Creative Review for August

James Cridland and David Couch in typical showbusiness mood. Picture by Sally Walker.

You’ll learn a lot from this month’s Earshot Creative Review with David Couch and James Cridland. And you’ll hear a lot of radio ads.

Discover how Spotify is allowing advertisers to target audiences by postcode, what is the most important content to have on your radio station web site and what not to do with cameras in the studio. Hear ads from Cuervo, Kwik Fit, Transport for London and the Bentall Centre, plus an educational promo from Absolute Radio.

Play the audio here: Duration 42’17″

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Download the mp3 (39.7M).

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David Couch is Managing Director of Maple Street Studios and a former creative head at GCap and Global. You’ll hear him enthuse about some superb radio ads and discuss the freedom and new opportunities of product placement.

Radio futurologist James Cridland divulges tip after tip on radio’s multiplatform future. Be sure to take notes – James’s clients spend vast sums of money on his advice. You only have to pay attention.

And, as always, there’s tons of great audio including leading entrants to The Cow Moo Challenge and its ultimate winner. Thank goodness that’s over.

Credits

Thanks to London’s Somerset House for hosting our recording on their wonderful sunny terrace, thanks to radiobeds.co.uk for the music beds and thanks to Pascal Standaert from Belgium for the ident used towards the end of the podcast.

Next Month

Inside Glide – the story of the year’s biggest radio stunt so far direct from the people who pulled it off, and what’s going on at BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music? Christopher Reay shares his perspective from the production desk. Subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss it. There’ll be no cows.

If you’d like to comment on anything in the podcast or if you’d like us to include your audio just drop us a line to earshot@smartin.me

Any views expressed are those of the contributors and not of Maple Street Studios, the BBC or any of our associates, employers or clients. We acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purposes of education and review.

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A cloudy forecast

Every now and then we see a production innovation that doesn’t just build on existing techniques but signals a move toward a totally different approach. So when three such examples all appear at once the direction of travel becomes startlingly clear.

Get ready for cloud-based production.

Here are the three clues that indicate it’s on its way. You may have seen others so do share them if you have.

1. Soundation

A fast, browser-based, online music creation and editing tool from PowerFX. Use the free supplied samples or buy from the “sound shop”. The “audio lockers” give you capacity to save and use your own sounds too.

2. Phantom Producer

Billed as the world’s first desktop radio imager, this tool lets “anyone in just seconds” disaggregate and repurpose imaging elements created by Jeff Thomas and Arden Hanley.

Once subscribed you gain access to a library of effects, voice talent and a browser-based assembly interface that promises to make imaging production both easy and fast.

3. Myna

Myna is a free online audio editor with social media sharing tools so you can work collaboratively on audio projects anywhere there’s a browser. It’s part of a suite of Flash-based creative production tools from Aviary. Look – they’re challenging Adobe’s dominance of the creative tools market… by using Flash!

Why not upload your station’s imaging elements to Myna? Then next time the PD calls you up when you’re shopping or on holiday, simply pop into the nearest internet café and your production hero status is intact.

None of these tools will fully replicate or replace your existing studio set-up (and of course the Flash-based tools like Myna won’t work on your iPad) but now seems a good time to think about cloud-based production and the opportunities it will open-up for you and your competitors.

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There’s a cow in the lounge

As they say on BBC Radio 4… “Listeners may be interested to know…”

…that the Earshot Creative Review radio production podcast, complete with the Cow Moo Challenge is now available in the PURE Lounge.

If I’ve understood this correctly it means you can play it on IP-connected PURE radios like the Sensia pictured above without any mucking about with URLs, RSS feeds, computers and iTunes.

And just in time too – entries for the Cow Moo Challenge close on 9th August. Believe me, it’s not a moment too soon.

Original photo (c) Rick Harrison. Used with kind permission.
Photo of PURE Sensia by James Cridland. Used under cc licence.

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Adobe Audition meets Mac

What’s your favourite audio editing software? I remember a big Sadie v ProTools debate in the BBC many years back when somebody came up with the idea of getting the whole organisation to settle on one system. The object, I think, was to save support costs, get more purchasing power and enable people to work across different areas without retraining.

Well, guess what… both systems were so well supported by their respective userbases that the project team couldn’t reach a consensus and we all stuck with what we knew.

Today the debate in radio production circles is more likely to be ProTools v Audition. ProTools users have long had the choice of PC or Mac while Audition has remained firmly rooted in the world of Windows.

Well, soon fans of Adobe Audition can have their favourite editor on a Mac. It’s something that Adobe’s product evangelist Jason Levine is very excited about as you will see in this video. Look carefully and you’ll see that 15″ in he actually wets himself a little bit.

Thanks to Ian Deeley of BBC Radio 1Xtra for bringing this to my attention (the software, not the wee.)

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