Online Playlists May Kill Radiostar

If “video killed the radio star,” as British band The Buggles famously sang in 1979, then online playlists might put the nail in the coffin for FM disk jockeys.

“Many music fans are not content to simply listen passively to what radio DJs play,” according to Derek A. Slater ’05-’06, co-author of a report that will be released today by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Gartner Group, a research firm.

Slater wrote in an e-mail that listeners “want to be DJs too, sharing their tastes online through playlists and creating their own downloadable radio-style shows. In this way, they might take away the power of radio and other traditional tastemakers in shaping tastes.”

Slater, a government concentrator in Winthrop House who will graduate from the College Phi Beta Kappa in January, has worked at the Berkman Center for the past three and a half years. He is the first undergraduate ever to be named a student fellow at the Berkman Center. Several people, including professors, have even called the law school and asked to speak with “Professor Slater,” according to Berkman Center spokeswoman Amanda R. Michel.

Slater co-authored the report with the Gartner Group’s research director, Michael McGuire. The Gartner Group, based in Stamford, Conn., provides analysis about the information technology industry and counted over $894 million in revenue last year, according to its website.

The report by Slater and McGuire found that playlists yield cultural benefits by exposing listeners to a greater variety of music. Moreover, the lists introduce music fans with similar tastes to one another, reinforcing online communities.

Slater and McGuire recommend that record companies study the dynamics of playlist sites so they can restructure their marketing strategies accordingly. In addition, Slater and McGuire encourage online music services to improve playlist-publishing capabilities and to solidify links to other consumer-to-consumer music-sharing sites in order to attract more traffic to their Web pages.

Slater, an avid music fan who spends much of his free time attending concerts, began studying internet and copyright issues because he has a genuine love for music.

“The struggle over music file sharing has unfortunately turned ‘sharing’ into a bad word,” Slater said in a Berkman Center press release. “Whatever one thinks of illegal downloading, much can be gained from giving music fans a chance to share their musical tastes in a variety of ways.”

The use of consumer-to-consumer recommendation tools such as playlists is becoming increasingly common, the report finds. According to the report, 20 percent of online music listeners use these tools at least five days a week, and more than 25 percent of online listeners use the tools between one and four days a week.    

Slater and McGuire predicted that by 2010, 25 percent of online music transactions will be driven directly by consumer-to-consumer sharing applications.