Google Inc.’s foray into selling radio ads was supposed to show how its online-advertising brainpower could revolutionize an old-fashioned people business. [MORE]

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Industry experts say that radio can embrace technology and sustain its popularity. Growing sales of digital sets worldwide certainly lend strength to that theory. [MORE]

Source: BBC News

Radio has long been recognized as the theater of the mind but more and more it is becoming an interactive medium. New interactive technologies are opening up new and possibly fruitful opportunities for radio stations – but they also require a fresh new approach for salespeople.

Today selling radio also includes online sponsorships, videos, text messaging, online streams, podcasts, display ads, etc. One size fits all packages are not the way to go when you have so many new weapons in your arsenal. To be successful, account executives must create custom solutions that both benefit their clients and the radio station they represent. The perfect ad buy not only brings in fresh new revenue but also drives traffic to the on-air product and reinforces the power of your station.

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With music and content available almost everywhere, how does the radio industry compete? The average person, with little effort, can receive a huge variety of music, talk, and information on their computers, mobile phone, GPS devices, and now through their car stereos. Blaupunkt and miRoamer will be announcing a new car radio that will not only receive AM and FM radio, but also connect to thousands of internet radio stations. Should the radio industry be concerned or are the multitude of devices and technologies too confusing for the average person?

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CBS will also take over ad sales for Launchcast, offering advertisers both display, video and audio ads. The new service will roll out sometime in the first quarter of 2009. [MORE]

Source: TechCrunch

In what may well stand as a defining moment in the maturation of Apple’s App Store, Tapulous has announced that it has partnered with the band Nine Inch Nails to release a premium version of its popular game Tap Tap Revenge some time in October. [MORE]

Source: TechCrunch

What is radio going to look like in the future? There are a lot of opinions, both positive and negative. One strong possibility is that radio is going evolve into something new and exciting – something beyond terrestrial and satellite. A new breed of smartphones are on the streets and shaking things up, including radio. Are you ready for Radio 2.0?

With T-Mobile launching it’s iPhone-like G1 based on Google’s Android software, more mobile music applications will be in the hands of the general public. This new breed of smartphones are intuitive and feature rich. It doesn’t take the average person very long to learn how to navigate and use many of the powerful features these devices provide, including music related apps that are a very popular application category. With Pandora, Last.fm, and the ability to access a multitude of radio station’s streams, more and more people are finding that radio transmissions aren’t the only way to get the music they like. Smartphones still have issues with connection speeds, battery life, etc. but eventually these issues will be worked out.

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Researchers are developing intelligent radios that can sense their surroundings and adjust their mode of operation accordingly. [MORE]

Source: iTnews

Premiere Radio Networks on Wednesday announced the launch of a new syndicated radio show called “The iTunes Download.” The three-hour weekend music countdown show will feature the 30 most downloaded songs in America, as featured on Apple’s iTunes Store. [MORE]

Source: Macworld

Pandora is reportedly working out international licensing deals. As Tim Westerberg writes in a message to international users, “the pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.” [MORE]

Source: Wired