The Streema Blog

For a while now, we’ve been wanting to restyle Streema’s website for desktop users. And here we wanted to give you a heads up of what’s coming!

First, let’s take a step back – one of our priorities was to change our site without confusing our users. There are many things we needed to improve, so we’ve been working hard on the “facets of the honeycomb” – mostly in the following attributes: useful, usable, findable, accesible, and credible. (thanks Nico!)

To start off, we silently rolled out a new layout for our radio profiles. This is what you’ll find now on our site:

Also, as a sneak peak, here’s a mockup of what we think our homepage could look like:

… and for those site builders and web enthusiasts out there, here are two possible wireframes for our new radio player page:

Bear in mind that this is a work in progress and that we may implement something completely different, but we still wanted to share this with you. :)

Hope you like what you’ve seen above and hope you will soon enjoy a new and improved Streema. Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

At the Streema Blog we generally cover major events, so this time we want to bring the 2012 U.S. Presidential Debates.

The Presidential Debates in the U.S. are usually held at large halls (in a university, for example) with citizens in the audience and journalists as moderators. It’s important to remark that although the Debates are not constitutionally mandated, they are already part of the election process. The topics are usually the most relevant of the current agenda, and the Presidential Debates this year are particularly more interesting globally since one of the main topics is foreign policy. Before the elections there will be a total of four debates, three of them between presidential candidates and one of them between their respective vice presidential candidates.

So, tomorrow Tuesday 16, at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, the 3rd debate is happening and it’s between the US President Barack Obama (Democrat Party) and the former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (Republican Party). To listen to it on radio, most of the Public Radios in the US will broadcast the event, but you can particularly try the following ones:

WNBF – AM 1290

WVTF – FM 89.7

Fox News Radio

In case you’ve missed the previous debates, during the first half of October we already had two of them, the first on Oct 3rd between the presidential candidates and the last on 11th between the Vice Presidents – current Vice President Joe Biden (Democrat) and Wisconsin U.S. Representative Paul Ryan (Republican).

So, tomorrow October 16th will be the third and the next (and last) one will be on October 22 (also 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time). Be sure to listen (or see) to them if you get the chance!

After that, the elections will happen on November 6 and we hope you follow them on radio too. :D

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

With the latest addition of the Facebook Login Button we’ve added one more chapter to our relationship with the social networking site – a relationship that has been a long and exciting journey. Here is our story.

Ever since Streema’s beginnings, we’ve wanted our site to be a social network for radio listeners. When Facebook launched its Application Platform back in mid-2007 we looked at that as a natural step in that direction, so we started developing an application in late 2007. We did some really cool stuff with that app, even growing to become one of the biggest radio apps out there and winning a “hockey stick award“. As we grew, Facebook Page owners started asking for a way to add stations to their pages, so we went ahead and built an application for Pages.

Unfortunately, Facebook started deprecating certain features for Pages, so we couldn’t continue developing that particular application and we closed it in 2010. Then last year, we realized that we couldn’t dedicate resources to our original Facebook app for listeners and we stopped developing it as well.

Then, the story took an interesting turn, bringing us to today. Our community of users continued growing and Facebook continued evolving their strategy to create a more social web, launching Open Graph in the past year. So we thought this was a great opportunity to bring Facebook back into our life by adding the “Login with Facebook” button – as a result, now you can use your Facebook account to login to Streema while sharing your Streema activity. We think that’s the way to go for now and, although we know there are many things we could do, we believe this is the start of a deeper integration with Facebook.

In a few words, yesterday we had an application (or, rather, two applications) on Facebook; today we have the “Login with Facebook”; and tomorrow, the truth is we don’t exactly know, but we have a few ideas. What’s certain is that we’ll keep working with Facebook and other applications / social networks to create the best social radio experience on the web.

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Sometimes when we explain to people what we do, we hear a reaction such as: “Ahhh, broadcast radio… isn’t that industry going downhill, specially with all those services such as Pandora, Spotify…”. In this blog post we would like to give our point of view.

First, when we think about “radio”, we think about a song, talk, show, or any content that is delivered live to everyone. While some services offer music or content on demand, radio is essentially the same audio content at the same time to everybody.

Right now there is trend called “customization” that technology and the web have spread widely, but we think that even in this context a live stream that anyone can tune in to has very specific value. Actually, it’s a way to “connect” people and makes us feel in community. Think about a song that is released for the first time on a station or when a popular radio DJ ask a tough fun question to a caller on live radio – that is a very unique experience.

Second, as we’ve mentioned before, radio is not only about music, there are also live shows, sport events, and talk shows of every type that you can imagine and even more: anime, astrology, art, children, drama, gaming, language, military, transport… and the list goes on. There are more than 70 non music genres containing radio stations that represent more than 30% of our directory.

Now, let’s get back to music. Everybody would think that most people discover new music through sources such as YouTube, Spotify, or any similar. However, recent studies suggest that people still choose radio as their first source for music discovery.

And now, back to content. It’s true, a big part of the traditional radio industry is still doing the same thing that it was doing decades ago, but there is a lot changing too and there are many people experimenting with new things, like new sources to fund and reach audiences. For example, the case of radio show “99% Invisible“, they aimed to raise $ 42K at Kickstarter (a popular online crowdfunding platform) and this month they raised more than $170K!!! This may or may not be a trend, although it’s certainly not the only one, and while it’s also true that not every show can easily raise the money to make it happen, this is for sure a great success story!

To conclude, without a doubt radio has its threats and its weaknesses, but we believe it also has its strengths and its opportunities. We hope Streema can help with these last two, helping radio to reach places it has never reached before and connect with its listeners in ways it has never done before.

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

If you’re still interested on this topic, check this out: The Big Box Theory, or Why Radio Is and/or Isn’t Dead

Yes, it’s true, we didn’t post any news during the month of July – and that was the first time it happened since we opened this blog back in 2008!

The truth is… we’ve been quite busy here! But we do hate to say that, because busy is not a good explanation nor is the answer we think you should receive – this beautiful article tells why we think that: The ‘Busy’ Trap.

Now, it’s also true that if we don’t want this to happen again, we better start working on our next blog post. :) Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

PS: BTW, Dilbert always explains it better (click on the image to see it in a larger size).

We’re about a month away from the next Olympic Games which will be held in London.  For those that didn’t know, London will become the first city to host the Olympic Games three times – the two previous being 1908 and 1948.

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games will start on July 27th and end on August 12th, where 205 nations will compete in 26 sports divided into 39 disciplines.  This will be followed by the 2012 Paralympic Games, from August 29th to September 9th, where 147 nations will take part in the competition.

The excitement generated by the Olympics is worldwide and it will be followed globally through TV, Radio, Newspapers… and of course, the Web. The media has traditionally played a significant role in this event, although one can say that this role has evolved a lot since the last time the Olympics were held in London!

Once again, the BBC will be the main broadcaster providing a special program from July 25th to August 13th, and in addition, many UK radio stations will follow the event, a few of which follow below:

• BBC London
• LBC Radio
• talkSPORT

We look forward to see an amazing show, where athletes value progress over victory, respect over rivalry, and motivation over fear. We also hope the best for your favorite countries, athletes and disciplines. :)

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

In the last few months there have been a couple of conferences and events in the US (SXSW, RAIN Summit and Digital Music Forum East, to name a few) where many media industry leaders have been presenting their research and recent developments. The numbers are really positive for radio listening, so we wanted to share some of them with you. Bear in mind all these stats are for the US market, but they do show a trend that we believe is happening around the world too.

To start off, the report The Infinite Dial 2012 from Arbitron, the media & marketing research firm, shares a bit of data around the number of radio listeners out there:

Weekly online radio audience reaches an estimated 57 million people; audience doubled every five years since 2001.

When we talk about behaviour, TargetSpot, the digital audio advertising network, presented the First Digital Audio Advertising Research, a report that contained some interesting pieces of information, such as:

- 80% of internet radio audience listens for 1-3 hours per day, 40% listening 1-2 hours per session.

- 61% of listeners don’t keep player minimized, 64% often check the player for song/artist info. - this was added by TargetSpot’s CEO at the RAIN Summit.

- 73% of Internet radio listeners change stations stations multiple times a day.

Finally, based on Jacobs Media’s TechSurvey8, the most popular applications in the US are:

Pandora is the most popular pure-play Internet option, with 45% of “streamies” listening, topping competitors like iHeartRadio (19%), Spotify (7%), TuneIn Radio (7%) and Slacker Radio (5%). Its users are split as to whether internet pure play is actually considered “radio”: 43% said yep, 49% said nope. Listeners to alternative, Contemporary Christian, country, CHR and Variety Hits are more likely to consider Pandora “radio.”

That’s all for now!  Hope you find this data optimistic and relevant – we certainly do think it’s good news for Streema. :)

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

It has been a few weeks with a lot of buzz around copyrights and the Internet. Many of us have read about SOPA and/or PIPA, and as many people asked us about our opinion, we wanted to share it.

We believe in copyrights, and the right anyone has to receive royalties for work they’ve done: sound, video, literature or any kind of expression of art or science, among others. We also truly believe in freedom, the total absence of coercion, as the ultimate expression of human development, and how it is non-negotiable. And we also believe in balance, and when we say balance, we mean a solution that can suit the different parts that affect a system – in this case, creators and consumers.

The truth is technology is moving fast, and even though it doesn’t solve all of the world’s problems, it does generally provide better chances to learn and live. The Internet is part of this technological trend, and as with every technology in the past, it’s changing the economic and social model that we live by. At the end of the day, the truth is that we all have to adapt to this new reality – creators, consumers, media companies, and any other related entities.

As it stands now, SOPA and/or PIPA may not pass, but it’s important to still be aware of this for the future. More than ever, we need to have an appropriate legislation that will give us protection as well as the freedom to choose, learn and understand.

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

PS: If you feel you want to know more about the implications of SOPA and PIPA, check out the following video, it’s one of the best explanations we’ve found recently:

In addition, here are two interesting blog posts from well respected personalities in the technology industry:

An Open Letter to Pearson about SOPA/PIPA by Martin Fowler

It’s time to stop PROTECT IP by Matt Cutts

Hi! It’s getting close to the end of 2011 and we can’t believe how quickly the last 12 months have gone by! This year has been a busy and rocking one for us, with improvements to our site Streema.com, our first steps in mobile, a growing community of users, and a growing team of awesome people.

Before the year is over though, we wanted to thank all of you that have been there with us – family, friends, colleagues, and of course, you, our community of radio listeners. Thanks for the support.

We wish you a wonderful Holiday Season and a great start in 2012 – see you in the new year!

Yours truly,
The Streema Team

PS: A small present from a man who knows to rock!

Today we want to send out a quick update about three user experience improvements we’ve released:

Search

We’ve improved our radio directory search using Indextank, an outsourced search service for web applications. This should provide faster and better results when you search by radio, city, country, etc. on Streema. We’ll soon be releasing other features, such as: Faceting and Autocomplete. Consider this is a recent implementation and might need some fixes, it’ll keep getting better. :)

Radio Streams

As part of the process we started a couple months – which we mentioned in a previous post – the streams of thousands of radio stations in our directory have been fixed. This should definitely result in a better user experience, because there’s nothing worse than trying to tune in a radio and not being able to listen to it. We want to continue working on this area, so please, help us by letting us know when a station doesn’t work.

Radios without Stream

You’ll find our directory has many stations without streams, this is either because the station doesn’t stream online, it doesn’t work, or we don’t have it stored in our database. For those stations, we thought it would be great to provide our users with similar options to listen, so in case you click on the “play button” of any of those radios, a message offering other streaming stations will appear. We want to specially thank Emiliano Castaño who has given his good advice on building this part of the user interface.
Disclaimer: this is a feature we are currently testing, so you’ll probably won’t see it every time you visit Streema.

That’s all for now, we hope you enjoy these improvements. :)

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team