[UPDATE: There's an interesting discussion going on in the Etherpad version of this blogpost. Head here if you want to participate. I will try to keep this post in sync with the Etherpad].

This is an early stab at defining a set of problems that have lead me to a rough idea for a new project which I’m calling Hyper Audio.
My background is in journalism and storytelling, mostly radio features and documentary and stories revolving around free culture, the internet, a2k and copyright stuff. I love the radio. I love the internet. I think, when we look back in time 20 or 50 years from now, we will talk about the internet and not radio as the determining media of this era. Existing media —radio, television, print—are increasingly merging with the web (as predicted by McLuhan). In radio, there are already technological advances that fuse FM with the web, such as Radio DNS. So, for me, the distinction between airborne and broadcast-era technologies is unimportant. It will all somehow merge.
Right now there is a split between podcasts, streaming and FM delivery. That will change. And that change should happen in ways that mimic the openededness of the internet and the web. The future of radio is already here. Or more accurately: there are various possible futures, and the playing field is still relatively open.
That said, we are at a point in time when this transition could go in several ways. In Tim Wu‘s terms, we are at a point in the cycle where interneta nd radio can merge in ways that favors open. We can have radio that works more like the web—that’s consumed on your time, that’s connected to web services APIs, that’s hackable, remixable, and fresh. Or we can have something lesser.
This project aims to show why free and open is the better way to go for audio, radio and journalism, and to set the yardsticks first—by tinkering and exploring on the edge of the possible. The term “Hyper Audio” draws inspiration from Tristan Nitot who, after seing the first popcorn.js demo by Brett Gaylor and developers from Seneca College, coined the term“Hyper Video”. Since this is an offspring of Mozilla’s existing HTML5 video efforts, it seemed appropriate to run with it.

What would Hyper Audio look like? What would be better?

- Search! Why has no-one nailed audio search, linking text and audio? Where is Google when you need them? Why are transcripts—when available—decoupled from the audio? Why is it hard or impossible to find stuff that has been said on the radio, on the web? [there are exceptions, like WNYC]
- I want to quote from a podcast or in a radio show and share it with my friends. I don’t want to share the whole thing. Who will give me a way to mark in/out  points and share? Imagine sharing and commenting from the timeline, Soundcloud-style. And why not hook that up to the transcript while we’re  at it? The lack of search and quotation means that spoken word audio—albeit accessible via the web—is not part of the conversation, that is the web.
- Web players suck,  are flash-based (or worse!) and short on social and enhanced features.  Only Soundcloud feels (somehow) like 2010, but of course an HMTL5 player with hyper features would be ideal. You cannot move from one player (at home) to another (office, car, bicycle) unless you connect to  your (Apple) local device first. You cannot bookmark, save for later,  accumulate or store unless using closed platforms. All this could be done with existing technologies and in the browser. Imagine Firefox Sync handling this between your mobile device, your car and your 2-3 computers.
- Audio is a powerful tool for learning while doing something else—driving, for example. Often the removal of visuals and the immersive nature of the listening experience asserts a  deeper influence than other media streams. But you are alone and isolated in your listening experience. Why is that? Why can’t I interact with others based on social graph, geo-location, or, say, twitter hastags?
-  I hear some cool music in a show. I want to buy it, or just check it out. I can’t. There are some exceptions which are all tedious and tied to one platform and “flat” audio, played locally, in your browser or mobile device. Maybe I want to switch advertising (buy this book on amazon) on/off.
- I want additional info on the book, the person, or the breaking story I am listening to, from the web. What is a credit default swap? I’d like to decide which sources I see; Wikipedia, YouTube related videos, trending on Twitter etc. Is this breaking somewhere else?
We are experimenting with achieving this with Mozilla’s semantic video project, popcorn.js and currently looking into combining this effort with audio.
-Was that edit really fair?  I’d like to check the source interview and edits. Did he really say that, or is this taken so  much out of context? Where’s the original file? Has this interview been performer or after a certain time or event? Are there more recent relevant source interviews?
-Subtitles, translation and versioning never happens. This means most content from outside your language area is invisible to you.  I did most of my interviews for DR in english. I have hundreds of great  interviews with key people on the web in a drawer. Few minutes of each  were used, and since I had to translate it, I could only use snippets.  This sucks! There’s so much value in there, so much transaction cost. Could Universal Subtitles be applied here?
- Every interviewee in the news gets interviewed by every different news outlet to get the essentially same soundbite. That’s a lot of friction. Why not share and provide a version history if the story evolves?
- Insider a broadcaster you can access each others editing sessions. Why not facilitate the same, so you can learn and build on other people´s work across broadcasters?
There are a lot of ideas here. In discussing these with various people—Mozilla’s Audio API team, people at Seneca College, Soundcloud, the team behind Hindenburg (see this), and not least, radio journalists, we all recognize a need to make radio more like the web.
In the short term, I’ll be collaborating with various parties on demos that combine immersive storytelling and journalistic experimentation with cutting-edge technologies that Mozilla are involved in, specifically HTML5 <audio>. But, I am dead-set on focusing on content, story and why instead of how. We’re going to be much more than techno-porn: I want to see a new and immersive radio listening experience built on open coming out of this experimentation. One that makes sense for everyone who loves radio and the web.
After the first demos I hope that we’re at a point where a first (hopefully several) “serious” prototypes are lined up; partnerships are made, and a focus development is under way. And, ultimately, I hope we can set a standard for inserting semantic data into audio, and one that is ready for adoption by major and mainstream players.