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As In-Car Entertainment Options Grow, Radio Keeps Pace

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With robust digital offerings, radio can maintain its place as the no. 1 in-car media

Radio enjoys the enviable position as the most popular in-car media, but the car is quickly emerging as the new battleground for audio. As more vehicles with advanced entertainment systems and WiFi connectivity hit the road, drivers can tune into online radio or apps for their audio, and that’s giving radio new competition.  

According to Edison Research’s latest Infinite Dial report, 56% of drivers named AM/FM radio as their top in-vehicle entertainment choice, but that slipped from 63% just two years ago. At the same time, digital audio increased its share from 8% in 2016 to 12% in 2018 and podcasts inched up from just 1% to 3%.  

At the upcoming 2018 Radio Show in Orlando, Edison Research will share new data on in-car listening, which is sure to garner plenty of attention. Radio currently enjoys a strong position and is often the only time many consumers are using the radio. Among overall respondents, 54% say they only listen to AM/FM radio in the car and 62% of 13 to 34 years old say the car is the only place they tune in to radio.

As more cars feature advanced and integrated technology, broadcasters need to be ready with their digital products. Streaming audio services, including Pandora, iHeart Radio and Spotify, are pre-loaded in some car systems, and a growing number of new vehicles also feature Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which allow in-dash screens to mimics a smartphone screen so drivers can easily access any apps, including audio apps. By 2025, the Radio Advertising Bureau predicts all new cars rolling off production lines will be connected to the Internet, giving drivers access to an unprecedented number of entertainment options.  

But, here’s the good news for radio: Local broadcasters are well-positioned to embrace new in-car technology and, potentially, to grow their in-car audience. Along with traditional AM/FM listening, radio stations can offer drivers high-quality live streaming audio and on-demand content, including podcasts, and deliver it all through the latest in-dash systems. If a driver has a radio app on their phone, it appears on CarPlay or Android Auto. Drivers with cars that feature Alexa voice-technology can even use that to access their favorite radio station skills.

To stay ahead, radio stations need to make sure their digital products are cutting-edge, including high-quality live streams that offer a seamless listening experience, intuitive apps, a strong lineup of podcasts, and easy-to-use Alexa skills. After all, these are the key ingredients to any positive digital audio experience and the car is no exception.

At Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS technology for broadcasters and media companies, our solutions make it simple to create, distribute and share content across digital platforms — including the car — and to produce and integrate ads for digitals channels. Our audience engagement suite features:

Futuri Streaming offering the finest-quality streaming audio to your mobile app and web player through our reliable technology solution with 24/7, VIP support.

Futuri Mobile: an interactive audience experience featuring more than 50 customizable features, including contests, push notifications, audio and video streaming, podcasts and more.

Our custom-built Alexa skills can deliver your content, promotions, and sponsor messaging to Alexa-powered smart speakers.

The upcoming 2018 Radio Show, will feature more insights about this latest Edison research study on in-car audio data.  Join broadcasters on Sept. 25-28 at the Hilton Bonnet Creek and the Waldorf-Astoria in Orlando, FL, and hear Edison’s Larry Rosin share the latest findings on in-car audio data from Share of Ear, Infinite Dial, and NPR.

Futuri Media is a proud sponsor and contributor of the 2018 Radio Show. To schedule time at the show and learn more about our audience engagement technologies and how it can help brace your brand for the future, contact Futuri Media here.

 

Podcast Reach Blog

How Podcasting Can Reach an Audience of 100 million

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To boost engagement, broadcasters and digital publishers need to educate consumers

The biggest hurdle to growing podcasting may be helping consumers understand exactly what a podcast is and how to find it.

New data from Edison Research notes that 64% of Americans, of 180 million people, say they’ve heard of podcasts, up from just 22% in 2006, but only 17%, or 48 million, have ever listened. That leaves a lot of room for improvement.

“The number of people who actually listened to a podcast in the last week is significantly smaller than those who are familiar with the term,” Edison said. “The key…is understanding why those people familiar with the term ‘podcasting’ have never listened.”

With producers and podcasters’ help, Edison estimates that podcasting can attract 100-million listeners, a critical threshold to be considered mainstream media.

What are the biggest obstacles to growth? The answer is surprisingly simple: Many Americans don’t understand how to find and stream podcasts, while others have misconceptions, like thinking podcasting will eat up a user’s data plan.  Among those who don’t listen to podcasts, 37% said they don’t really understand what podcasting is, while 48% said they weren’t sure how to listen; while 65% say there are so many podcasts, they don’t even know where to begin.

With high-quality and engaging shows for every niche and interest imaginable, the podcast industry is booming. More advertisers are signing on to the medium and local broadcasters are upping their podcast game, launching new shows and adapting on-air content for podcasting.

To grow the audience, local broadcasters can spread the word, offering tips on where to find podcasts and how to stream, and regularly promoting their podcasts. Use on-air promo time to discuss podcasts and post regularly on popular social media channels. On-air talent can promote their podcasts or talk about their own favorites, then remind listeners how to find their own unique content. Providing the early podcast education is critically important and here’s why: in the recent Edison study, most Americans don’t know that 80% of smartphones are preloaded with a podcast listening app such as Apple Podcast.

At Futuri Media, a global provider of SaaS technology for broadcasters and digital publishers,  our platforms make it quick and easy to create on-demand content for podcasting, and to share that content across all media channels.

Our POST system makes it virtually effortless to produce podcasts for both Android and iOS devices.

“POST is extremely flexible for editing and including OTA or original content,” said Sophie Fry, Futuri’s SVP, Sales. “With POST, we can help broadcasters create, edit, craft, and distribute whatever programming content and advertiser sponsorship platforms the station desires.”

POST provides:

  • In-studio, touch-screen system so hosts and producers to quickly and easily capture audio and convert it into podcasts.
  • Ad-insertion, allowing stations to deliver custom messaging inside podcasts.
  • Easy distribution to multiple digital channels, including Facebook, Instagram, station websites, and more – with fully licensed images available to attach to podcast content to make it even more discoverable.

For high-quality streaming, Futuri Streaming, provides the best-in-class streaming experience available on the market today. And, with our custom-built Alexa skills, we can incorporate your podcasts for playback on any Alexa-enabled device.

Want to learn more about how we can help grow your podcast production and sales? Contact your Futuri Media partner or reach us here.

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Summer is the Time to Drive Digital Engagement

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Consumers turn to digital in the summer more than any other time of year. Engage your audience across all digital platforms using technologies proven to boost both audience engagement and revenue.

This summer, as more Americans stream audio in cars, on smart speakers, Bluetooth devices, and smartphones, online audio is primed to be more popular than ever. For radio broadcasters, this equals new opportunities to engage with audiences and attract advertisers.

In recent years, online listening for both radio broadcasters and pure play services has been booming. About 57% of Americans, or 160-million users, are streaming digital audio weekly, up from 53% last year and just 17% in 2010, according to the latest “Infinite Dial” report created by Edison Research. The average listener consumes more than 13.5 hours of digital audio per week, including music, spoken word formats, and podcasts.

In-car digital audio is also rising in popularity, 44% of consumers listening in-car, up from 40% in 2017 and 21% in 2013, Edison reported.

Meantime, radio stations are working to maximize new revenue streams from digital platforms. Last year, radio digital ad revenue jumped 13.4% to $700-million and is expected to reach nearly $800 million this year, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau and Borrell Associates. On a per station level, digital accounts for 7.5% of the average station’s ad revenues, up from 6.3% last year.

At Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS software for broadcasters, our solutions make it simple to create, distribute and share content across digital platforms, and to produce and integrate ads for digitals channels.

Futuri Streaming delivers the finest-quality streaming audio to your mobile app and web player through our reliable system and comes with 24/7, VIP support.

Our team can create a custom mobile app just for your station. Optimize mobile with Futuri Mobile, our app platform that boasts more than 50 customizable features, including contests, push notifications, audio and video streaming, and more.  

POST, our exclusive content delivery and management system, enables on-air talent and producers to easily create digital content, including podcasts. The in-studio, touch-screen system makes it simple to grab and upload content for digital and on-demand listening, and to create exclusive digital audio.  

To help monetize digital, POST’s audio is PPM encoded, which enables broadcasters to measure their digital listening in the same ratings system as on-air audiences. POST also offers ad-insertion to create custom messages for podcasts and digital audio.

With #engage, our interactive programming tools, stations can keep up with trending topics. Our customized actions, including song alerts, text and email notifications, push alerts, and song voting, boost mobile and social engagement. Stations can sync social posts to song lists.  

Our custom-built Alexa skills can deliver your content, promotions and ads to Alexa-powered smart speakers.

Keep up with your audience’s trending chatter with TopicPulse, a real-time monitoring system that tracks the stories of interest to your listeners and provides fodder for on-air, online and social posts.

Let us help you be the soundtrack for the summer. Contact your Futuri Media partner rep or contact us here.

people looking at their phones at a train stop

Mobile Usage in America Reaches All-Time High

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Radio Must Respond with Mobile-Ready Content

How many times a day do you check your smartphone? The answer is probably much more than you think. In fact, the average American checks their phone every 12 minutes, or 80 times per day, and nearly one in ten Americans peek at their phones every four minutes, according to a recent study by Asurion.

Among smartphone users, streaming audio and podcasts rank as top activities. Radio broadcasters are eager to connect with these mobile consumers – and with good reason. Each day, 40% of Americans stream audio on their smartphones, according to the latest findings from Edison Research Infinite Dial. In fact, 75% of podcast listeners engage with programming content on a mobile device more than any other source.

Through mobile apps and websites, radio stations can offer live streams, on-demand music, podcasts and more to their consumers. Mobile serves as a tool to extend the life of on-air content as stations time-shift their most popular shows, or offer replays of live shows and music events.

Now more than ever, radio broadcasters need to be mobile-ready. According to Pew Research Center, smartphone penetration is at an all-time high, with ownership reaching 77% among adults, up from just 35% in 2011. The smartphone penetration reaches its highest loyalty with consumers between 18-29 with 94%; and 89% own a smartphone with adults 30 to 49. The boomer generation of adults ages 65 plus, have yet to make the consumer conversion to smartphones with the lowest ownership rate of 46%. 1:10 Americans are smartphone-only Internet consumers, following an overall market trend to more mobile connectivity and fewer broadband households, according to Pew Research Center.

Media consumption is driving Americans’ mobile usage, with 50% of Americans relying on their smartphones to receive breaking news alerts, while the device also serves as a buying tool with 51% making online purchases via their device, and 28% searched for work.

At Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS software designed to drive audience and revenue growth for broadcasters, we believe smartphones are key to grow listening and the bottom line.

Futuri Media’s suite of tools can help you create, distribute and monetize your digital content across platforms. Allow us to share a few ideas:

Futuri Mobile:  Our mobile app platform offers more than 50 customizable features, including contests, push notifications, audio and video streaming, and more. Our team can design your mobile app with the features that are most important to your station and audience.

POST: With our exclusive content delivery and management system, on-air talent and producers can easily convert content for on-demand consumption. Producers can grab and upload benchmarks and exclusive interviews, and create bonus content, such as an after-show podcast or in-studio visit from a musician and local personality.

TopicPulse: Our real-time monitoring system tracks the stories your specific target audience is responding to now so you can talk about it on the air, on a blog and on social channels.

Futuri Streaming: Deliver top-quality streaming audio to your mobile app and web player through our reliable system, which includes 24/7 support.

#engage: Stay on top of what’s trending with our interactive programming tools. Designed to increase your mobile and social interactions, we offer customized actions, including song alerts, text, email and push notifications, and song voting.  Stations can even sync their social posts with their song lists so listeners can build their own playlists.

Want to learn more? Contact your Futuri Media partner or reach us here.

 

People speaking at the WWRS Panel

WWRS 2018: Gen Zers, Millennials Use Radio On Their Terms

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To cultivate young audiences, radio needs to advance new devices, cars and data

Want to reach Generation Z and Millennials? Be authentic, explore new technologies, and use as many platforms as possible. Seeking a better understanding of Gen Zers,at the Worldwide Radio Summit 2018 opening panel, Futuri Media CEO Daniel Anstandig surveyed top audio and technology industry executives. The top finding: To reach these influential consumers (Gen Zers are ages 6 to 23 years old and Millennials are 24 to 38 year olds), radio broadcasters need to adapt — and fast.

“We need to stop just thinking radio. At iHeart, we develop for everything so we are always where the consumer is,” said iHeartRadio President Darren Davis, per Twitter, where the #WWRS2018 hashtag helped spread some of the panel’s best insights.

“Don’t be afraid of Gen Z – they may not be consuming radio in a traditional way… But if you have great content, they’ll find it,” said Elevate Research Founder Nicole Bergen. “They consume content everywhere.”

In a joint study by the R&D lab they developed together, Futuri Media and the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications have learned Gen Zers use media in 8-second bites and juggle five screens at once! They get information from peers and Google, are tech-savvy, and heavy social media users. They start each day with mobile, and use radio to discover new music, connect with favorite DJs, and stay up on local news and events.

On podcasting, Alexa and streaming 

Gen Zers don’t tune in on a broadcast schedule, but stream audio and podcasts on their time. To reach them, iHeartMedia stations offer both bite-sized, on-demand audio and full-length podcasts. It’s one way Davis said radio broadcasters can rethink distribution. “To them, radio is like an appliance, like a toaster,” Davis said. “We all need to stop thinking of ourselves as radio people. Our content goes so many more places than out of that one appliance.”

Think of next-gen tech as potential, not potholes. “Streaming is additive to radio. Alexa has brought radio back to the home,” noted Tim Clarke, Cox Media Group’s VP of Audience and Content for Radio.  And while Nielsen ratings might stay flat, Clarke says streaming audiences were growing.

To serve up more on-demand content, Ben Cooper, Controller for BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio1Xtra, and BBC Asian Network, has said he wants to create a Netflix for radio.  That way, Gen Zers stay connected, but on their terms. “For the radio industry, we have to make sure there are things they’re going to miss out on if they don’t listen,” Cooper said.

At the wheel

With Gen Zers relying on smartphones to access entertainment, in-car connectivity is critical. In fact, these young adults say they care more about their vehicle’s connectivity than make and model.

As carmakers innovate, if radio wants to maintain its position as the no. 1 in-car media, they need to pump out premium programming, says Scott Burnell, Ford’s Global Lead, Business Development & Partner Management. “When the vehicle becomes the ‘living room,’ autonomous cars, radio – more than ever – needs to create content people would consume while the auto is driving itself,” he said.  

Stay social

Along with heavy amounts of social media like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, Gen Zers are glued to YouTube for music, entertainment and even podcasts. Radio stations and talent should engage young adults on social channels, and do it with authenticity, another Gen Z priority. “What radio does brilliantly is connect people to a sense of community,” Cooper said. “If we can make content that makes you feel a part of a community, we will still be relevant in Gen Z’s life.”

Data, data, and more data

With podcast advertising expected to hit $500 million by 2020, per Bridge Ratings, brands are watching closely to see how Gen Zers embrace and use podcasts. That will likely bring new opportunities to radio stations too.

“There are more sophisticated ways to prove the value of radio now. [We can] show a buyer more sophisticated info than we’ve ever been able to, fueled by big data, to continue to prove radio plays an important role in their media mix,” Clarke said.

To help its clients meet Gen Z and Millennials’ demands and more, Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS technology for broadcasters, offers multiple solutions:

– TopicPulse powers your broadcast with real-time insights into the stories your specific target audience is responding to now so you can talk about it on the air, on a blog and on social.

– Futuri’s POST system makes it simple for radio broadcasters to create and publish podcasts.

– The Futuri Ad Network offers flexible, turnkey options for broadcasters to monetize their digital content in streaming and podcasts.

– #engage boosts mobile and social activity with customized actions on mobile apps and social, including song alerts, and text, email and push notifications. Sync social posts with your playlists, and allow users to build playlists.

– Futuri Mobile creates custom apps with more than 50 features, including audio and video streaming, playlists, weather, push notifications and contesting.

–  With custom-built Alexa skills, stations stations to deliver streaming and on-demand content to Alexa-enabled smart speakers.

– Futuri Streaming offers high-quality streaming with 24/7 VIP support.

 

Want to learn more? Contact your Futuri Media partner or contact us here.

 

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Futuri Media Makes a Broader Set of Patented Interactive Features Available for Licensing

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Cleveland-based technology company holds patents in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Cleveland, Ohio, April 18, 2018 – Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS technology designed to drive audience and revenue growth for broadcasters, today announced that it is making a broader set of its most popular intellectual property available for license to media companies who desire to use its award-winning IP in their own applications.

Futuri, named Tech Company of the Year 2017 by OHTec, has an extensive portfolio of intellectual property assets. These include patents (of which the company has 11 published or pending), trade dress, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. Futuri has protected IP filed in 151 countries, and has licensed IP to media companies in twenty countries to date.

While Futuri’s IP licensing agreements are typically in connection with product subscription or service agreements, Futuri is now opening up licensing for features and systems of interest to media companies desiring to build their own apps or other software in the likeness of Futuri’s award-winning IP.

Futuri’s product offerings include Futuri Mobile™, highly-customized and engaging mobile apps; on-demand and podcasting system POST™; the TopLine™ sales research and data visualization app; story discovery and show prep tool TopicPulse®; interactive broadcasting system #engage®; high-quality, ultra-reliable Futuri Streaming™; and smart speaker skills for broadcasters.

“Since Futuri Media launched in 2009, we’ve invested millions of dollars in innovation, feature set development, and new technologies. Along the way, we’ve taken considerable measures to protect Futuri’s unique intellectual property – not just our products, but the underlying technology that powers each of them,” said Futuri Media CEO Daniel Anstandig. “We’re pleased to open discussions regarding licensing to partners who want to build on our current innovations while Futuri continues to focus on our core mission – driving audience and revenue growth by deepening consumers’ trust in, affinity for, and loyalty to brands and the teams who represent them.”

For more information on licensing Futuri’s intellectual property, please contact Kelly Johanns at kelly@futurimedia.com.

 

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Futuri Media Reflects on a Year of Growth

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We were honored to be named OHTec’s Tech Company of the Year 2017, and honored again when they reached out to us to get an update on what we’ve been up to since winning. This article originally appeared on the COSE website.

What a thrill it was for Futuri Media to be named OHTec’s 2017 Tech Company of the Year!  Ever since we launched our company out of a tiny Rocky River office in 2009, Futuri has maintained a deep belief in the quality, passion, and promise of the Northeast Ohio technology community. Today, we employ nearly 100 people, our SaaS technology solutions are relied on by more than 1,000 broadcasters in 20 countries worldwide, and all of this happens right here in Cleveland. That’s a clear testament to fact that Northeast Ohio’s technology industry is thriving, and we’re incredibly proud to be leaders in this community.

In the months since receiving OHTec’s 2017 Tech Company of the Year honor, Futuri Media has continued our rapid growth.  In August, Futuri was named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s fastest-growing private companies for the fourth consecutive year, and this year, we took the coveted #1 spot for percentage of three-year revenue growth among all Northeast Ohio software firms. Obviously, revenue growth means that we can hire more people to create, market, sell, and train partners on Futuri’s innovative SaaS technology solutions, so we’re very focused on an Inc. 5000 five-peat in 2018.

Speaking of hiring more people, the size of our team has more than tripled in the past three years, and we’re currently hiring for several new positions. We’re sure that many who have worked in a fast-growing startup environment know that growing pains frequently manifest themselves in the office, in the form of a lack of personal space. It’s hard to do brilliant work when you’re packed in like sardines! So this year, after working from a series of spaces that couldn’t accommodate our faster-than-anticipated growth, we moved into a new headquarters.

On the product side, our incredible technology team once again outdid themselves by creating, maintaining, and constantly improving on dozens of new features, and in some cases, new products. Our entire family of audience engagement and sales SaaS technology solutions has been deployed around the world – interactive broadcasting tool #engage; podcasting and on-demand platform POST; sales research and data visualization app TopLine; data-driven story discovery tool TopicPulse; high-quality Futuri Streaming; our smart speaker skills division, Futuri Voice; and our app division, POST, our podcasting and on-demand audio platform, was one of our highest-growth products. While this might sound unsurprising to anyone who’s familiar with the incredibly fast pace of growth in the streaming audio market – a recent Nielsen Audio report showed that 2017 saw a 59% increase in year-over-year on-demand audio streams – we built POST to stand out in a very crowded technology market. For example, understanding that visuals are a great driver for on-demand audio consumption – and that an increasing number of brands are getting fined for unauthorized usage of copyrighted photos – we built a library of fully-licensed images into the product.

We completely redesigned TopicPulse, our real-time story discovery tool that delivers audience-specific insights based on engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and 100k+ sources of verified news sources. As one of our TopicPulse partners, Emily Stone at Fox 5 DC, recently said during a panel at a convention of television executives, “You used to go into your news meeting with a stack of papers…you’d assign your reporters, and you’d start your day. Now, everything would be different by the time you printed the paper.” Media has never been in such a period of rapid change, and it’s critical that the art of story selection be paired with the science that tools like TopicPulse provides. Now, broadcasters can see in real time not only which stories are predicted to go viral with the specific demographic they target, but they can also see which stories their audience is tiring of, and find fresh angles on ongoing stories to keep their audiences engaged.

We’re committed to generating strong ROI for our partners.  In January, we launched the Futuri Ad Network to help our partners take better advantage of on-demand audio growth. Now, POST and Futuri Streaming clients have very flexible ad insertion options, where they can sell all of their advertising inventory, some of their inventory, or none of it. Inventory is available through the Futuri Ad Network and our clients are compensated for their time.  Of all the reasons we’re excited about this, it’s gratifying that our technology now gives our partners direct access to revenue opportunities.

Futuri is well positioned for another banner year. There are several new product developments and partnerships that will be announced over the coming months, and as always, we continue to cultivate a company culture centered around trust, speed, passion, and proactivity. We’ve consistently found that the best talent thrives in that type of culture.

We’re very much looking forward to future events OHTec and its technology partners have in store! It’s so important to take the time to celebrate Northeast Ohio’s incredible technology community. We’re a fast-moving, forward-thinking, change-minded group of people, and to see this sector booming is incredibly gratifying. And we love all the opportunities Tech Week provides for us to meet our peers, share ideas, talk about how what we’re doing to shape the future, and encourage each other.

Learn more about Tech Week, of which the Best of Tech Awards is a part, by clicking here.

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Futuri Media Launches Futuri Ad Network and a New Suite of Ad Insertion Services

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New capabilities provide flexible, turnkey options for broadcasters to monetize their digital content in streaming and podcasts

Cleveland, Ohio, January 24, 2018 – Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS technology designed to drive audience and revenue growth for broadcasters, today announced a new streaming ad sales network and suite of ad insertion and monetization services that provide clients flexible and turnkey options for generating revenue with digital content. The core of the offering is the Futuri Ad Network, which enables broadcasters to monetize their digital content seamlessly by leveraging Futuri’s national ad sales resources.

Clients of Futuri Streaming and POST, Futuri’s on-demand audio platform, will now have three new options for monetizing their audio content:

  • 100% turnkey: The new Futuri Ad Network sells audio and video pre-roll and mid-roll inventory and pays publishers their share of network ad revenue.
  • Managed ad ops: Broadcasters can submit pre-roll and mid-roll insertion orders, which always have first priority. Start orders are managed for the station, reducing the workload at the station. Any unsold inventory is monetized through the Futuri Ad Network.
  • Self-serve ad ops: Broadcasters can sell and traffic all of their inventory directly.

“Futuri’s broadcast partners create high-quality content every day. The audio and video streaming ad market are growing, and we feel it’s more important than ever to be an advocate for our partners in matching their content with revenue opportunities. The Futuri Ad Network provides flexible, turnkey options for broadcasters to generate digital revenue with their existing content, no matter how they’re staffed or what their immediate needs are,” said Futuri Media CEO Daniel Anstandig. “We’re excited to provide yet another way for our partners to use Futuri’s SaaS technology solutions to drive revenue growth in 2018 and beyond.”

For more information on Futuri Media’s new ad insertion and monetization capabilities, reach out to 877.221.7979 x2 or partner@futurimedia.com.

ABOUT FUTURI MEDIA

Futuri Media is a global leader in SaaS technology designed to drive audience and revenue growth by deepening consumers’ trust in, affinity for, and loyalty to brands and the teams who represent them. Futuri Media’s audience engagement and sales technology, for which it holds 11 published or pending patents in 151 countries, is used by thousands of broadcasters and publishers worldwide. Named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s fastest-growing private companies for four consecutive years, Futuri Media’s best-in-class customer support is a key driver of its growth. Founded by CEO Daniel Anstandig in 2009, Futuri Media is dedicated to driving measurable success for its partners through innovative SaaS technology, proactivity, speed, and trust in all of its relationships.

Is Your Streaming Player Flash-Free?

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Just because you stream your station doesn’t mean everyone can hear it.


After slowly sunsetting Adobe Flash for many years, Google Chrome has finally disabled it within the default installation. Re-enabling it requires going through a convoluted six-step process in a hidden configuration menu.


The more digital-savvy among you may be saying, “So? Most sites have already moved away from Flash.” But not every listener is up on the latest and greatest technology, and now that Flash has effectively been removed from a browser with more than one billion active users, many radio broadcasters are dealing with headaches.

Enter Media Source Extensions (MSE). Futuri Media is proud to announce that our streaming player is the first to use this new, Flashless technology, which is relied on by YouTube and Netflix to deliver a high-quality, reliable experience on even the worst Internet connections.

MSE was designed specifically for streaming. It has advanced buffer management features that can detect when a cut-out may be on the verge of happening, and proactively prevents interruptions by downloading bursts of audio as needed. Combined with Futuri’s use of HLS streaming technology, this new player technology makes it possible to reliably listen over long periods of time, even on slow running internet connections.

MSE works in a wide variety of desktop and mobile browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. Running your station’s stream through Futuri’s player, the first in the radio industry to use MSE, is a simple way to ensure that even your least tech-savvy listener has a high-quality experience that reflects well on your brand and keeps them listening.

Learn more about how Futuri Streaming can delivery a high-quality, reliable streaming experience for your brand today!

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Futuri is the leading provider of cloud-based audience engagement software for the enterprise. Brands rely on Futuri to make their content more relevant, accessible, engaging, and results-driven. Founded in 2009, Futuri holds 11 published or pending patents in 151 countries. Named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies for six consecutive years, Futuri is the only audience engagement platform that includes solutions for sales, marketing, and content teams.