I was saddened by the news that Cliq was being closed by UBC. I have some good friends there, and they were trying to do something innovative for radio and the music industry.
The basic idea is a good one – let people buy music when they hear it on the radio (and share some revenue with stations). Radio is a major way people to discover music, so why not have a button on the radio marked “BUY”, for when discovery turns into desire.
Well… there are many issues, so here goes:
The music you buy has to be delivered to you. If the radio can store your bought music, perfect. PCs and mobile phones are the closest to this ideal. GCAP, and Emmis in the US, have forged good partnerships with iTunes to make this as smooth an experience as possible - but it's not going to make station owners rich. It will provide listeners with a useful service which is, of course, a "good thing".
A “BUY” button on a car or kitchen radio would be a much bigger proposition. Much more listening takes place on these, leading to more purchases… But these devices, to date, haven’t been equiped to communicate with music stores online. This is what UBC will be working on in future, it seems.
On PCs the biggest problem is the competition from “free”. On mobile phones you’ve got DRM issues and data transfer costs. UBC could have hung on until they'd sorted out DRM-free deals with the majors, and Virgin Media had threatened illegal downloaders to within an inch of their second-lives... but hanging on costs money.
So what about putting the "BUY" button into digital radios. Cliq started out as a DAB radio initiative. But only one UK phone was ever capable of receiving DAB, hosting the Cliq software and connecting with a music store via the internet – the Virgin Lobster. (A design which oddly went against the trend for slim small phones, and actually contained pockets of thin air inside!)
The DAB technology isn't the problem - nor the battery life, as some have suggested. It's down to the mobile networks' business model.
If Vodafone want to sell their customers music, charge them for streaming and other entertainment services – why allow a manufacturer to put a DAB chip in their new phone. The chip would deliver free entertainment, and allow third parties to take the music revenues instead of Vodafone?
The networks routinely tell handset manufacturers which features are turned on in the phones they sell to their customers. Not every Nokia XYZ is the same - they differ, by network, ever so slightly. The operators probably don’t see any reason to subsidise phones that eat their lunch. It's our job to give them a reason, perhaps?
This isn't to say that DAB isn't going to get into mobiles - it is. But it's not happening fast enough for UBC right now.
In what was a good move, it seemed to me, Cliq came out with a java app. Suddenly the potential customer base wasn't just a few people with a DAB phone. It was everyone with a decent mobile phone and a basic data contract. But getting world+dog to load java apps onto their mobiles is a major exercise in persuasion, with a marketing cost attached. The numbers probably didn't add up.
So - where does this leave DAB. Well - GCAP's withdrawal from some aspects of DAB doesn't mean it's a dead technology. People like their DAB radios, and they're still selling well. New DAB radio operators are entering the market - such as Planet Rock's new owners. It's just that the costs of DAB transmission aren't trivial. (There's a close comparison to be made with web-businesses. How many web start-ups have low costs and great revenues. Not many.)
Does DAB need a new killer application? It wouldn't do any harm. I'm not sure music downloading is a killer - but it's something that will happen eventually and it will help, in its own way, to make even more people love their DAB radios.
So - good luck UBC with the business-to-business work. Should be interesting.
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