Orange turns up music services with Radio FG

Rating: its all about the Soundtribes or Pikeo and reality radio, man

Orange has teamed up with Radio FG to offer mobile and internet services to users with exclusive editorial and music content.

What?
Basically, Orange customers can now listen to Radio FG live on the mobile device or the Internet when it is broadcast over Liveradio.

What else?
Radio FG can also plug into Orange flagship services Soundtribes and Pikeo.

Soundtribes?

This is a services that allows users to create their own personal space where they can upgrade music and video. The aim is to create a social network. This new partnership means that Soundtribes is not the official “search for new talent” platform for FG Recordings label.

Pikeo
Pieko is the Orange photo sharing and storage site. From now on Radio FG users will be able to share their photos from concerts or events on the Pikeo site.

Radio FG?
Radio FG has 350,000 listeners a day, 70 in house DJs.

What we think?
Now, I have to say. When Orange first launched Soundtribes and Pikeo I had high hopes but months on the fact of the matter is that there are enough of these types of services from other bigger brand providers that consumers are latching on to. Orange needs to ramp up its marketing and the Radio FG deal could be it.

Reality TV or Talent shows are the rage. Everyone loves them and the find the next talent idea behind Radio FG and Soundtribes sounds very interesting. What I don’t get is the push toward “editorial content”.

This press release states that Orange is pushing high quality editorial on this service and I ask the question of whether it is necessary. High value editorial is better served with services that feature artists. In terms of where the Radio is being used to serve other needs and drive social networking services adding a blog or a rating service might be more useful to the user.

The one example that springs to mind of great editorial is on the Virgin Bites portal where real journalists and editors are asked to write reviews. This is because a user can purchase the CD or DVD etc. Where a sale is not possible – strong editorial might we wasted because the social feel and aspect of the service needs to be continued with user generated content.

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