“Are Smart Speakers the Bitcoin of Radio?” Mike Henry asks in a recent post on the Paragon Media Strategies blog.
Henry questions the radio industry’s enthusiasm for smart speakers and compares the technology to Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that is touted by some as the payment method of the future but is not yet widely adopted by the mainstream.
He notes that the rapid adoption of smartspeakers is certainly a plus, but says “there is another side of the coin that radio should consider” (continuing the Bitcoin metaphor).
Namely, Henry cites rising Sound Exchange fees; monetization challenges; diverse platforms requiring stations to create multiple skills and to promote/train listeners for different devices; the potential that smart TVs may make smart speakers obsolete in the near future; and the tradeoff between smart speaker (streaming) and broadcast listening.
However, he isn’t all doom and gloom. He gives suggestions for how stations can capitalize on the potential.
