NPR music site will test the allure of aggregation

Originally published in Current, July 23, 2007
By Mike Janssen

NPR and at least seven of its member stations plan to start pooling music-related programming and text this fall at a central web location, hoping to boost their online traffic.

The music hub will spotlight content from NPR and from public radio’s most prominent music stations, with features such as album reviews, top-10 lists, interviews with musicians and pre-recorded performances from stations’ studios and concert venues around the country.

The service will present audio as on-demand streams and, if rights can be secured, possibly as podcasts or downloadable files.

NPR declined to describe the service, but a spokeswoman said the launch is planned for Oct. 30 [2007]. Executives at participating stations, who are advising the network on the site’s development, did not know whether the hub will be set up as a part of NPR.org or as a standalone website, with an address like nprmusic.org.

[Indeed, NPR has held that web address since June 2002, along with the dot-org and dot-net variants.]

Station executives say that most of the content they’ll contribute will be repackaged versions of features also offered on their own websites. Their initial year-long contracts with NPR are non-exclusive, allowing them to continue providing the same content to their own web visitors.

But execs say that by feeding the recycled content to NPR, they hope to reach a bigger audience by piggybacking on the network’s high-profile brand name.

The collaboration “allows the power of NPR to be there, but allows the station’s identity to be intact,” says Scott Hanley, g.m. at Pittsburgh’s WDUQ and a member of the NPR Board. “It’s really a win-win.” Hanley’s station will provide content related to jazz, its primary music format, but might also draw on an archive of folk, classical and other recordings that it has lacked funds to distribute nationally.

Participating stations cover the gamut of musical genres heard on pubradio, including jazz, folk, blues, classical, Triple A and Celtic music. They are WDUQ, WGBH in Boston; WXPN in Philadelphia, WFUV in New York, KPLU in Seattle/Tacoma; WKSU in Kent, Ohio; and WBGO in Newark, N.J.

Station leaders said NPR also invited WGUC in Cincinnati; Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media in St. Paul; and KUT in Austin, Texas.

WKSU’s track record contributing to NPR.org helped to persuade General Manager Al Bartholet to join the new service. Its web stream FolkAlley.com, which leads among online destinations for folk fans, shared features with NPR.org about the best folk albums of 2006 and romantic airs for Valentine’s Day.

Traffic at FolkAlley.com increased after the features appeared on NPR’s site, Bartholet says. WKSU’s contributions to the new service will include folk performances recorded at Kent venues.

Stations also stand to earn money from the venture, though no one is sure how much. NPR will share revenue with stations based on how much content they contribute, but station g.m.’s expect to earn only modest sums in the service’s early days.

Aggregation’s pros and cons

NPR first laid out the plan for the music service in the “Blueprint for Growth” written at the conclusion of its New Realities strategic planning process. The Blueprint said that public radio’s music content is dispersed too widely across the Web, making its full breadth “nearly impossible to find and explore for even the most intrepid, knowledgeable and dedicated listener.”

“NPR will lead an exploration to develop a multigenre digital music service that will build distributed value for NPR, producers and stations and reinforce public radio’s role in defining and presenting music,” said the July 2006 report. “The new service will make it easy for the audience to find, audition, explore, share, store and purchase music in all its forms.”

The site seeks to capitalize on the cultural cred that NPR and stations share. WXPN, KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., and other stations have earned recognition for breaking artists who go on to wider renown, such as Norah Jones and Jill Scott. And it’s said within public radio that a musician’s appearance on a show can cause their sales on Amazon to spike almost immediately.

Public radio’s podcasts, including music programs, often top the charts on Apple’s iTunes Music Store, and the success of NPR’s podcast directory has convinced some observers of the benefits of aggregating their content.

The podcast collaboration “taught a lot of folks in public radio a very valuable lesson,” says Ben Roe, former director of music initiatives at NPR, who helped to develop the music hub before leaving the network in January.

“A lot of people are interested in the content on public radio, but they don’t necessarily access it by tuning into their local public radio stations,” Roe says.

Not everyone sees a big upside to pooling content. NPR asked KCRW to contribute to the music service, but the station declined.

“We understand that it will advance NPR,” says Ruth Seymour, g.m. “But we have a brand, and we have a reputation in music, and we just don’t see how combining it in this way works.” Seymour also doubts whether a multigenre music site will fare well against the Web’s many sites that cater to niche interests. [KCRW's main music page is accessible not only through the station's website but also through publicradiomusic.org, a web address it registered in October 2002.]

Mark Fuerst, executive director of the Integrated Media Association, also questions the music hub’s focus. “My personal view is that NPR is principally a news organization, at least in the mind of the public, and that the strength of the industry rests largely on our ability to develop news and analysis,” Fuerst says. “And that’s where the investment should go.”

But Fuerst adds, “If the stations agree that NPR is approaching this in the best way, I’m 100 percent behind them.”