Barnesandnoble.com is hoping to duplicate the success of brick-and-mortar booksellers that use live music and coffee lounges to enhance consumers' brand experience. It has introduced a streamed audio service that lets shoppers listen to music while they browse.
BN Radio is the brainchild of Daniel Blackman, director of music, video and software for Barnesandnoble.com.
'We have a very robust music store that is doing great business. This feature extends the user experience not only to our music store, but to all the other areas throughout the site,' said Blackman.
Launched in February 2000 with 16 music channels, BN Radio - outsourced to Radio Active Media Partners (RadioAMP) - expanded its service last fall to 149 channels, such as jazz and blues. Also included is a section devoted to the spoken word, where consumers can listen to snippets of books.
While streamed audio has only been around for a few years, there is already ample evidence that services such as BN Radio can dramatically increase the stickiness of sites. Blackman said that while consumers spend only 10-15 minutes on average at any one site, that goes up to 20-30 minutes for each listening session on BN Radio.
For now, the jury is still out on how much of an impact this has on revenues.
'It increases sales for the records being featured,' said Blackman. 'As far as trying to pin down any increases in sales in general, our sales are up for a number of reasons - our site works well. We've got great search engines and fantastic editorial. (BN Radio) is just another cog in our suite of features that create a compelling web site.'
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