“Indonesian radio is in the process of finding the new ways to go for it!” said Raditya Hardanto, Director of Radio at Mahaka Radio Integra, one of Indonesia’s biggest media groups.
Mahaka X as a tech-based media company offering full-service, media-tech solutions for brands in Indonesia. The company has a vision with focus on digital media and technology that empower creators, communities, conversational, and commerce. Mahaka Radio is one of a range of business units in the company, along with: Republika, Inspire, JakTV, Alive and Creative Intel.
“One of the challenges faced by radio in Indonesia is that advertisers have lots of options for which platforms they can place their ads on, so commercial radio has a lot of competitors,” said Hardanto.
Mahaka Media does not just sell radio content, “we offer all kinds of content, such as TikTok feeds of the live shows on social media, so our presenters can show the client’s brand.”
“Heavy traffic in Jakarta is radio’s friend. In traffic jams, people are listening to radio longer,” he said, commenting on the long commuting times in the sprawling Indonesian capital city.
Mahaka Media is using Radio.Cloud in its radio stations.
Christian Brenner, CEO and Founder of radio.cloud told delegates that this part of his company has been around for about 5 years, with the main development of the software done by a local team of developers and coders in Jakarta.
“Sometimes when you do networking you can lose the local content, but radio.cloud can deliver local content, with the best talent, easily across a network,” said Brenner.
The product’s virtual desk lists songs on the side of the faders. It also incorporates multiple inputs, a phone hybrid into the system, voicetracks and transcription. News.cloud is a similar system that can “create multiple versions of the news show in a rules based way.”
“Indonesia is one of the best locations for software development, people are highly skilled here so we put our development department here,” said Brenner.
In the same session, another media technology supplier told delegates about its next-gen radio platform to drive optimal revenue streams.
Daniel Meili, Chief Technical Officer of the Swiss based company Audiospace said his company “serves 150 radio station clients globally.” The company also has offices in Jakarta.
“There is a global business transformation taking place in this industry,” he said.
Podcast and streaming has grown between 200-500% over the past ten years. 3.5 billion people worldwide listen to radio every day. However ownership of radio sets has dropped from 54% to 22% over the past ten years.
“Radio companies were not funded to be digital companies, we try to give them the tools to transform their business to meet the way people are now listening to audio.
“Product development is accelerating in the audio industries. Traditional radio stations spend about 60% of expenses on people/talent, but the other audio businesses do not have the same overheads.
“We design features always by goals. We want to grow in this market by helping you use the content you create, delivered through your own platforms, not third party platforms.
“We can help you deliver the right segment to the right user at the right moment. The only way to do that is through automation delivered to any kind of smart device,” said Meili.
Audiospace tools can send contests, voting and voice messages through the digital platforms. Other features include classifying songs played and personalising a playlist for each listener.
“Interactive audio offerings give your audience personalised radio… 60% of users convert to registered users. You can get to know a lot about each listener because we can build up a profile of them and engagement across all channels.
“So many industries are moving to a subscription model as part of their revenue mix,” he said. Audiospace tools aim to help stations maximise personalised data, content and revenue opportunities.