The Emergence of Internet Radio in Egypt: Success in The Making or Fad of The Time?
The following audio
piece is an interview conducted with Akram Kassem, The Marketing and Production
Manager of Sound of Sakia, in which he tells us more about internet radio in Egypt, how
successful it has been so far and what difficulties is the platform facing.
Interview Transcript:
Interviewer: Linda
Badr
Narrator: Akram
Kassem
Date: 15
October, 2012
Place: Sound
of Sakia Studio
26th
of July Street, Sphinx Square,
Agouza
University: The
American University
in Cairo (AUC)
Professor: Kim
Fox
Date Completed: 15
October, 2012
[Introduction]
Badr: Hello and welcome to my first interview
conducted for the JRMC460 documentary in which I'll be talking about the
emergence of internet radio in Egypt and more specifically about how successful
it has been so far and how it is expected to be like in the future. With me
right now is Akram Kassem, The Marketing and Production Manager of Sound of
Sakia internet radio who will talk to us more about the subject.
[Interview]
Badr: Hi
Akram.
Kassem: Hi Linda, how are you doing?
Badr: Good, how are you?
Kassem: Good good.
Badr: Before we start, I need you to introduce
yourself first.
Kassem: My name is Akram, I joined El Sawy
Culture Wheel for the project Sound of Sakia Radio. It's the first culture and
art online radio and the whole objective of the project is to spread the
cultural and art scene of Egypt
to the worldwide and put it on the map, the worldwide map.
Badr: Not a lot of people know about internet
radio, I was sitting with one of my friends and talking to her about my audio
documentary and I was like "I'm Doing My Documentary About Internet
Radio" and she was like "What is Internet Radio?" so can you
please tell us more about it?
Kassem: Well, I wasn’t aware for the internet
radio also from like two years ago. The internet radio gives you more space of
listening to a content anywhere in the world and it gives you an opportunity
that you can spread whatever you are doing across different countries and
giving the opportunities for these artists to be exposed more worldwide. I
think the internet radio started to be more popular in the last period and
specifically in Egypt after
the revolution, we got a very strong feedback and more attention to the project
when the revolution happened in Egypt.
Badr: We already have radio stations with frequencies,
why would someone listen to internet radio when we actually have the radio
stations with diverse content.
Kassem: The difference between the online radio
and the frequency radio is that also the online radio gives you more space of
freedom of expressing yourself and it's more dynamic, it's more straightforward
and short to the point and it has to deliver whatever you wanna as messages as
you wanna deliver to the listeners in a very short briefed way.
Badr: Speaking of the advantages of internet radio
platforms, do you think it is easy to establish, like any one can have a studio for
example at home and start his or her first online radio platform?
Kassem: It could happen, it could happen
actually. It is a matter of how much investment in the project.
Badr: so do you think internet radio has
achieved success?
Kassem: Definitely, the whole industry is
becoming more successful on a monthly basis even, you find a lot of radio
stations that just came out for the last period. We have been there for over than
two years but we found lately there is Wasla, just opened up from a
couple of months ago and there is also Cairo Capital which was
previously called Masr EL Gedeida and there is a lot of other online
radio stations that becoming more successful in this region. The only problem
about it maybe that the investors are
not seeing yet how this industry is spreading and how they could utilize it for
their own benefits, in terms of from the commercial side and this is what we're
suffering for the last period.
Badr: Yes actually one of the disadvantages of
or one of the things that I've found while researching is that a lot of
internet online radios have reported that sustainability is one of the main
problems that they are facing. They said that they do not guarantee the
sponsors. Enough sponsors so they really fear that they might not be able to
sustain their platform.
Kassem: Absolutely right. From a research also I
found couple of radio station have opened up but they couldn’t sustain the
project because at the end of the day you have spending and you have expenses
that you need to cover. Still sponsors and commercial side, they still cannot
realize how important this industry is. I think it's a main role for the
digital agencies to push these radio stations and to push these brands to at
least go for a try and see this is on your target segment or not. This will
solve a lot of issues for us as an industry.
Badr: That was a good sum of information, thanks
a lot Akram.
Kassem: Thank you Linda, thank you very much.
All pictures are taken by Linda Badr at Sound of Sakia Studio
