Metadata on the Radio
Published: 12.28.01
by Cameron Barrett
For the holiday weekend, I drove home to Michigan (quite a long drive) with my brother, Damien. When picking up the rental car, I specifically asked for one with a working CD player because the radio outside of New York City (and most other metro areas) pretty much sucks ass these days. I grabbed about a dozen CDs to listen to during the drive.
Since my music tastes differ from my brother's, there were several times a song was playing that he had never heard, thus prompting me to dig out the CD case. Since both of us have our entire CD collections ripped to MP3, we've become spoiled by the fact that most software-based MP3 players can display the song title, artist, and album information (acquired via the CDDB look-up process). More than once, I wished that the CD player in the car would display this information during songplay. After we exhausted my supply of available CDs, I switched to the radio and found a station to listen to. Several times, a song came on that I didn't know. It frustrated me that I could not glance down at the radio to see what was playing.
This desire for more information about songs (called metadata) that were playing led me to realize that there isn't much stopping radio broadcasters from broadcasting a little extra metadata with their signal, which could then be simultaneously displayed on the standard LED most CD players have.
The only barriers-to-entry for this embedded technology are as follows. There would need to be an agreement on a standard for metadata. This is called an ontology (ideally, it would follow some sort of XML schema). There would also need to be a broadcasting standard for sending and receiving that data over the airwaves. I think that if standards for this emerged, the CD player manufacturers would quickly integrate it into their players, the RIAA would encourage the labels to manufacture their CDs with this metadata included (it already is a digital format, after all), radio stations would modify their signals to send metadata, and consumers would be gratefully happy. I think that widespread adoption of these standards would happen very quickly. It's simply a matter of supply and demand. If consumers are aware that this technology exists, they will clamour for it.
Why this has not been done already is beyond me. Perhaps the whole industry is so deep in the pockets of a few large corporations, innovation and ideas like this has been stifled. One way to increase adoption of this technology would be for advertisers to buy text advertisements that are also broadcast along with the song metadata.
Of course, there already exist MP3 players that you can put into your car that can display this metadata. The key is getting the broadcasters to include it in their broadcasts. And for the labels to include it on their CDs.
An added benefit of broadcasting metadata to your radio (car, or other) is that it neatly enables niche markets to develop. What if, all of a sudden, you could simultaneously broadcast a streaming text transcript of what is being broadcast audibly. Suddenly, lyrics would be available for reading. A listener could scroll back an LED to see what was sung. Talk radio transcripts could be saved to a small hard drive, compact flash card, or Sony Memory Stick. There could even be a firewire port to grab that data from your radio and drop it onto a PDA-like device like Apple's iPod. Alternative formats could be broadcast for the disabled. Deaf people would suddenly be able to have access to information that was previously only available to those with hearing.
Every time you hear a song you liked, you could press a button on your radio to save that data. Later, you transfer it to your iPod, which can act as your hub between your radio and your home computer. Perhaps this would then act as an enticer for you to log into an RIAA-approved Web site and purchase MP3 copies of the songs you liked.
This idea could save the radio broadcasting industry, which is suffering right now because of too much consolidation. It could also enable new digital-broadcast markets to emerge and provide new forms of entertainment that peacefully co-exist alongside the older and analog-based radio industry.
Related Information:
If you know of related efforts or ideas that talk about this concept of digital metadata in the broadcasting industry (radio, television, etc.), please send them to me. Thanks.
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