The Buggles may have echoed the sentiments of dying radio penetration while composing Video Killed the Radio Star in 1979, but the late noughties saw a sudden spike in radio content with the rise of internet radio channels. Leading this trend is a dynamic format that reads into the listening habits of the audience to create a customised radio program that links the audience to artists similar to the ones they constantly tune into. Will this format bring about a revival of radio culture? How easy or difficult is it run such a project? Sound Box got in touch with the young entrepreneurs at Be the Change Radio (BC Radio), one of the very few Indian ventures to capitalise on this global trend.
Where it began
Kaustub Pandey, Saurabh Agrawal, Kritin Joshi and Dhruv Joshi are everything you expect from any IIT-B student. Each of them pursues diverse majors, ranging from chemical engineering to civil engineering. Living in the same hostel, it was inevitable that the group would meet at some point. What laid the foundation for BC Radio was their interest in the independent music scene. While playing for myriad college-circuit bands, the group decided to move from being music makers to platform providers. Thus, Be The Change Radio went live in June 2012 with three genre-based channels- Rock, Metal and Jazz.
New for old!
“The biggest challenge is to provide a technical wrapper around this content which the users love and are drawn to, because it is simple, smooth and error free,” says Kaustub Pandey, talking about the designing of the web radio. BC Radio is loosely based on a web radio interface that is drawn from other ventures like thesixtyone.com, Grooveshark etc. “It was the limitations of thesixtyone.com that really drove us to think of something better and simpler. The immense number of bands did appeal to us but we never wanted to monetise on the listening experience (costly accounts, charge for no ads etc.),” he explains. The web radio also diverges from other platforms in an effort to crowd-source information to customise listener experience, “As we continue to grow, we want to be able to tell which person where is listening to what, to pull band specific analytics and tell bands where their fans are and what do they like.” Another point of essential differentiation of BC Radio from these web radios is the all-Indian content.
Getting the word out
If there is one thing we have learnt about offbeat ventures (or any start up for that case), is that it’s all about creating a buzz. Grabbing eyeballs has ironically become all the more difficult with increasing means to reach out. Pandey explains how promoting a venture like BC Radio works, “Promoting a web radio is like promoting any other website, at the core. You need other value propositions to lead to the website, traffic routing, parallel posting, trending etc.” The web radio’s social media messages takes on a pop-culture phenomenon to design its communication, “Serious posts would never take the message across. Memes are short lived but have a deep impression in your memory. Hence, we use a lot of memes and humor to get our messages across to our target audience, the youth.”
Here on
To sustain interest in a dynamic medium calls for dynamic diversifications. BC radio teamed up with Delhi based Boombox radio to create The Pirate Mixtape, a show that is aired every Sunday for two hours, designed in a podcast format. The web radio also made a real world debut recently when Le Rock, Bangalore hosted ‘BC Radio night’ where the music played at the club was curated by the venture.
In another expansion move, the radio introduced a regional language channel in addition to genre-based segregations, “Indian rock is on the rise and we have some brilliant bands like Swarathma, Joshish and Divine Raaga, making inroads into the scene. We wanted the country to see this growth and have access to it at the click of a button,” elucidates Pandey.
Here to stay
Web 2.0 gives rise to innumerable brilliant ideas every day, but the reality is that many of these fail to stand the test of time. Juggling between the highly demanding roles of an IIT student and that of entrepreneurs is not a cakewalk, particularly since there isn’t much common ground between the two. However, Pandey tells us otherwise, “Although the courses on campus are really research oriented, we definitely learnt a problem solving and ‘do or die’ mindset. College is not about its courses but about its people.”
When operating in a nascent indie scene, the stakes are higher for those who aim to make a career in this line. “We see BC Radio as a career, but not at the cost of music. Music is supposed to be free. Services around music, like live events, collaborative events, merchandise can be chargeable and their revenue should fuel music,” he believes.
Ideals in place, business model in mind, BC Radio is off to a fine start. In a thematic frame will such ventures alter how music reaches us? Will international trends picked up and shaped to Indian needs have the same ramifications as it did in those countries?
For now, the boys at BC Radio believe, “We are the change and we are here to stay” and it’s time for us to wait and watch as to what course the Internet radio phenomenon will take.