US radio giant Infinity Broadcasting says it plans to launch visual radio in the US beginning early next year. Visual Radio is a product developed by Nokia and HP that has a mobile data channel that runs alongside a standard FM broadcast, offering users additional content relevant to what’s being played, including song titles and album art or photos, and the ability to download songs and ringtones and other content as well as interact with the broadcaster.
The service is already operating commercially in Finland on one station and on three Nokia handsets. Nokia hasn’t released any Visual Radio handsets in the US, though now with a big broadcaster behind it, the support of HP and the widespread availability of flat-rate data tariffs, the handsets should be forthcoming. Nokia has also said it’s willing to license the Visual Radio technology to other device manufacturers.
Visual Radio is cool to play with, but I’m personally unsure if the content is compelling enough to generate a lot of return visits by end users, particularly if they’re paying for data traffic (which Nokia estimates at 200K per hour). It does offer an e-commerce channel for broadcasters to take advantage of, but it’s really relatively easy these days for users to buy mobile content. At the end of the day, there’s going to have to be something more than just a commerce channel to make Visual Radio a success.
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