The BBC dominates traditional radio with almost half of the UK's more than 50 million weekly fans of live music tuning into its stations.
But as younger audiences gravitate to streaming services, and recommendation-driven playlists grow in popularity, the launch of the Playlister music curation and recommendation service marks the corporation's attempt to maintain its relevance in a digital age.
Bob Shennan, the controller of Radio 2, Radio 6 and the Asian Network, highlighted the role of the BBC and its DJs in discovering new acts and giving them exposure to a mainstream audience at the Playlister launch on Wednesday.
Shennan said bands such as Coldplay and Florence and the Machine were "discovered" by the BBC – just two years ago Jake Bugg was trying to get a break uploading tracks to the BBC Introducing initiative to support unsigned acts – examples of what he said was the BBC's traditional role as the "great curator of music content".
However Mark Mulligan, media analyst at Midia Consulting, pointed out that the rise of streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer and the self-built playlist pioneered by Apple has meant the BBC has had to undertake a radical strategic rethink.
"The definition of what constitutes what radio is changing, and changing rapidly," said Mulligan. "The reality is the real radio revolution is happening online and it is taking the form of streaming services and playlists. This is the BBC making sure they are the part of the dialogue of what the future of radio is."
The corporation faces a range of issues in transitioning to the digital era.
The BBC doesn't have rights to play full music tracks online (only 30 seconds); new stars are emerging through the power of social and digital recommendation while DJs are still mostly stuck with a one-directional relationship with listeners; and traditional BBC music fans aren't getting any younger, the average age of a Radio 1 listener is 32 years old.
"The internet and devices are changing our relationship with music, and BBC Playlister represents our first steps to finding our place as a guide in a digital world alongside broadcast," said Ben Chapman, the BBC's head of popular music, radio and music for multiplatform.
Playlister will allow music fans to easily aggregate any song played across BBC radio, and soon TV shows such as The Voice, to a personal playlist at the click of an "add this" button.
Options then include "exporting" the playlist to a third-party music service, the launch partners are Spotify, Deezer and YouTube, and there will be recommendations aggregated across the BBC's music output and from individual DJs as well.
BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe – who is referred to as a "trusted curator" or guide on Playlister – is upbeat about the opportunities for BBC radio. "It will influence the way we make radio," he said, speaking at the launch event on Wednesday.
Shennan added: "In a world of infinite choice those guides [BBC DJs] become even more important. Those values associated with Zane, Jo [Whiley] and Jules [Holland] are values of the BBC, a lot of trust they have is the fact that they are BBC. Independence is critical – [of] thought, judgment, motivation. We want to translate this into the digital space."
The corporation has big plans to develop the service, just getting to "beta" launch has taken more than a year, but is at pains to point out that the next step is not to add a "buy now" button and create an Apple iTunes-style experience.
"We are doing it for public service not pseudo-commercial reasons," said Shennan. "We are not offering a 'club card' mentality".
Mulligan believes that the Playlister service stands "every chance of working" and becoming popular for the BBC.
However he is less convinced that it is the great digital music leap forward the BBC believes, pointing out that it could actually harm its own services in the long run.
"I don't think it is very ambitious," he says. "They are just a curating service for other streaming services. It is neat, but a cynical view is that they are encouraging radio and TV audiences to go elsewhere to streaming services, away from their own music offerings."
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