What Your Show Sounds Like In 2028

Dream with me for a moment.

The year is 2028. And radio DJs aren't just on the radio anymore. And ideally, your DJs aren't just on the radio anymore.

Truth be told though, DJs don't even exist anymore in 2028. There are no discs to jockey. Shockingly, they don't even know what music will be played on their shows at all. More on that in a moment.

No, to call them "DJs" is no longer accurate. They are Personalities.

They don't just live on an FM signal. They live inside Spotify, Apple Music and other pure-plays. And it's not terrestrial-radio content that has been shoved into the pure-play environment.

No, it's something different.

When your Personality creates a break, before they upload it to the streaming service, they tag it based on a few different metrics, the main one being emotion. In the audio file meta-data, they can apply tags that say, 'Uplifting' or 'Energizing' or 'Sad' or 'Peaceful' depending on the content. If an artist is mentioned or interviewed, they apply that tag. If it's localized content, they can apply that tag, too. Time-sensitive content? Start and End dates are applied. If it's one part of a multi-break story, that sequence is tagged. The point is that almost all of these tags are based on how a listener would search for your content, with a few internal nuts-and-bolts sort of tags.

Once it is uploaded to the streaming service (Spotify, etc.), the Personality now has very little control of what happens next. And that's what makes it pretty exciting stuff.

Now, let's imagine that I am your listener in 2028.

I sit down in my car, ready for the workday to begin. Maybe my car is self-driving, maybe it isn't (the RethinkX think tank predicts that by this point, self-driving vehicles will account for roughly 90 percent of the miles driven in America, up to 95 percent in 2030). Even if it does drive itself, I may not be able to watch movies or read, because I get motion-sickness pretty badly. That's not a dream, that's real life, ladies and gentlemen.

So, I want to listen to my favorite Personality. I don't think of them as a radio DJ; in fact, I'm not sure what company this Personality actually works for. I don't care. I like them and their show, and so I use a voice command when I sit down, and immediately a break begins to play; it's one that has a high rank in terms of being new content that is being shared by a high percentage of listeners. Is it a sad break? An uplifting one? An artist interview? Depends on what I've skipped in the past. Every time I skip a piece of content from your Personality, Spotify takes note and learns what I like at certain times of the day. When the break is over, what song plays? A song that Spotify's system selects because it has a high rank based on how much I love it, and how well it fits the emotion tags for that break. An uplifting break will go into an uplifting song that Spotify knows I will want to listen to at this point in my day. The Personality has no idea what that song is, because it will be different for every listener.

But what if it isn't even a Christian song? Well, then I guess it's pretty important that ministry happens in the break, isn't it?

Keep in mind, terrestrial FM signals will still likely be here in 2028. There will be an option for me, your listener, to find your real-time radio show with your hand-selected playlist. But Spotify will be a media giant by this point. They're projected to hit $47 billion in revenue in 2020, and that's just Spotify. Fast-forward eight more years, and it's easy to envision their dominance. In the meantime, my hope is that FM radio has transformed into a multimedia experience intersecting audio with video, photos and social media. My hunch is that Spotify will have more capital to use for innovation in the next 10 years than non-commercial Christian radio will.

The great news is that this new, Personality-driven, customized on-demand sort of show is a win-win for everyone. Well, almost everyone. Bland Personalities disappear, which makes the overall media landscape more appealing and engaging. But the great ones will have a whole new platform with a massive reach. And Spotify? Well, they get to join in the relationship equity your Personality has built with many thousands of listeners, while still shaping the overall experience and allowing the listener to hear what they want, when they want. Instead of being a huge jukebox, they get to be an all-encompassing media empire with all of the world's very best Personalities. Oh, and each 'spin' of a break from a Personality earns royalties for the content creator, just like it does for the artists who have music on Spotify.

If 'Radio' doesn't want to stay buried behind two or three navigation screens in the Connected Dash Board, we need to start thinking about this stuff. And we can't just try to cram our existing model into the new paradigm. We need to begin communicating with Apple Music and Spotify, showing them (not just telling them) that our Personalities have engaged, responsive audiences that are highly valuable. Our Personalities will give their product the human touch it so desperately needs. We need to show them that incorporating our established shows will be far more profitable for them than if they create their own 'home team' of glorified podcasters. We can't reach out in desperation; we need to offer our strength.

For our part, we'll need to embrace the idea that we will have less direct control over the total experience. But on a larger platform, reaching listeners that we never could before, we'll have greater influence for the Kingdom of God.

Of course, this vision of the future makes a few big assumptions; the biggest of which is that we're able to successfully demonstrate the equity we've built with our audience. Thankfully, it's still 2018, not 2028. So we have the chance to do it now. How can you build Personalities instead of DJs? How can you coach them into producing the sort of intentional, targeted content that would fit beautifully into this experience of the future? And how can you mobilize your audience in such a way that even corporate suits take notice?

We don't need to wait until 2028 to become something different.

And we probably shouldn't.