BBC's Blog, page 9

What's on BBC Red Button - 26 October - 1 November

This week there’s a refreshing, crisp breeze in the air as Autumnwatch returns with live wildlife spotting, special guests and much more. We also head out to the country with coverage of the 2013 sheep dog trials with Countryfile’s One Man and His Dog. There’s plenty of sport too, including boxing, F1 and the MotoGP.

One Man and His Dog

One Man and His Dog

For the first time, Countryfile is home to the BBC's One Man and His Dog competition showcasing the time-honoured skills and traditions of sheep dog trialling. The very best sheep dogs and their handlers from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales will compete to become champions of 2013. Matt Baker takes to the commentary box to take us through all the trialling action, while Julia Bradbury will be finding out if the collie really is the brains in the operation or if the simple sheep has been pulling the wool over our eyes. And Adam's in Bala in North Wales - the birthplace of sheep dog trialling - helping farmers bring down more than 900 Welsh Mountain sheep from the hills. 

Sun 27 October, 7:15pm-10:25pm
Wed 30 October, 4:00am-7:00am and 9:30pm-6:00am
Thu 31 October, 6:00am-7:00am
Fri 1 November, 12:30am-7:00am
Sat 2 November, 1:00am-6:00am

Autumnwatch

Autumnwatch 2013

Join the Autumnwatch team live from Leighton Moss, Lancashire as they go spotting starling murmurations (that's a large flock to the uninitiated), marsh harriers and more in Autumnwatch Extra. Afterwards, join Nick Baker for all new Autumnwatch Unsprung featuring special guests, mystery objects, quizzes, your questions, photos and more.

Tue 29 October, 7:00am-9:25pm
Wed 30 October, 7:00am-9:30pm
Thu 31 October, 7:00am-9:30pm
Fri 1 November, 7:00am-7:00pm

Hugh Laurie’s Blues Changes

Actor, comedian and musician Hugh Laurie with his acclaimed Copper Bottom Band examines the ways in which the blues has influenced the types of music that we listen to today.

Mon 28 October, 7:55pm-4:00am

Wrong Mans

Get exclusive extra content from new comedy thriller Wrong Mans on Red Button. Each week town planner Noel Ward will release a new dossier of evidence against his colleague Sam Pinkett. Press red for the Noel Truth or catch up at www.bbc.co.uk/thewrongmans

Sun 27 October, 10:25pm-12:00 midnight
Tue 29 October, 9:25pm-10:55pm

Mini: A Life Updated

This documentary was originally broadcast in 1985 and is featured in Mini: A Live revisited. Juxtaposing scenes from past and present, we follow the story of former child arsonist ‘Mini’ – now age 21 – as he takes his first steps in the outside world after spending half his life in high-security psychiatric care.

Tue 29 October, 10:55pm-4:00am

This week's Sport highlights

There’s plenty more sporting action this week with the World Amateur Boxing Championships final, MotoGP racing from Japan, Indian F1 highlights and race extras, as well as England v Wales in the Women’s World Cup qualifier. We've also got Rugby League World Cup highlights as well as World Squash and Cycling World Cup coverage.

For a full list and times of sport coverage on Red Button see the BBC Sport website. Please note times are subject to change.

Don’t forget, you can get more information on BBC Red Button services here and you can keep up with all the latest news by following us on Twitter @BBCRedButton. 

Links: BBC iPlayer App Downloads

The BBC iPlayer app has now been downloaded more than 20 million times  (in the press release there's a list of the most popular programmes and days). This was reported by Metro (which has some nice infographics) and the Telegraph ("BBC iPlayer viewers abandon computers for smartphones and tablets"). Quote from the Telegraph:

"Mobile devices accounted for 40pc of the 176 million requests for television programmes in September, versus 33pc on computers.

It represents a watershed in a rapid shift in online viewing habits. A year ago smartphones and tablets accounted for only 25pc of viewing, compared to 47pc on computers. Three years ago only 6pc of requests for programmes came from mobile devices.

The switch will be seen as significant both by the BBC, which recently announced a new strategy that put iPlayer at the centre of its plans, and by the wider sector, which is scrambling to keep up with the migration of away from PCs to mobile devices."

 


For more infographics see the Metro story on BBC iPlayer app downloads

The BBC recently announced plans to have a Controller of BBC iPlayer. From the press release, here's a quote from Danny Cohen:

"From now on I want us to think of BBC iPlayer as having the same status and value as a linear channel service. In essence, it becomes our fifth channel, creating and sharing content alongside our linear services."

A new deal with PACT which includes the extension of BBC iPlayer’s free-to-air catch-up window from seven to 30 days was also announced.

If you'd like to give your thoughts about the BBC's plans for the future (which include enhancing BBC iPlayer) there's a "Where Next?" survey on the About the BBC website. 

The Register reports: "BBC to spaff £18 MILLION of licence fee cash... on BIG DATA". Quote:

"'The BBC is looking for a framework of suppliers to provide web and data analytics tools and services, and associated activities,' the tender stated.

The framework will be split into two lots: the first is a single supplier lot for a core analytics platform designed to provide "insight" into web reporting, advanced predictive analytics and regulatory reporting requirements.

This is worth between £6.3m to £9.9m for the supplier that wins the only seat on the framework.

The second lot is a multi-supplier framework which covers enhanced reporting and analytics tools, worth between £5.5m and £7.92m."

If you like "drones" you may be interested in the first conference on "Unmanned Aircraft Systems" in broadcast use which will be hosted by BBC R&D on 31st October.

And finally, Andrew Leimdorfer put together a Storify covering last week's #newsHACK.

Have a nice weekend.

Nick Reynolds is Editor, BBC Internet blog

News Hack 2013

Hi, I’m Matt Shearer, Innovation Manager for BBC News Labs.

On Thursday & Friday last week (17th & 18th October 2013) we held the #newsHACK, a “Hackathon” format event in Shoreditch Town Hall, London. This was a BBC Connected Studios and BBC News Labs event.

The event saw 150 people, participating in teams, from these organisations:

BBC, The Times, Financial Times, Independent, LondonLive, The Guardian, The Mirror, SKY News., Mozilla, Dennis Publishing, Lancaster University, University College London, Sheffield University, Swansea University, Newcastle University, Dundee University, plus some individual R&D participants.

At #newsHACK

These teams completed 26 hacks (prototypes), and there were winners in 7 categories, judged by an independent panel.

The Winners:

1) Best in Show Award

Presented by Robin Pembrooke (Head of News & Weather Products, BBC)

Awarded to: The Perspectivator (Financial Times).

2) Best Live & Breaking News Experience

Presented by Nic Newman (Independent Strategist, Trainer, and Product Tank Lead)

Awarded to: “Connected Storylines” by The Grads (BBC)

3) Best University Hack

Presented by Christina Scott (CIO, FT)

Awarded to: “News Drop” by Culture Labs (Newcastle University).

4) Best Visual News Experience that Scales

Presented by Jon Paolo (Head of Editorial at SKY NEWS ONLINE)

Awarded to: “” by The LatLongs (BBC Location Services)

5) Best Hack that's likely to never be launched

Presented by Peter Rippon (Editor of the BBC Online Archive)

Awarded to: “Rubix News” by “3 mins 16 secs” (The Mirror).

6) Hack that surprised us most

Presented by Anthony Sullivan (Head of Product, The Guardian)

Awarded to: “Talk News” by SKY News team (SKY)

7) Best Journalism Tool

Presented by Jon Paolo

Awarded to: “Westminster Watchdog” by The Times (Times Digital)

First team seen all wearing #newsHACK t-shirts

Links to these hacks (for as many as is possible), plus videos from the event will be published on BBC News Labs channels (see bottom of post) in coming weeks.

In Summary

We will be publishing more detail on key areas of the event and next steps in coming weeks, and until then here are some key points in brief.

There was a broad and interesting spectrum of “Hacks”:

The “Hacks”, or “prototypes”, ranged from “Talk News” a natural language speech-driven news reading prototype (from SKY team), through linked data 2nd screen and Journalist research tools (Sheffield, BBC et al), Social gamification apps (The Times) and novel CMS approaches (BBC), right through to “Rubix News” (Mirror) an innovative navigation paradigm and the “Perspectivator” (FT) to help numbers make sense to news audiences.

The format was Rapid Prototyping with Multidiscipline teams:

We saw some great rapid iterations on ideas with small, multidiscipline teams. Each team had a chance to test their ideas in audience testing on the Thursday afternoon to get some real insight. Another key element was that teams used real data sources, rather than mocked up data.

Collaboration across the News Industry:

The teams were from a broad range of News Orgs, and while they were competing for the awards, there was a great deal of collaboration, sharing and discussion between the teams from all organisations.

Great feedback for BBC R&D APIs

80% of the participating teams used the BBC “Juicer” APIs which we had prepared for the event, featuring 100s of thousands of linked data -tagged News content items including, real time new News content. We are taking feedback for how to improve these APIs for future News Industry R&D activities, and for future innovation events.

Linked Data innovation:

Of the teams that used the BBC Juicer APIs, about half used the brand new “Storyline” APIs. Their feedback is already giving us some clear next steps on the Storyline iteration, both editorially and technologically, which will help improve the utility of the open model “Storyline”.

News industry partnerships:

BBC News Labs are following up with the participating News organisations and Universities on how we can innovate further, together, with open technology and News data exploration.

An Exciting spread of Engineering:

As well as lots of software engineering taking place, we also had teams working on physical kit that they brought into #newsHACK with them; servers, handsets, and an interesting array of LEDs, sensors, projectors and more!

This is a blueprint for how BBC News Labs works:

We believe that when you form a multidiscipline team* in a creative environment, give them problems to solve, provide audience testing & data science support, then you will be making the best use of the team’s talents. Do this with 30 teams at once, taken from across the industry and academia, then we have a real innovation hot house; collaboration, sharing, problem-solving, innovation, and all of this at an incredible pace - the savings on lagtime between disciplines, and on time invested in untested/erroneous ideas alone is massive - try quickly, build with real data, then fail or succeed quickly.

If you want to find out more about these projects as they develop please follow BBC News Labs on the following channels:

BBC News Labs Twitter account

BBC News Labs on You Tube

BBC News Labs on Google+

* A “Multi-discipline team” in this scenario should cover these capabilities: Editorial/Journalist, developer, product design, design, BA, data modelling/architecture. We were recommending teams of 3-5, but up to 7 seems OK.

Matt Shearer is Innovation Manager, BBC News Labs

What's on BBC Red Button - 19-25 October

It's a fun-filled trip for the whole family on the Red Button this week. First stop is CBBC: take a sneaky peek at the new episode of Wizards vs Aliens and get backstage access to Wolfblood with Dodge. For music fans, there's more 6 Music highlights of top artists performing at the Maida Vale studios, while Hugh Laurie returns to talk about blues history. To round things off, Sports fans can enjoy extensive coverage of the Australian MotoGP, the World Boxing Championships and a preview of the Rugby League World Cup.

Wizards vs Aliens Extra

Wizards vs Aliens

To celebrate the return of hit series Wizards vs Aliens, CBBC’s Chris and Dodge conjure up a magical behind-the-scenes special that is truly out of this world. Want to hear first-hand from the cast about what filming the second series was like? No problem. Want to learn how the team use make-up and prosthetics to create the incredible creatures on the show? You got it. Itching for a sneak peek of the first episode of the new series? Coming right up! So sit tight and enjoy the ride with Wizards vs Aliens Extra, only on the red button.

Mon 21 October, 11am-4pm
Tue 22 October, 7am-7:30pm
Wed 23 October, 7am-9am, 1pm-2pm
Thu 24 October, 7am-7:30pm
Fri 25 October, 7am-9am, 12 noon-1pm, 4pm-5:30pm

Wolfblood Extra

CBBC’s hit series Wolfblood is back, and it’s bigger and better than ever. To celebrate its return, Wolfblood Extra has all the behind-the-scenes exclusives you could dream of. Find out what life was like on set during filming, see an exclusive report from Dodge as he sniffs out all the Wolfblood gossip and see some special cast interviews from all the stars of the show. All this plus Chris’s blog, horoscopes and jokes that will make you LOL.

Mon 21 October, 7am-11am, 4pm-7:25pm

6 Music Live

6 Music Live at Maida Vale is back and features Paul McCartney, Manic Street Preachers, and Sigur Ros. Showcasing the music that the station has championed, enjoyed and nurtured, listeners can find all the action on air, online and of course on the Red Button.

Sat 19 October, 7am-9am, 12:30pm-2:30pm, 6pm until Sun 20 October 2:45am
Sun 20 October, 5:30am-8:15am, 1pm-6pm, 8pm-10:25pm, 11:30pm until Mon 21 October 7am
Mon 21 October, 8:30pm-10:55pm
Tue 22 October, 4am-7am, 7:30pm-9:25pm,
Wed 23 October, 4am-7am, 7:30pm until Thu 24 October 7am
Thu 24 October, 9pm-6am
Fri 25 October, 6am-7am

Hugh Laurie’s Blues Changes

Actor, comedian and musician Hugh Laurie with his acclaimed Copper Bottom Band examines the ways in which the blues has influenced the types of music that we listen to today.

Mon 21 October, 10:55pm-4am

This Week’s Sport Highlights

We’ve got a wide range of sporting treats this week, including the Australian MotoGP action, from qualifying to the race. There's also a celebration of sport's biggest names, rising stars and unsung heroes in The Olympic Journey: Inspire. And don't miss the World Amateur Boxing Championships in Kazakhstan and our rugby league World Cup preview. For a full list and times of sport coverage on Red Button see the BBC Sport website. Please note times are subject to change.

Don’t forget, you can get more information on BBC Red Button services here and you can keep up with all the latest news by following us on Twitter @BBCRedButton.

Ada Lovelace Day 2013

Today is Ada Lovelace Day.

In the Broadcast Centre there is a meeting room named after Ada Lovelace in tribute to her pioneering work on computer programming.

Ada Lovelace banner

Today there was a special lunchtime presentation in that room where BBC staff heard about key engineering and technology projects lead by women at the BBC.

Marina Kalkanis talking about Video Factory in the Ada Lovelace room

The photo above features Marina Kalkanis (Head of Core Services, Programme and On Demand, BBC Future Media). You can read Marina's post about Video Factory on the blog.

More details of events related to Ada Lovelace Day can be found on the Finding Ada website.

Nick Reynolds is Editor, BBC Internet blog

News Hack: Storyline Video

Hi - I’m Matt Shearer, innovation manager for BBC News Labs.

BBC News Labs work as part of BBC Connected Studio, to drive and support open innovation in the BBC, and to develop industry collaboration & partnerships.

This week, BBC News Labs & BBC Connected Studio are hosting an event called “#newsHACK” where News, Academic, Innovation and Research & Development organisations will participate in a 2 day “Hack” event. Teams from each organisation spend 2 days producing prototypes that address key News industry challenges, sharing new tech approaches and trying out new ideas during the event.

Newshack logo

Participants include: The Times, SKY, The Guardian, BBC, Evening Standard, Independent, FT, Mozilla, UCL, Sheffield Uni, Dundee Uni, Lancaster Uni, Nesta, The Mirror, Newcastle University  and more.

The goal is to drive collaboration across the digital News Industry in open data and new technologies, in order to raise the bar for News audience experiences across the UK and globally.

One particularly interesting element BBC News and News Labs are looking at is the development of a new open data standard called “Storyline”.

Storyline is an open (free to use) data model developed by some News industry data practitioners to allow the description of News Stories (including articles, images, video, shorttext etc) using linked data.

Storyline aims to enable News publishers to curate and surface the important elements of News Stories, and drive aggregations and connections to enable relevant, exciting and serendipitous user journeys around News stories and related online content. Using linked data to do this enables us to make more use of open web standards, and to give the best News experiences in an increasingly fragmented and multi-device publishing environment.

Jeremy Tarling, Senior Data Architect for BBC News explains more about Storyline in this video (apologies for poor sound quality):

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Jeremy Tarling talks about Storyline and Juicer

Follow the BBC News Labs twitter account where we'll be tweeting on Thursday's and Friday's News from the event. There are also more videos on the News Labs You Tube channel and our Google+ page.

Matt Shearer is Innovation Manager, BBC News Labs

Video Factory: Transcoding Video for BBC iPlayer

In 2006 when BBC iPlayer was still in embryonic form a new way of delivering content was commissioned by the BBC from Red Bee Media called the On Demand Production Service.

The service was ground breaking for 2006. It delivered 600 hours of Television programmes each week to BBC iPlayer. But seven years later iPlayer audiences have increased to over seven million per day on four screens and on over 1000 devices and platforms. The experiment in delivering video over the internet was proven to work, the demand was there but the infrastructure was aging and needed replacement.

So Monday the 30th of September was an important day for BBC Online. because it marked the end of the On Demand Production Service ODPS and the launch of Video Factory.

I’m Marina Kalkanis the head of the engineering teams that have built Video Factory. In this post blog I shall be telling you about how it’s built and how it will allow us to continue to improve the BBC iPlayer service.

This year the BBC will publish about 50 thousand hours of TV content and nearly 100,000 clips online on iPlayer, News, Sport, and on programme pages.

In 2013 we put content onto four platforms (PC, mobile, tablet and TV) and onto more than 1000 different devices.

Because BBC iPlayer has been a big huge success loads of people rely on BBC iPlayer to catchup on their favourite programmes. We get complaints when programmes take too long to become available. Live progammes are particularly challenging for us because we have to do all the online processing after the broadcast completes. This is even more challenging when many live programmes all broadcast at the same time. The 6:30 regional news bulletins are a perfect example of this. 16 live broadcasts that all end at the same time.

This usage pattern is ideally suited for delivery using elastic cloud computing so Video Factory has moved live processing into the cloud. Cloud computing is computing services sold on demand, on the internet, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic - a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time. This means we will have the flexibility to scale (up or down) and only pay for what we use.

The other advantage of using cloud services is we don’t have a fixed amount of storage so we no longer have to limit the hours of content we can process nor do we have to limit the hours of HD content we can handle. And because it is easier to add in new services our system is much more flexible in creating content for new devices.

Our live workflow is quite simple. We capture live broadcasts and send these to cloud storage where they get picked up by a transcode job and either sent to an idle transcoder or if the queue is full and all transcoders are busy, a newly started transcoder. Once transcoded the media either goes back to the cloud storage to be packaged on demand when a request from the internet comes in or it is pushed through to one of our other distribution services.

To get accurate start and end points for the live programmes Video Factory receives messages from the BBC playout systems giving the exact start and end frames for programmes in the TV broadcast.

Transcoding from Live TV

This diagram appears simple but behind the scenes there is a great deal of processing to capture the broadcast, make sure the right media is created for each type of device, that all the access service components like subtitles etc are produced and that the correct online rights are respected.

Video Factory is developed by engineers in BBC Future Media. We are working with leading providers of media transcoding and packaging. Our roadmap for Video Factory is packed with features. We are improving quality, increasing the amount of HD content, greatly expanding the online catalogue and the formats and getting live programmes available much more quickly.

Turning off ODPS has meant discontinuing some older workflows and formats. We have moved the transcoding and post-processing service off of MS Windows servers and as a result of this we will no longer be offering Windows Media video downloads.

We won’t only be renewing our TV workflow. We also have an Audio Factory project that is getting underway. We have similar plans being laid to completely refresh the systems we use for publishing Radio programmes online. The BBC publishes more than 50 radio stations online, both live and as catchup and many of the benefits of a new TV publishing system also apply to Radio.

Some of my colleagues on the Video Factory team will be blogging soon with much more detail about how we built and system and how it operates. In the meantime I’d welcome your questions and feedback.

Marina Kalkanis is Head of Live Services, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media

What's on BBC Red Button 12-18 October

Music lovers are in for a treat on Red Button this week.  6 Music Live returns for a week-long celebration of live music from the legendary BBC Maida Vale studios in London plus the Pixies’ Black Francis talks to Steve Lamacq as well as performing live. 

6 Music Live

Manic Street Preachers

6 Music Live at Maida Vale is back and features Paul McCartney, Manic Street Preachers and Sigur Ros.

Showcasing the music that the station has championed, enjoyed and nurtured, listeners can find all the action on-air, online and of course on the Red Button.

Mon 14 October, 12pm-1pm, 6:55pm-8:25pm

Tue 15 October, 12am-6am, 6am-1pm, 4pm-9:25pm, 10:30pm until Fri 18 October 3:30am

The Wrong Mans

Get exclusive extra content from new comedy thriller The Wrong Mans on Red Button. Each week town planner Noel Ward will release a new dossier of evidence against his colleague Sam Pinkett. Press red for the Noel Truth or catch up at www.bbc.co.uk/thewrongmans

Sun 13 October, 6:15pm-7:55pm,  10:25pm-11:30pm
Tue 15 October, 9:25pm-10:30pm

Antiques Play Along Quiz

Demonstrate your knowledge of antiques by playing along with Antiques Roadshow. Our valuation game is simple, fun and free to play. Consider each of the objects featured in the programme, select an option before our experts give their valuation and see how many you get right.

The play along is not available on Virgin TiVo but remember you can also download the BBC’s free mobile play along app.

Available on Sky and Freeview

Sun 13 October, 7:55pm-9:00pm

6 Music: Pixies in concert

Legendary rockers, Pixies, talk about their first new music in 20 years and play at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, introduced by Steve Lamacq.

Sat 12 October, 9:05am-2:35pm

Crimewatch: Wanted Faces

Crimewatch needs your help to track down wanted faces. Your first chance to view and report people wanted by police before the main Crimewatch programme. Will you recognise anyone?

Mon 14 October, 8:25pm-12:00am

Sport Highlights

Sports fans can get all the action from the qualifying round of the Malaysian MotoGP and watch a tribute to the legendary Murray Walker as the Formula commentator celebrates his 90th birthday.

For a full list and times of sport coverage on Red Button see the BBC Sport website. Please note times are subject to change.

Don’t forget, you can get more information on BBC Red Button services here and you can keep up with all the latest news by following us on Twitter @BBCRedButton.

Links: Tony Hall Speech, BBC Playlister and Android Update

Tony Hall's speech on "Where Next?" for the BBC on Tuesday was largely reported neutrally, with most mainstream media opting for straight forward summaries. The whole speech can be watched on the About The BBC website.

For analysis and comment, Steve Hewlett in the Guardian on the Sunday before the speech asserted: "Tony Hall's digital vision could cloud BBC licence fee's future". Steve's argument was debated and debunked in comments.

Decipher Agency in a blog post called "Tony Hall’s Vision For The BBC Re-Interpreted" disagree with the vision for BBC iPlayer in the speech and made this point:

"...it raises the question again of which point in the value chain is best set up to deliver personalisation.  It has been shown time and again, that the best place to deliver this is at platform level – ie one stage further up the value chain than where the BBC sits."

Blog posts from Charlie Beckett ("Tony Hall's Joined Up BBC") and Damian Tambini ("BBC Joins The Global Race") are also of interest.

Zane Lowe at the BBC Playlister launch. Taken from the @bbcplayerlister twitter stream.

The other big announcement this week was the BBC Playlister Beta. The BBC News story is where comment action can be found.

Other interesting headlines around Playlister include:

"BBC plays down fears of exposure to explicit material through Playlister" from The Guardian.

"How BBC Playlister will curate the nation's musical tastes" from The Telegraph.

The Independent's story includes this quote from Bob Shennan, Controller of BBC Radio 2:

"We are not offering the club card mentality. But we are living in a world where a lot of our audience expects us to know who they are. They live in a world where they expect to sign in but it’s really important that what they get from the BBC is an enhanced service rather than exploitation"

The Register tentatively welcomes Playlister:

"Yet even in its crude version 1.0 incarnation, PlayLister brings some welcome integration to music fans. It seems absurd in the internet era that discovery and "fulfillment" (aka actually listening to the song or buying it) are so poorly integrated: radio and third-party music services live in separate worlds."

Elsewhere David Berlin has left a comment on his blog post with an update on BBC iPlayer downloads on Android devices:

"We have found that some brand new high powered popular devices can only receive streams to a certain level, or that video downloads bugs can cause cyclical crashes and device hard resets, rendering the BBC iPlayer app useless thereafter and the device temporarily paralyzed. These are not your usual basic bugs and such severe behavior is not acceptable to the BBC. This is why we’ve adopted the strategy of whitelisting devices."

Five more Android devices now have support for BBC iPlayer downloads. The full list is on the iPlayer help pages.

On the BBC College of Production website interactive producer Alex Hudson describes how social media has changed BBC Question Time.

While Digital Annex blogged their experiences at the Connected Studio in Glasgow:

"While not quite a hack day, BBC Connected Studio invites technologists, creatives, writers and planners to bring solutions to often complicated problems and, although we were there to bring ideas, we walked away having learnt more than we could have expected"

Have a nice weekend!

Nick Reynolds is Editor, BBC Internet blog

 

BBC Playlister Beta

Today, as Tony Hall announced yesterday, we release an early Beta version of a new online music product called BBC Playlister.

The vision for BBC Playlister is to start to transform music on BBC online, by connecting the music you hear on the BBC with your online music life, helping you to discover more music you love from the millions of tracks that are now so easily available.

BBC Playlister Homepage

BBC Playlister will do this by offering three main features.

Firstly, BBC Playlister aims to solve the problem of hearing music on the radio or on TV and not knowing what it is, and how to remember it for later. From today, whenever we play music on our national music radio stations and some TV programmes, you will be able to simply “Add” that piece of music to your own personal playlist with one click. And then you can retrieve your playlist from anywhere, at home or at work, using your BBC iD to share this information across desktop, tablet and mobile.

Secondly, great music recommendations. The problem many users face today is not getting access to music, but discovering the right kind of music that suits their taste. BBC Playlister aims to translate our expert musical guidance from on-air, to online. See Ben Chapman’s blog post for more on this. Being able to see what our presenters are personally recommending and following them for regular updates is coming in a future product release (see a taster video below), so today we have a simple offer focussing on recently played music and on popular tracks.

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video

Lastly, the ability to actually listen to the music you have “saved” or been recommended. The BBC doesn’t own the rights to allow you to listen in full to commercial music on-demand, so we are initially partnering with three of the biggest players in the digital music space: Spotify, Deezer and You Tube. With Spotify we are also releasing a branded Playlister space which houses not just your exported tracks, but also editorially curated playlists from our radio and TV stations. This means you will be able to remember music you’ve heard on the BBC by adding it to a playlist, then “export” or send that information to one of our partners so you can listen in full to the music there.

There has been lots of background work necessary to deliver Playlister. We’ve had to rebuild our entire music backend and content management system that delivers much of the underlying data that drives Playlister; we’ve had to create new unique identifiers for individual tracks to allow us to offer aggregations such as “Popular” and to share track resources such as images and short sound clips. We’ve also had to improve the technical architecture of our music metadata ingest systems so that recently played tracks are quickly available for users to add to BBC Playlister.

Playlister is labelled a “Trial Beta” for now whilst we gather feedback from users, ensure the technology is robust and resilient enough, and we complete the initial feature set including recommendations from our on-air presenters. Later this year we expect to remove the Beta label, which is also when we’ll integrate Playlister functionality into our BBC iPlayer Radio mobile apps.

I’m keen to hear your thoughts once you have used the service, so either leave a comment below or email us direct at bbcplaylister@bbc.co.uk or tweet us @bbcplaylister.

Chris Kimber is Executive Product Manager in BBC Future Media for Radio & Music