Digital Radio Week 2020

Nick Piggott 17th February 2020

Every year we gather in Geneva for a whole load of events around the theme of digital radio. Hosted by the EBU, it’s an intense three days, culminating the Digital Radio Summit.

We’d like to thank the EBU for hosting our events – our Steering Board meeting, our General Assembly and the Automotive Workshop in conjunction with WorldDAB.

Members will be getting a report of the General Assembly directly soon, and attendees to the Automotive Workshop will also get a meeting summary, but I thought it would be useful to share some highlights.

General Assembly

We were pleased to report that RadioDNS is growing…

  • We’re in Audi, VW, Porsche and BMW vehicles – across all connected vehicles, all ranges
  • We’re now at 30 members, which is a record number.
  • DNS registrations increased by 24% in 2019
  • Our support queries increased by 75% in 2019

We’re extending our Member Benefits with an extensive Test and Fault Reporting platform which will really reduce the amount of time taken to find out why things aren’t working the way you expect.

We’ll be continuing to develop a Standard Licence for Metadata, and develop our Technical Standards

Our Members TuneIn and Xperi/DTS also presented. Xperi/DTS gave us an update on their Connected Radio platform, and TuneIn explained how they’re using our standards (SPI) to enable faster and more accurate transfer of metadata from broadcasters to them.

Automotive Workshop V

The Automotive Workshop is a round-table interactive discussion between broadcasters and manufacturers, and had a record 27 attendees this year. The discussion was detailed and looked at not just the problems each side faces, but how to address the underlying business factors.

The topics discussed covered:

  • Getting Metadata (including station logos) right
  • Configuring Transmissions correctly
  • Service Following – broadcast to broadcast and broadcast to IP
  • Fault Reporting
  • Android Automotive
  • Listening Analytics

RadioDNS and WorldDAB took away actions to progress from each of those topics, so that we can maintain the momentum we created.

The next workshop is tentatively scheduled for the 19th June 2020, following the WorldDAB Automotive event in Turin, Italy.

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