INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Can you explain what Music Choice is and how it works?
Answer
Music Choice is cable or satellite for your stereo rather than for your
television. If there's a type of music that you very much like or you would like to know
more about, for example techno, progressive dance or perhaps jazz or avant-garde
classical, we have 50 channels, each one is a different type of music, which goes to your
stereo and plays the best of that kind of music 24 hours a day, without commercials and
without advertising. So you can tune in any time of the day or night and hear your
particular type of music, which is something you can't do anywhere else. In Italy it's
part of the cable service. So if you subscribe to cable in Italy, you will automatically
receive 40 Music Choice channels.
Question 2
Radio has developed greatly through satellite and through new technologies. Can you talk
about this?
Answer
Radio will move much more into the multimedia age and in fact we've been the first in
Europe to really do that, initially through cable and satellite. This will happen through
terrestrial radio as well, but it will take slightly longer. You can start to provide the
range of choice that we can do in terms of number of channels and depth of channels, the
depth of range of music that is on each channel. But equally you can provide a lot of data
services. For example, if you want to know what track you're playing, we can tell you
right away just with the press of a button, the artist, the album that it comes from. We
can also promote a lot of new types of music and new artists. Obviously, if people want
then to buy those CDs, then we can sell them to them directly as well, just with the press
of a button.
Question 3
So in a certain way you have a thematic radio. Don't you think that when people
choose a thematic radio, in a certain way they are a little closed in their interests?
Because when you choose a generalist channel - if you can call it that - you may hear
things that you wouldn't choose, but these things can open your mind.
Answer
Of course that's true and that's why we provide 40 or 50 channels, because
that starts to provide things which people can't hear anywhere else and which they can
start to experiment with. But equally it means that if there is a type of music that they
really do love, they can hear it programmed much better and with a much wider variety on a
Music Choice channel than they can on radio, even if a radio format exists; but probably
for about 40 of our 50 channels there's no radio format, because typically radio plays a
fairly narrow range of formats. This is really a totally new experience; it's not at all
like radio. There are no commercials, no DJs; it's very much focused on the music, playing
a much wider range of music and new music that people won't hear on the radio.
Question 4
Will you experiment with radio on the Internet?
Answer
We're already doing that. We will do that with Telecom Italia in Italy. We think that
people tend to listen to music a lot while they are using their computer at home, and
quite often even through the PC, through the computer with a CD-ROM played in the
computer. We believe that if you can offer the choice that we can offer through cable and
satellite through the Internet, then that will be very successful. People can listen to
music while they're doing other things with their computer. In fact, we're doing some
trials with Telecom Italia but also with other companies around Europe.
Question 5
Don't you think that giving people pay-radio channels, you exclude people who cannot
afford to pay. In the future it may be interesting to give free radio channels, thematic
channels.
Answer
In fact the price is very cheap already; we're talking about a few hundred lira. We would
like to do free radio. The trouble is if you talk about, for example, avant-garde
classical music, there is not enough of an advertising audience to support that as a free
radio format; it has to be part of subscription because the audience is quite small. But
luckily when you put 40 or 50 channels together as we do on a pay basis, you can justify
the economics. So we would like to do free radio and in fact in some countries, in
Germany, for example, we're doing two or three radio stations already. I hope we will be
able to do that in Italy. But I think that that will be a different type of service.
Question 6
Satellite and radio through satellite is also quite developed in the third word countries.
Are you studying this?
Answer
We're a global company. We have an American service. I represent the European service,
which is programmed right across Europe, including Italy. But because it relies on digital
technology, it needs to be distributed in a place where there is digital satellite or
digital cable. Today the most sophisticated markets for that are in Europe and the US, but
clearly it will expand through those kinds of new technologies all over the world in the
next few years.
Question 7
Do you think that by developing a new industry you will create more jobs?
Answer
Absolutely. We've been working in Europe for four years and in Italy for one year now and
we have already built up employment within our company and within related companies. What
is more, as we build with the music industry interested in new types of music and sell
more CDs, we will also help Italian performing artists and recording artists and the
Italian record industry.
Question 8
Music could also be interesting for a thematic channel on television.
Answer
Yes, we don't think of ourselves as radio, we think of ourselves as music. People think of
music as an audio experience, not a television experience. Music television is generally
very successful around Europe but it tends to be a niche product, a very small audience,
typically quite young people who are interested in watching music on television. But we
know that 99 percent of people are interested in actually listening to music, so we don't
want to restrict our audience to people who are only interested in music television. We
want to talk to everybody who is interested in music.
Question 9
But for instance television could be successful for opera. Don't you think that a thematic
channel on opera could be successful?
Answer
I think that it may well be the case. If you look at music television, there are now two
or three classical music TV channels in Europe which never existed before. I think that
there is a market for those, particularly for the big events. If there's a big opera in
Milan which people can't get tickets for, then I think they might be interested in paying
to go and see that. But that's really a different thing from what we're doing. We're
really focused on the music ourselves. Perhaps alongside the television station we will
show the pictures; we might actually include it in our program as a music broadcast. Our
business is audio broadcast, and we think that that has mass market appeal, whereas music
television will always be a niche.
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