Robot Radio

So Jez is still hacking away at the Gmail Radio experiment and today presented me with an m3u playlist file that streams tracks grabbed offa Gmail and stored on his server, which was cool in itself except any ogg or m4a files were converted to mp3 and the text of the emails that accompanied them was turned into robot-speech. The end result was a radio show generated on the fly by a range of different people. Once you understand what’s going on here the potential becomes clear and mildly exciting.

Take this slightly different model. There are lots of mp3 blogs out there hosting songs. Automatically grabbing the mp3 files and creating an audio stream would be easy but it misses an important aspect – what the blogger has written about the song in question. With this system you’d get all the tunes from a range of blogs automatically but also the comments that go with them. An audio version of a blog aggregator if you like. Of course you’ve still got the raw information about the song, who posted it, etc, so as you’re listening to the stream you could check the site, see what’s being played and follow the link back to the original post. Wouldn’t that be cool?

All you’d need would be a server with half a gig or so of space and unlimited bandwidth (which, if I’m not very much mistaken, and I suspect I must be, you can get here for $15 a month) to run the program on. Get it to check a selection of mp3 blogs on a 6 hourly basis (say via their full feeds), grab the mp3 files and commentary, convert it into a stream and you’ve got an eclectic radio station with presenters talking about each song, all automatically generated.

A similar but quite different thing is going on at Radio Paradise, which I’d recommend you check out as it’s what mainstream rock radio should be like if there was any justice in the world. (I’ve been listening to it for three hours straight if that’s any recommendation.) Essentially just one couple, Rebecca and Bill Goldsmith, in the small town of Paradise, California choosing the tunes and programming the stream, but what takes it to the next level is the listener interaction. As the stream plays the current track is displayed on the main page. Follow this link and you’re in a forum where members can comment and vote on the track. More interestingly is a second stream, the Listener Review Channel, featuring songs they’re considering for the main playlist, usually suggested or uploaded by listeners, with a simple voting system in place. While the station is ultimately controlled by Bill and Rebecca and has their stamp all over it, this filtered listener interaction adds subtle layers to the experience not just for those involved in the fora but for the non-interacting listener as well.

The model I’m thinking of is again similar but different. The core would be the members only music sharing site mentioned yesterday which is a no-brainer but think about all the data it’s generating. A lot of this can be thrown back into the mix as you’d expect but what’s exciting me is the idea of using this selection of music generated by a large-ish pool of folk to create some kind of external service. A public radio station that’s above board and legal generating cash by whatever means are applicable which gets fed back into the community. And it’s all run by robots.

Cool, huh?