With 450 music streaming services operating around the world, an expert radio panel at BroadcastAsia on Thursday were asked how radio can compete with such a huge threat.

On the whole, the panel agreed that radio had responded to the challenge and needed to continue to play up its strengths, especially the unique and personal engagement that is only possible with a one-to-one medium like radio.

The panel included Georgina Chang, Vice President of English programming at MediaCorp’s Radio Division, Simon Kendall, Head of Business Development for the BBC World Service, Joddy Hernady from Telkom Indonesia and Charles W Kelly Jr, Head, Sales from Nautel.

The audience was told how by 2013, 28 million people had subscribed for online music services.  Pandora has a 31 percent market share in the US, followed by iHeartRadio and iTunesRadio and then Spotify.   In this region, South Korea has seen a huge take-up for streaming services, becoming the fourth largest market in the world, said panel moderator, Keith Williams from RCS.

Comparing the likes of radio with Spotify was like comparing a pair of heels with some sneakers, said Chang who said that while online listening was initially championed by the youth, MediaCorp has recently seen large numbers of older fans to its stations try online listening for the first time.

Kendall agreed that there was “no relationship between Spotify and the listener in the same way as there is with radio”.  But he said the BBC has designed digital products that integrated with the likes of Spotify, to enhance user experience.

Nautel’s Kelly said radio had faced several theats since its invention more than 100 years ago and the medium would continue to see off competition so long as it continued to adopt narrowcasting strategies, offering more niche content choices.

He said: “Radio has adapted and changed over the years and that the creativity and originality that continues to makes radio special.

Kelly warned that it wasn’t possible for there to be a 100% take-up of online listening and that traditional transmission would continue to dominate.

Joddy Hernady, the panelist from Telekom Indonesia described how they were rolling out a hybrid service with hundreds of streaming channels and a thousands online radio services in a project that would see revenue shared between the telecoms giant, radio stations and music copyright bodies.