Music Rotation Capability

Tender description

The BBC has purchased a Music Rotation capability for use by radio stations and networks to generate track by track playlists according to user defined rules. An effective rotation capability is pivotal to a radio station’s operation and performance. It is a key component in realising music policies as audience facing propositions. This ITT is to procure a single solution to support the BBC’s linear national and local radio services for Network Radio (Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, 6Music, Asian Network), English Regions Local Radio (41 stations) as well as 3 services in Wales (1 English language service (Radio Wales) and 2 Welsh language services (Radio Cymru 1 and 2). The Contract will be for an initial term of 3 years with options to extend by 2 x 24 month extensions, to a maximum of 7 years. BBC Nations, Scotland and Northern Ireland, are out of scope for this procurement, as is the BBC’s Non Linear Service BBC Sounds. Lot 1: The BBC is seeking to purchase a Music Rotation capability for use by radio stations and networks to generate track by track playlists according to user defined rules. An effective rotation capability is pivotal to a radio station’s operation and performance. It is a key component in realising music policies as audience facing propositions. This ITT is to procure a single solution to support the BBC’s linear national and local radio services for Network Radio (Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, 6Music, Asian Network), English Regions Local Radio (41 stations) as well as 3 services in Wales (1 English language service (Radio Wales) and 2 Welsh language services (Radio Cymru 1 and 2). The Contract will be for an initial term of 3 years with options to extend by 2 x 24 month extensions, to a maximum of 7 years. BBC Nations, Scotland and Northern Ireland, are out of scope for this procurement, as is the BBC’s Non Linear Service BBC Sounds. The anticipated contract value is expected to be up to a maximum of £1,400,000.00 over the full 7 year term. The BBC is about to start the process of evolving to a “Digital Ecosystem” designed to drive the digital transformation of the BBC and enable the evolution of our portfolio from broadcast to online led. This has prompted the BBC to think differently about our procurement requirements. The technology strategy underpinning the Digital Ecosystem provides direct support for the change from broadcast to online lead by requiring procured software to participate in a flexible ecosystem of built and bought solutions by integrating easily with other applications in the BBC Digital Ecosystem. Having analysed the types of collaboration needed, the BBC has prioritised a set of software capabilities exposed at an API level to support this collaboration – the Digital Ecosystem Foundations. Whilst no “Foundations” are yet in place, the initial set to be developed and those to which procured systems will need to integrate during the lifetime of any Music Rotation contract are included in the Specification of Requirement. In practical terms, this direction of travel gives rise to a series of Non Functional requirements around these capabilities and the integration capabilities underpinning their effective operation. Nevertheless, bidders should note that this is a direction of travel and integrating effectively with a current landscape that does not have the “Foundation objects” is of paramount importance as described in the Specification. Bidders should also note that the BBC has aspirations to utilise the categorisation data associated with tracks in order to inform and underpin personalised recommendations for the audience. In practice, this will involve integrating with another BBC system via an API. As mentioned above, rotation requirements for the BBC’s non-linear services are out of scope of this procurement. However, it is highly likely that from the outset, music track and associated descriptive attributes and categorisation data will need to be exported to a BBC business system in order to assist non-linear teams building “mixes”. This data export capability is given in the Specification of Requirement.