Project #1: Interview

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

                                      26^th 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