Scenario #3: Radio Revival

August 11th, 2006 | Published in Blog, Scenarios | 1 Comment

Personal radio in your mobile

Executive summary:
Radio breaks free of channels and time tables and adapts itself to your preferences, anytime, anywhere. The combination of wireless broadband, personal data bases and vast media libraries lets you enjoy radio the way you want it.

- - - - - - - The scenario - - - - - -

The rain drizzles down on this very grey Monday morning as Anna boards the bus for her daily 30-minute commute.

“I wonder how long I would stand this without my daily radio theatre”, she ponders while she takes a seat and whips out her mobile and wireless headphones. She selects a new drama in the radio theatre menu.

Her profile is set to 25 minute-episodes to fit her commute time and seconds later she is immersed in a much more exciting world of adventure. As she leaves the bus she almost longs for the ride back, in order to learn what will happen next.

Meanwhile, her husband Mike is sitting in his car just outside the city, swearing at the heavy traffic. He is facing a 3 hour drive to an important supplier and cannot find any music station on the radio that he likes. “Why don’t I try a book instead”, he mutters and selects the Audio Books menu on his mobile which is sitting in its dashboard cradle. As he browses the different categories he notes that there are language courses too.

“OK, this is my chance of updating my Spanish. I will take an hour of Spanish lessons, after that I will enjoy that new Tom Clancy thriller everybody’s talking about.”

Their son Bobby is just coming home from his summer job delivering newspapers. His earplugs are still booming with a medieval war drama as he lies down on the lawn to experience the battle climax, with massive sound effects and big trumpet fanfares.

He then starts with his next assignment: mowing the lawn. To kill the next boring half-hour with the mower, he switches his mobile to his favourite music forum. An alert pops up on the display: “New single by Jupiter in your Mix”.

Bobby has opted for receiving promos and ads, since he doesn’t want to pay for the shows. The Mix music show is auto-composed daily according to his personal music preferences, with news, songs and interviews with his favourite artists.

Humming and mowing, Bobby decides to buy a download of the new single and pay a bit extra to also send it to his girlfriend, all with two clicks on the mobile.

/Henrik Ahlen