There's so much rubbish radio out there, we listeners deserve a total clear out! Too many radio people have obviously forgotten that radio is a unique and powerful force capable of stimulating imaginations and energizing the apathetic. Radio, good radio, reaches out to people and touches the soul in a way that other elements of media cannot possibly achieve. The radio people that forget this deserve to fail and very quickly please!

The name RadioTaxi was chosen because the 2 words are instantly recognizable in almost any territory on the planet. Both Radio and Taxi are universal language words. The name also conveys the message: Sit back you're a taxi passenger on a free journey through 100's of the world's very best radio stations and the driver gives you the tip!

I know we're really going to stir up emotions and challenge opinions. We believe all the radio stations we've selected deserve your attention and they certainly merit being promoted on RadioTaxi. In some cases, we might be wrong and maybe we are missing stations which deserve to be promoted. So, we want people to engage and help us create the most topical, the most accurate, and the most popular online radio guide. Very soon we'll release our top 10 charts of the very best DJs, presenters and shows. I’m thinking back to when I was a DJ at the BBC, I’d have been desperate to be in the Top 10 of the World's Best DJs.

RadioTaxi is independent and our loyalty is primarily to the listeners but if a recommendation on RadioTaxi proves to be beneficial to a radio station then that’s great. Indeed, I really like the idea of a small radio station we rate highly being able to expand its listener base way beyond its own area and consequently attract greater advertising revenue. Wouldn’t that be great? Imagine a small community radio station we really like in the Scottish Islands becomes globally attractive to commercial partners because it’s on RadioTaxi.

The profitability of commercial radio stations depends upon the ability to prove to advertisers there are lots of people listening. With FM it’s a guestimate. Nobody knows with  complete accuracy how many people are listening at any given time to an FM radio station. The industry hides behind a totally flawed and frankly fraudulent audience measuring system. Wake up advertisers on FM! The rate card is worthy of Ponzi and Abagnale so challenge the ad sales guys to prove their figures- because they can’t. But our online radio clients know with absolute precision how many unique listeners are engaged, how long they are listening for, where they are on the planet and even what kind of device they are using. Thankfully the rapid growth in online radio technology is exposing this fraud.

The growth of listening hours for online radio stations has been hampered by the fact consumers are overwhelmed by the thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, and maybe even millions of radio stations on the internet. Of course, some are just people mucking around for fun which is great but it doesn’t help serious listeners in their quest to find the very best radio to suit their tastes. That’s why I’ve used my connections to pull together a team of producers, presenters and radio enthusiasts who do all the exploring, filtering and assessing of what’s good and what’s not. OMG - there’s a lot of crap out there but we think we’ve found some of the really good stuff.

Many of the big radio corporations have been very slow to acknowledge they’re no longer in control. We used to say that “content is king “but the undeniable fact is “the consumer is king”-the listener is now in control. And yet these big business players still think they know best. We’ll give the listeners what we think they deserve. Their arrogance does not belong in the Internet age.

I watch the self-destruction of the BBC with nostalgic sadness. In an interview I gave 10 years ago to the BBC’s Newsnight I warned that if the BBC did not focus upon providing listeners and viewers, with the bedrock proposition of trustworthy information, innovative entertainment and engagement with their communities it would be irrelevant. Well, the concept of trustworthy information was destroyed when Auntie pumped out the Government’s Covid agenda and now BBC local radio is being destroyed and who am I to comment on the paltry output of the Entertainment Department!!!

Unless there is a seismic change in the performing rights and copyright regulations, I really do fear for the survival of radio as we know it. Very few radio stations are profitable, and this is not just because of a downturn in advertising revenue. It’s utterly insane a radio station must pay to play music. I don’t think many listeners understand this. Its crazy-advertisers pay for the airtime to promote their products, agreed-but the radio station has to pay to promote the music products! I get the argument that without the music products you don’t have a radio station, so then you can’t make the income from the commercials but there should be a single buyout. For example, if Hertz purchased cars from Mercedes so that they can make money hiring them out- it’s a one off purchase. They don’t pay Mercedes every single time they hire out the car even though they profit from that. Why is the music industry a special case?

Generative artificial intelligence is unstoppable. It is much further developed than we are being told. As with all tech, AI offers threats and benefits. Thankfully it will accelerate the end of the outdated and unworkable music copyright laws. Personally I wouldn’t buy shares in the big 3 record labels or put money in one those music royalty investment funds. AI will change the economics of radio forever.

We're currently developing for a major client a portfolio of AI radio stations. Our tech team are engaged in what our marketing people call the ‘great flip’- take the BBC in the UK for example-they probably employ 1000 people to run 6 radio stations-we can run 1000 radio stations with 6 people! (don’t tell them but we probably only need 4-or maybe 2!!!)- this is the future of radio. Big buildings, big executive offices, big studios, big payroll, big tech, big costs= little profits. Goodbye Trad Rad-Hello AI Radio.

I was very fortunate that in the early days of my radio career I was guided by hugely talented and very experienced producers. I feel very sorry for any young person wanting to get into the current radio environment because there’s no support. The result is, with very few exceptions, all the radio presenters sound the same. And as for us listeners don’t we feel ignored when, for example, the breakfast presenters all talk to themselves rather than to us? The other morning I was listening to one of the New Zealand breakfast shows and four people made absolutely no attempt to communicate with me, one of their audience. You end up screaming ‘hello I’m over here and my ears are paying your wages!