Bug Mistake Triple M are doing with the Modern Digital when it should be Greatest Hits Digital getting the axe instead.
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Yeah I agree. I’m surprised Koffee is still around too. What they should do is launch Smooth Extra like they have in the UK, or better still Smooth Soul. In the UK Magic has Magic Soul and apparently it’s a pretty successful DAB niche.
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Lowest Triple M branded station in all markets it airs, lowest station overall in Adelaide and Melbourne, equal lowest in Sydney.
Modern Digital is a good idea, the execution was terrible, the current format is dreadful and no one is listening. Greatest Hits is doing far better.
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Maybe they have worked out how bad the format is 
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Last Song to be Played on Modern Digital is… Tomorrow Wendy by Andy Prieboy featuring Johnette Napolitano, I’ll Miss Modern Digital very much!!!
Vale Triple M Modern Digital.
New short program label is MMM AUS
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…and just for the record, the first song to be played on Triple M Aussie Digital was Love In Motion by Icehouse.
Station was (re)launched as if they were going into another hour of music! 
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In Perth they’ve added MMM Aussie and MMM Country, both new, along with MMM Classic Hits.
Downside is they’ve cut the bitrates of ALL SCA digital only stations (HIT and MMM) to 32Kbps, and 92.9 and 94.5 to 48Kbps.
Sounds terrible.
Edit: although it says MMM Aussie, it’s still MMM Modern Digital until I assume midnight Perth time.
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Slideshow images
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Something I noticed in Melbourne is that they also added the station as just ‘AUSSIE’ - which is how the former ‘Aussie Digital’ from Pacific Star was listed.
It’s just another pointer to the same audio stream, but means people looking for the old station might find the Triple M one instead, though I don’t think any radios are stupid enough to treat it as the same station.
Which I’m fairly sure means every Perth commercial station is now 48kbps or under. Such a shame considering just a few years back 96fm was at a full 128kbps with decent music programming…
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Enjoying Aussie so far, they are playing some non safe tracks which is good and some new music also. Need to keep the spectrum wide
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Currently playing Current Stand from Kids In The Kitchen! 
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Second that. Time to contact the CBAA and those Sydney community licensees on digital to request this. Could be beneficial to them too.
New Aus music quota filler, hence the endless flogging on MMM.
Indeed. Amazing with all we hear of pill testing and the associated festivals that must turn a profit that Nova couldn’t monetise Nova Nation. Wiki lists Nova Nation ending online mid 2016.
Yes, I don’t understand this either. They’re the bitrates across Syd and Melb, Bris is different due to the number of Coles Radio stations that are aired.
Perhaps Nova at 112kbps demonstrates what a higher bitrate can sound like e.g 2CH with 120kbps.
Agree. Does anyone at Nova have this level of inclination to implement it?
Released 1990? How is that modern?
Thanks for the Perth updates. Terrible that they’ve shoehorned additional stations in thereby sacrificing bitrate.
Typical. It’s been a long time now, quite desperate by SCA.
Not good at all.
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Yep. Noongar Radio and Inspire Digital are 64kbps and higher than any commercial station.
Here’s the list as of today, 26 Jan 2019:
1080 6iX Digital 48 Stereo
6EBA World Radio 32 Mono
6PR 48 Stereo
96FM 32 Stereo
ABC Classic 80 Stereo
ABC Jazz 80 Stereo
ABC KIDS listen 72 Stereo
ABC PERTH 64 Stereo
ABC Country 80 Stereo
ABC Grandstand 40 Mono
ABCNewsRadio 48 Mono
ABCRadioNational 64 Stereo
SBS Arabic24 48 Stereo
BUDDHA HITS 32 Stereo
Capital Digital 48 Stereo
Coles Radio 32 Stereo
Curtin DiGital 48 Stereo
Double J 80 Stereo
EASY HITS 32 Stereo
hit92.9! 48 Stereo
Inspire Digital 64 Stereo
Kinderling Kids 32 Stereo
KIX Country 32 Stereo
Macquarie Sports 48 Stereo
mix94.5 48 Stereo
MMM AUSSIE 32 Stereo
MMM CLASSIC ROCK 32 Stereo
MMM COUNTRY 32 Stereo
My Perth Digital 48 Stereo
Noongar Radio 64 Stereo
Nova 937 48 Stereo
News Talk Sport 32 Stereo
OLDSKOOL HITS 32 Stereo
SBS PopAsia 72 Stereo
SBS PopDesi 64 Stereo
RTRFM 92.1 48 Stereo
SBS Radio 1 40 Stereo
SBS Radio 2 40 Stereo
SBS Radio 3 48 Stereo
SBS Chill 72 Stereo
Smooth FM 48 Stereo
The Edge 32 Stereo
The 90s 32 Stereo
triple j 80 Stereo
triplejUnearthed 72 Stereo
URBAN HITS 32 Stereo
Vision Aus Radio 32 Stereo
X Digital 32 Stereo
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There’s just no vision or planning around digital formats here. In Perth we have 3 country stations all competing for one niche, 2 ‘chill’ stations, 2 ‘urban’ stations, 3 adult easy listening stations (3, even 4 if you include 94.5 and 96fm), 2 ‘old school’ stations.
Why are operators copying each other, instead of providing a wider variety to attract people? Getting people to even listen to DAB is an uphill battle at best, but providing poor sounding clones of themselves isn’t helping.
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Yes I agree totally. In my more cynical moments I sometimes think the big operators want it to fail. At best they have no interest in it succeeding. If that’s true then it’s incredibly short sighted - DAB is the only real hope for the survival of terrestrial radio as we know it. It’s the only platform that could potentially provide the variety of formats required to compete with streaming and internet stations.
I think the operators think their future is their own internet delivery channels like iHeart for example. I think they’re wrong. They don’t understand the internet. If they encourage/force people to listen to radio via the internet they are signing their own death warrant as once this happens they’ll expose their audience to infinitely greater choice, and quality of options. Their audience will disperse.
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Absolutely agree.
SCA and ARN want us listening through their apps, so they can collect analytics, personal data and personalise ads to their audience. But if I’m going to listen to something online, I’m going to listen to Apple Music, Spotify or a premium radio service like Digitally Imported, not local automated repetitive shit. If I’m going online, you’ve lost the war for my ears. In car streaming is easier than ever, and will get even easier with connected cars so you won’t even need a phone anymore as the car has its own Internet connection.
DAB and Digital Radio needs a big rebrand and marketing push. They need to stop calling it Digital Radio; in my experience people think it’s streaming off their phone data.
Call it DAB. You can then have AM radio, FM radio and DAB radio. All the menus in cars refer to it as DAB. Embrace that. People don’t know what Digital Radio is.
Dump the simulcasts of FM stations. Get the AM stations to promote the shit out of it for their main stations. ‘On DAB and AM, this is 6iX’ for example. Get the FM operators to sit down, find the gaps in the market, what the market wants, then tailor their stations to fit. No rock station in Perth? SCA has experience with rock over East, SCA provides a rock station. Urban? ARN has a successful urban station in Sydney, ARN provides an urban station outside Sydney. Smooth FM is going gangbusters in Sydney and Melbourne, Nova can provide that to Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Sydney wants a golden oldies station? 2CH is close, let’s get them to go even older for their digital station.
And don’t go overboard with too many stations; 80kbps MINIMUM for music, 32kbps for talk.
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On Sydney DAB, it correctly appears as MMM AUSSIE
(though the genre comes up as ‘Country Music’… ??)
Given that in Melbourne SCA are likely on the same mux as Pacific Star’s Aussie was, could this be an issue related to that? Probably not, but just a thought.
There’s MMM AUSSIE as well - they’ve just added a duplicate of it just called ‘Aussie’, seemingly to get people who are looking for the old station.
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How has the “Digital Radio Plus” campaign been going recently? I remember the ads airing reasonably often during the first few years of DAB+ transmissions but not really since about 2012 or 2013.
Overall I agree that the broadcasters (especially AM stations) should be doing more to promote DAB+ but at the same time, they still need to have online streaming/apps.
As far as commercial/public stations go, I completely agree.
I think the metro-wide community stations (even if most are on FM) need to be on DAB+ for full coverage though.
From a Sydney perspective, 2CH seems to be the only AM station doing a half-decent job of promoting their DAB+ service.
I personally think the DAB+ audio streams of talk stations (at least in the markets with two commercial/community multiplexes) should be at 64kbps at the absolute minimum.
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