The radio industry is going to be a shell of itself (if it isn't already) in the coming years as driverless capabilities reach the point at which people no longer need to watch the road. Then they'll be on their phones and tablets while the car takes them to their destination.
Which makes sense why this would be appealing to them. Totally reasonable. I imagine the TV industry is going through a similar crisis as competitive forms of media are not only playing their game, but able to access richer data about viewers. We've heard previously about "smart" TVs that spy on your viewing habits. However, like many things, it ain't my problem.
That is, until they make it my problem by surveilling me for their sole benefit.
The TV industry has pretty rich data about you as well. If you have cable and use a cable box, there's a considerable chance that not only are your viewing habits being data mined, advertisers are able to dynamically target specific commercials at you. The term is "addressable TV" if you want to look into it more.
And your cable provider has likely pulled your credit report as part of signing up (to avoid requiring a deposit), as well as confirmed your identity, physical address, and phone ynumber. All very valuable information and making it much easier to stitch your data into third party data sources if they want. And if they're also your internet provider, theoretically have some potentially lucrative access to your overall interests, usage patterns, devices in your household, etc. All of which could be leveraged at just the metadata level to derive secondary information such as your daily routines, household size, major life events, whether you have an affinity for Apple vs Android, whether you're an "early adopter" of tech, etc.
Cable providers can be just as if not more capable of creating and monetizing incredibly rich data about viewers as their non-cable counterparts. If they're in the mood to risk any PR fallout from it.
I was a Nielsen viewer years ago (private TV viewing monitor for advertiser demographics). They paid you to participate and covered all diagnoses and repair. Now, your TV provider, Netflix, etc. sell your data in far more detail without most people even realizing it.
iHeartRadio (formerly known as ClearChannel) already bought up a ton of radio stations. On the other hand, they also have a popular music streaming app, so they might survive the transition away from actual FM signals.
I never got what drew people to the I heart radio app. Once im no longer listening to radio, and am using my phone's mobile data, it feels like either spotify or pandora would be much more preferable.
Do people actually listen to the Scooter crew morning zoo or w/e the local station's morning show is on their app?
That would make sense as they would not only have a bidirectional pipe to end users, they own the data. I can only imagine that cable TV providers are more than willing to sell viewership data (likely because many are also ISPs) and are likely using it for their own benefit as they get into content creation themselves.
iHeartRadio did file for bankruptcy, but I believe that was due to debt.
The radio is impossible to listen to now unless it's a specific live talk show I'm interested in. Otherwise there are better radio stations online to listen to better playlists of music than Top 40 on repeat.
