Radioplayer, the non-profit radio platform backed by broadcasters around the world, is launching a new way for car companies to access official metadata about radio stations.
Manufacturers can now improve their in-car radio interfaces by adding rich metadata like streams, logos, now-playing information, and podcasts via a feed using the brand new RadioDNS ‘ClientID’ standard. Radioplayer MD Michael Hill announced the new feature at the WorldDAB Automotive event in Turin on Thursday.
Radioplayer is the first organisation in the world to offer this functionality. It combines the ease and consistency of a recognised open international standard, with the protection of strong authentication, to ensure that valuable official metadata from broadcasters is only used by licensed partners.
Radioplayer has always offered basic metadata (eg logos and station descriptions) on behalf of partner stations in the open RadioDNS format, making it the largest single ‘Service Provider’ of RadioDNS metadata in the world.
The new ‘ClientID’ functionality will roll out in addition to the original open feed, enabling Radioplayer to offer more enhanced and valuable metadata to trusted partners by issuing them with unique ‘Client Identifiers’.
Radioplayer is open to metadata partnerships with all car companies and ‘Tier One’ hardware providers (who make the radio units for cars). The data feed is free, providing manufacturers respect some basic guidelines about the interface. These are designed to keep radio simple, safe to use, and central to the dashboard.
Michael Hill, Managing Director of Radioplayer said: “Radioplayer’s top priority is to help car companies build better radios, so we welcome any technology solution which helps us achieve that, particularly if it’s underpinned by open standards like DAB and RadioDNS. This new feed will help manufacturers build fantastic new ‘hybrid’ radio interfaces, keeping radio strong in the connected cars of the future”.
Nick Piggott, Project Director of RadioDNS said : “We heard from broadcasters that they wanted better control and measurability over the distribution of valuable metadata, so we worked with both them and device manufacturers to develop this solution. Radioplayer is an important RadioDNS Service Provider, so we’re very pleased that it has chosen to be an early adopter and increase the availability of metadata to device manufacturers wishing to implement a better hybrid radio experience.”