A slide from the presentation. The full version is available on the BBC Commissioning website

At our recent A&M Online Event for independent suppliers on October 12th, I shared our strategy for the BBC's radio and music online service and how we go about delivering this working with external suppliers.

It was a great opportunity for us to look at the launch and future of iPlayer Radio and share insights with each other. We had the following speakers:

• Barbara Greenway on the process for winning commissions

• Ben Chapman on popular music sites and events

• Andrew Caspari on classical music and speech radio sites

• Andrew Scott on how to work with BBC technology teams

• Harry Cummings from Softwire on their experience of working with the BBC, warts 'n' all.

The presentations can be found on the BBC commissioning website.

It was fantastic that so many independent companies gave their time to come and share experiences. It helps us to improve our approach to commissioning and managing independent companies and to share our plans for the future.

I hope if you were there you found the event useful, and if you weren't you'll find the presentations stimulating.

Mark Friend is Controller, BBC Audio & Music Interactive

We shared our strategy for the BBC's radio and music online offer across four screens and how we go about delivering this working with external suppliers.

We showed the Radio 1 homepage as a demonstration of how we want to make the live radio experience more visual, social and plugged into other online activity.

Here is a film of our presentation:

Mark and Andrew talked about how the product will integrate seamlessly with broadcast radio, as @valtech tweeted:

Product update on radio&music: The Internet is changing the medium! What is played on on the website will be played on the radio #BBCOnline - 12:48PM

Kite staff were happy to see the Radio 1 homepage they built used as an example:

Radio 1 Homepage on screen LIVE! Kite mentioned! #BBCOnline #wemadethat #pride - @MadeByKite, 12:10PM

I also like this example because we've made every episode of the 100-part series available rather than the normal approach of withdrawing the podcasts 7 days after the original programme was broadcast. This means that if you only discovered the series half-way through its 9-month run, it's easy to download any or all of the previous episodes to listen to whenever it suits you.

In research we've recently conducted listeners have been telling us that we should make more podcast episodes available for longer than seven days. More than 75% of podcast users say they want that.

As a result we're now providing extended availability for all podcasts where it makes editorial sense and where the BBC has the rights.

Read more and comment at the BBC Radio blog

Mark Friend is Controller, BBC Audio & Music Interactive

Over a third of people in the UK listen to digital radio each week and most of these devices have a screen. As a result, people increasingly expect visuals to supplement their listening. With that in mind, we're running a trial to bring a new level of interaction, including the faces and events of live radio, to the screens of your computer and your mobile.

This started at the beginning of June with 5Live's Simon Mayo show (5 Live's Interactive Editor Brett Spencer wrote about visualising Mayo here). At the start of this week the trial moved on to The Chris Moyles Show, Radio 1's Zane Lowe show, Switch, Radio 4's live science magazine show, Material World, and BBC 6Music's The Hub. The programmes in the trial represent a cross-section of BBC Radio output and target audiences in order to give us representative insights into how we can innovate and offer a much richer experience to those listening to their radio on a device with a screen, but without losing any quality to traditional radio output.

So how does this trial look to audiences? They will be able to go online to access the 'console' which will give them a whole new view of their favourite radio programme. The new 'console' will bring you live steaming video feeds from the studio, as well as giving you the opportunity to send messages into the programme, live DAB text, track listing information and even tweets from the Twittering classes. On other BBC blogs over the next week or two you'll be able to read about other aspects of the trial too, for instance, information about the video kit we're using (which is quite different from the tech you'll find in a TV studio).

It's important to note that this trial is not about turning radio into television. Early experience tells us that the pictures we get from our radio studios are very different from the material produced in BBC TV studios daily. There's something about the intensity of a filmed radio interview that I think you're going to find fascinating. But this is not just about AV - there is far more interactivity being offered to audiences through the new console. For instance, you can email the show directly from the console, and see the results of an audience vote on a 'swingometer'. We call this 'glanceable' content - the kind of stuff that will add something to your listening experience without being essential to it.

Another important aspect of the visualisation trial is our plan to share our findings with the rest of the radio industry, once the trial is complete. The whole UK radio industry needs to understand the implications of visualisation better and we're happy to help spread the knowledge we acquire during the trial.

5Live's Simon Mayo trial ran from 1-19 June. The remainder of the trial started with The Chris Moyles Show on Radio 1, and will run across all participating programmes until 31 July.

Posts by Brett Spencer on the News Editors blog and Guy Strelitz on the Radio Labs blog have already appeared and Mark Damazer, Radio 4 Controller, has written about the Material World experiment on the Radio 4 blog. Participants and listeners will be twittering their experience - on both sides of the glass and on both sides of the mic. Keep your eye on the hashtag #vistrial to read their contributions (but remember the BBC doesn't control what appears on Twitter).

Please join in with our experiment in adding pictures to live radio - on your computer or on your mobile - and let us know what you think, here on the blog or via the participating programmes.

Mark Friend is Controller, Multiplatform & Interactive, BBC Audio & Music

• Brett Spencer on the News Editors blog, Guy Strelitz on the Radio Labs blog and Mark Damazer on the Radio 4 blog.
• The Visualisation Trial is available on the following Mobile devices: Nokia N95, N96 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic; Sony Ericsson K800i; Blackberry Bold and Storm; Samsung i600 and HTC Touch.
• BBC 5 Live's useful FAQ for the visualisation console.
• The BBC's press release for phase two of the visualisation trial.
• Search Twitter for the hashtag #vistrial.
• The most recent RAJAR radio listening figures.

Click on this and you'll be directed to Audiobooks of The Archers which are available on CD and/or as a download. There's more information on each product, links to suggested suppliers and clear pricing information.

Our decision to introduce the 'Buyer's Guides' is driven by a public service, and not a commercial, ethos. Rather, this is about making it easier to find relevant BBC material and providing information to help guide people through buying online.

And just to reassure you suppliers do not make any payments to the BBC, either for listing as part of this service or for any click-throughs.

The suggested suppliers have been assessed against published criteria which include purchasing security, data protection and customer support. These criteria are intended to give a simple and reliable way to find BBC products while not favouring any one retailer over others.

We're launching the Buyers Guide after research we conducted (survey, interviews, focus group and user testing) suggested people want to know how to find BBC content that is commercially available online. They reacted positively to the idea that the BBC should provide links to commercially available BBC content. In fact most participants were happy for the BBC to take a stronger commercial stance. The user testing of the choice of price, preferred brand, and availability presented by the Buyers Guide was also welcomed.

Buying media online can be confusing and daunting, particularly for those with concerns around security and legality. I believe the BBC has a public service role to play in helping people to find older content, and in guiding those least familiar with purchasing media online. Acting as a 'trusted guide' is something that we take very seriously.

In terms of aggregating content, for example, if you're interested in the UN talks on North Korea, then BBC Online will link you to a wealth of archive BBC News reports on North Korea, background information and links to other sites including US Northern Command, CBS News and Sky News.

This aggregation of material becomes more complicated when some of the relevant BBC content is only available commercially, and, in the past, we didn't link to it. For example, go to The Archers website and you'd see links to other BBC drama from the past seven days but no reference to old material available as Audiobooks.

Consequently, we hope that the 'Buyer's Guide' will go some way to providing users with the opportunity to find out more about their favourite BBC content.

I'd be interested to get your reaction.

Mark Friend is Controller, BBC Audio & Music Interactive

Rather than answer them all independently, here are answers to some common questions:

Is audio-on-demand only available on the iPhone?

iPlayer video and audio-on-demand will also be available on the Nokia N96, which Nokia is due to release on October 1st (see Matthew Postgate's previous post). We initially launched this service on the iPhone as it's a very popular device amongst our audio and music audiences, but the BBC's new media teams are working hard to bring audio-on-demand to other mobile devices in the very near future.

Can I stream live BBC radio on the iPhone?

The iPhone is currently only available on the O2 network in the UK and continuous streaming of audio and video content is not permitted under the terms of O2's flat-rate packages. We're currently working on supporting live streaming when you're connected via wifi.

Can I stream live BBC radio on other mobile devices?

I would love to make iPlayer available on all mobile devices but as the media support and browser functionalities vary so widely, this may take some time. Where we can be certain that a wifi connection is being used, and that this connection is also used by the device's media player software, then it's already possible to access live streams. For more details see here.

Unfortunately, many mobile devices swap to 3G or GPRS connections without informing their users - which can be very expensive. The BBC is in discussions with network operators on this issue and hopes that consumer demand will help to drive this change.

Why doesn't BBC radio podcast all their programmes?

The BBC negotiates rights with collective bodies and artists' representatives to make streamed material available for up to seven days after broadcast. Where rights allow, we also make BBC programmes available to download as podcasts. We currently make over 170 titles available as podcasts and this number will continue to grow. The limits we place on this growth are largely down to cost.

Why have on-demand mobile services been prioritised before improving on-line audio quality?

Improving the audio quality of live internet radio streams remains a key priority. This is a much larger piece of work and will take a little longer to complete. There'll be a post later tonight on the Radio Labs blog detailing progress towards this.

Why do some programmes appear as 'currently unavailable'?

The audio-on-demand facility for iPhone, giving people the chance to listen to programmes from "the past seven days", only launched on Monday. So, the complete list of programmes is being built up over this week. All listed BBC radio shows should be available by Monday September 29th.

Once again, please feel free to leave me your comments about how this service affects how you listen to BBC radio.

Mark Friend is Controller, BBC Audio & Music Interactive.

Half a century ago, the transistor radio helped to start a revolution in the way people consume media and it's estimated that there are several billion of them being used around the world.

So it's not surprising that lots of people have been asking when they'll be able to listen to the BBC's digital radio services on mp3 players and mobiles.

From today, you'll be able to listen to BBC radio programmes on demand on an iPhone or iPod Touch for up to seven days after broadcast.

You'll need to be online via a wifi connection and will be able to listen to our radio shows in mp3 format (at 128kbps).

This launch is thanks to the hard work of the BBC's future media teams who have had to adapt audio (and image) formats to suit the iPhone and iPod Touch, change the way audio files are delivered and redesign the service to include the wealth of new content available.

On October 1st, the BBC iPlayer goes live on the Nokia N96 (see Matthew Postgate's post below). We anticipate rolling out audio on demand to other portable devices soon.

Will this change where and when you listen to radio? Do let me know by leaving a comment.

Image by John Ousby of Regency TR-1 transistor radios from 1954 and iPod Minis from 2005 as featured in this BBC News Magazine article - neither piece of kit has wifi connectivity

Mark Friend is Controller, Multiplatform & Interactive, Audio & Music Interactive.

In his post, Anthony hinted at much increased quality of radio streams within iPlayer; today, I'd like to flesh out the detail of what we're doing this summer to improve the whole experience of listening to BBC Radio online.

In this post, by "BBC Radio" I mean the national BBC networks like BBC Radio 1, or BBC Radio 6music - as this is the part of the BBC I work in.

BBC local radio services in England, BBC Radio Cymru and Radio nan Gaidheal, and the World Service) are not included in the new Player now, but will be over the coming months and will be making similar changes in due course. BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio Foyle are included in the new iPlayer. More information can be found in the [Update 2008-10-20: link changed help and FAQs section] help and FAQs section of the iPlayer beta.

For the launch of this new version of BBC iPlayer, we're concentrating on improving the "listen again" service.

• First, we're removing the need to install RealPlayer if you're listening in the UK. We're not dropping RealPlayer entirely (if you've a wifi radio that uses it, don't worry) - but, if you use the BBC iPlayer to listen again in the UK, you'll now be given an embedded Flash player instead, just like for the television programmes. As a result, it will "just work" for nearly everyone. You also won't need RealPlayer to listen live in the UK - the new iPlayer will use Windows Media Player which should be installed as a default on your PC (a version is also available for Macs!)
• When you use the current iPlayer for Radio, you can't rewind and can only fast-forward in five minute chunks. As we are integrating radio into the full iPlayer, we will be using the same transport controls as we do for television programmes. If you want to forward through Chris Moyles's show to around 8.00am, you can just click and drag. Easy.
• Another new feature is that iPlayer will remember what you last played so if you didn't have time to finish it, it's ready to resume when you are.
• And we're dramatically improving the audio quality for UK listeners. For most stations, we'll be using MP3-streaming at 128k stereo. If you're a fan of serious classical music on BBC Radio 3, we're improving it still further, recognising that classical music requires higher bitrates to do the job well - so Radio 3's listen-again will be at 192k stereo. Mono speech also increases in quality, up to 80k mono. All that means that BBC Radio through the iPlayer will be much better quality.
• There'll be further changes to our streaming infrastructure later in July: on-demand and live streaming. We'll fill you in with those details nearer the time. In the meantime, I really hope you'll enjoy the start of the tremendous difference in sound quality from iPlayer's listen-again service. For further information about the radio aspects of the new iPlayer, take a look at these frequently asked questions.

Finally, and for the techies: you might be wondering why we're using streaming MP3, and not AAC or its cousin AAC+. The very latest version of Flash is capable of using it, but given that much radio listening happens in the workplace, we wanted to ensure that BBC Radio was available to as many people as possible - even those who don't run the latest version of Flash. Watch the changes in July, though.

Transmitting the first radio picture of the King, October 1928

Mark Friend is Controller, Multiplatform & Interactive, Audio & Music Interactive