The author is project director of RadioDNS.
Radio World recently (24th May 2021) published a commentary titled “Is the Car Dashboard Radio’s Next Battlefield?” by Ruxandra Obreja, chair of Digital Radio Mondiale.
I was really pleased to read her comments on how hybrid radio can improve the experience of listening to broadcast radio. She mentioned some concerns, and I thought it would be useful to explain how we’ve addressed those.
RadioDNS is a standards organization, so we can’t force anyone to do anything. Stations can choose themselves the extent to which they publish metadata and content using our standards. We certainly don’t (and can’t) require stations to support switching to streaming, nor publishing their metadata completely openly.
Recent updates to our SPI standard include the capability for stations to “geo-fence” use of their streams, and for stations to provide their metadata only to trusted third parties.
RadioDNS fully and emphatically supports broadcast radio of all technologies. As well as working with FM, HD Radio and DAB+, our standards have worked with DRM since their inception. I’m pleased to say that there are broadcasters who are using our standards to enhance their DRM transmissions.
The best standards are constructed collaboratively. Many of the leading organizations who collaborated to create DRM are also collaborating at RadioDNS to design the best standards for hybrid radio.
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