M Concepts and YES Launch Widget Designed to Enhance Listener Experience and Promote Station Loyalty

New Technology Looks to Revive Radio Industry with Unique Social Media–Inspired Features

M Concepts, a boutique product design consultancy, and YES, a leading radio community, today announced the launch of the YES widget, geared to renew radio listenership by promoting listener loyalty and time spent with the station. The YES widget, which can be embedded into any radio station’s Web site, offers an interactive experience for listeners, creating a community through one-of-a-kind chat features and exciting prizes. In support of the Free Radio Alliance, the YES team hopes to keep open air programming free by increasing digital music sales and permitting improved listener involvement.

“As music technology has evolved over the past decade, radio industry growth has been stagnant, so we sought to create a way for stations to tap into a more social experience for music fans,” said Daniel Goldscheider, CEO of YES. “Our radio community platform combined with the design expertise of M Concepts yielded an innovation that takes radio listening from a passive experience to a way for stations to build relationships with listeners beyond simply airing songs.”

Through the widget, listeners can instantly purchase songs from the station’s playlist directly from iTunes. Listeners who purchase four songs become eligible to win $100,000 if the selected songs match the same four selected by the its winning reels at midnight. Additional prizes will also be awarded. Radio enthusiasts can search among thousands of stations at YES.com and will soon be able to grab the widget from their favorite radio station’s Web site, use it on their desktop, their mobile handset or display it on their own Myspace and/or Facebook profiles.

“We are thrilled to see one of the oldest broadcast mediums brought back to life with the convergence of social media,” said Michael Darius, design principal for M Concepts. “Our engineering partner, MotivePath, helped to greatly accelerate our launch on Facebook, OpenSocial and other social network communities.”

Along with the launch of the widget App Store for the iPhone in June, M Concepts will be releasing their freely downloadable widget calculator enabling the enterprise to submit work requests and ideas directly from a widget. Both the widget calculator and the YES widget will mark a significant milestone in establishing the marketplace for multi-platform widgets.

For more information about M Concepts products and services, please call 800.281.9667.

About YES

Headquartered in Switzerland, YES runs the largest broadcast monitoring network in the United States. Built upon proprietary technology that allows for tracking and direct response to broadcast, YES enlivens the media experience, making it social and interactive by connecting audiences with stations, artists and advertisers. For more information visit www.YES.com.

About M Concepts

M Concepts (Product design for the human condition), is a boutique product design consultancy based in La Jolla, Calif. M Concepts offers next-generation icon design services and rapid-fire concept development for in-dash, in-home, mobile and desktop widgets. Within a year of being open for business M Concepts’ specialized team has been responsible for many successful branded product experiences such as Spime’s NorthStar, a location based widget platform for the HTC touch. Michael Darius finished his five year term at Apple at the end of 2004 as an award winning feature designer for its Internet Enabled Applications including iTunes and later founded M Concepts in 2007 with his wife and Production Director Marissa Gail.
Contacts

M Concepts
Rachel Kay, 619-867-7353
rachelkay {at} mconcepts(.)com