – as is any BBC radio show these days, since the upgrade of said app back in July – but specifically bigging that fact up here is possibly a way of telling Spotify and Apple Music users “we do playlists too, don’t you know?”
Announcing the new playlisting show, Radio 1 boss man Ben Cooper told reporters: “Radio 1 continues to innovate with the way we present and distribute the new music that our listeners love, and I’m excited to see whose playlists I’ll be able to download to my phone. Across the industry, whether it be Spotify, Apple, or the BBC, we are all experimenting with reaching new audiences with audio in new ways”.
Radio 1 actually has one advantage over Spotify and Apple with this playlisting experiment. Because it operates under blanket licenses from the music industry’s collecting societies rather than direct deals with the labels, Radio 1’s playlist compilers won’t have the catalogue limitations those curating on Spotify and Apple face, especially when picking brand new music that’s yet to reach the streaming platforms.
Plus the BBC station may well be able to plug the new playlisting programme across the other TV and radio channels operated by the Corporation, utilising some of the £80 million in free marketing the Beeb’s pop stations enjoy through cross-promotion each year.
Or at least, that’s according to the Chief Strategy Officer at commercial radio firm Global. We know this because Global Radio’s Will Harding was having a good moan about the BBC’s pop stations when addressing the House Of Lords’ communications committee yesterday.
According to The Guardian he said: “[We are concerned at the] scale of BBC’s cross-promotion. We estimate that as much as the equivalent of £80m of advertising of BBC radio happens on BBC TV [annually]. A lot of that is valid. But our concern is too much [promotion] is devoted to programmes on Radio 1 and Radio 2 which aren’t showcases of public service broadcasting”.
Given the rumours that Global Radio has its own streaming service in the pipeline, if Radio 1 uses too much of its cross-promo time to market initiatives aping the streaming music experience, well, that’s only going to piss off the BBC’s commercial rivals all the more. Which is always fun. Cross-promo away I say.
