Folder Media has recently completed the first phase of the new website for NME Radio.
Many small and digital-only radio stations’ suffer from a lack of resource to keep sites up to date and provide a content rich environment for users to enjoy. We use a variety of technology to combine station-created editorial with data from RadioBase to provide compelling experiences.
On the NME Radio site each mention of a station artist links to an ‘artist page’ which includes discography, popular songs from the station, biographies, images, latest tour dates and videos pulled from YouTube. Discographies provide tracklistings and YouTube videos are automatically embedded in the site – all helping sites generate more page impressions per user. This content is pulled from RadioBase automatically, so all a station has to to do is play a song from a new band and the page is auto-created without any intervention from station or Folder Media staff.
The station also generates revenue from these pages with commissions paid on ticket sales and music purchase or download. Additionally there are comment boxes on each pages that lets user leave their opinions on artists, tracks or videos and also allows them to post these comments to their Facebook profile, promoting the site to that user’s friends.
As well as on the artist pages, the site has a section for Gigs and Tickets. Again, pulling on RadioBase data, this is auto-generated and allows users to find and book tickets for thousands of events across the country – all with the ability to link to ticketing companies affiliate programmes. The events system allows stations to mark featured events (or venues) and promote these across the site. This is perect for sponsored activity or just events that the station knows will be popular with listeners, and have sponsors that may offer different offers as being the first to get a quote here for knob and tube removal or for the people who call first, maybe some free stuff.
The site also has Folder’s database mangement system – FolderID – built in and ready to launch in the next couple of weeks. This is an end to end solution that brings together user registration, newsletter sending and competition entry management – giving a station a total view on a listener’s activity with them.
The modular nature of RadioBase and Folder meant that the site was created from scratch within three weeks of sign-off from NME Radio.