FB EDucator

On the heels of the BBC ramping up its digital assets with its iPlayer on-demand video and music player, the UK’s public broadcaster is gearing up to take its music service up another notch. Today it is unveiling Playlister, a global (not just UK) service in partnership with Spotify, YouTube and Deezer that lets people tag music they hear on the BBC to listen to it later, create playlists from it, and potentially discover more tracks by way of recommendations from BBC DJs and hosts.

If Playlister rings a bell for you, you’re not just hearing things. This follows on from reports a year ago that the BBC was working on this product, accurately identified at the time as Playlister. Instead it unveiled iOS and web apps for its radio service. Still, it hedged its bets. “Strategically, there is an obvious overlap and potential connection with music providers,” Daniel Danker, GM, programmes and on-demand for the BBC, told TechCrunch at the time. “There isn’t anything tangible right now, but we always have those conversations.”

This is a significant move for BBC’s music division, and an important step for the company in its strategy to generate more revenue longer term. This is something that the BBC, as a public broadcaster, does not do in the UK for its traditional TV and radio services, but when it comes to international and new media assets, the rules change.

With Playlister going live across the world, it gives the company a higher international profile for the service, and potentially sets it up for ways of generating revenues in the future. The plan is to integrate Playlister with the BBC’s radio apps in the future, but today it is only available via PC and mobile browser, where users can export a playlist from the BBC to Spotify, YouTube or Deezer and listen back to tracks in full. But this is just the start: “Over time, the BBC will look to welcome a number of other services to the product,” the company notes in a statement. These will include the recommendations feature, and perhaps even paid content downloads from the BBC’s very rich back catalog of studio recordings and live recordings, which have been largely untapped up to now but would potentially set a service like this apart from the me-too offerings of the many recorded-music digital streaming platforms.

“BBC Playlister is a wonderful innovation from the BBC that has been designed purely with audience needs in mind. We have a proud musical heritage that dates back to the very beginning of the BBC’s history, and over the years we have found many new ways of bringing fantastic music to our viewers and listeners,” said Tony Hall, BBC Director-General, in a statement. “Working with partners such as Spotify, YouTube and Deezer, we will once again transform our audiences’ relationship with music and the BBC.”

More to come.