Help us test a new way to listen to concerts online

At Radio 3 we put out a lot of concerts. If you add together all the four hundred-odd we programme with our friends at the BBC performing groups, the ones we record with other ensembles, the Proms (of course), our Saturday night opera relays and the many concerts we acquire from our partner broadcasters in the EBU, it comes to over 600 per year: about a dozen per week, all year round - and that doesn't include the many more informal performances: the ten or a dozen live performances on In Tune every week, the Jazz on 3, Late Junction and World on 3 sessions, the contemporary music concerts on Hear and Now...

In fact, over half of Radio 3's output is live or specially-recorded music. There can't be a radio station in the world that comes close to the volume and range of live performance that we broadcast. Look out of your window right now: there's a reasonable chance you'll see a big silver BBC truck on its way to or from a Radio 3 concert recording (do wave!).

And all of this live performance, from every corner of the repertoire, presents a real challenge in our increasingly networked world, with devices and screens multiplying around us. How do we give meaning to this almost inexpressible richness of musical performance online? And how do we open up the world of classical performance to the curious online audience? What tools can we use to make our 1,000-year back catalogue, performed live by the world's greatest musicians, more inviting to expert listeners and less forbidding for novices.

We've teamed up with Caper, a Silicon-roundabout startup with a history of work for cultural and musical institutions. They've built a prototype service called 'Concert Club', so named because it's a kind of 'book club for concerts'. It's an easy-to-use web app that makes listening to concerts online into a social experience, allowing enthusiasts and novices alike to share the listening experience.

Concert Club is part of a government-funded scheme called ICTomorrow, which pairs developers like Caper with companies and organisations like the BBC to build and test innovative services that might go into production or be commercialised. It's run by the Technology Strategy Board.

We've packed 'Concert Club' with Radio 3 concerts and we're testing the service for the next month or so. You're invited to join our community of testers. Sign up and join in on the Concert Club beta testing web site.

Tom Armitage, who has lead the development work on Concert Club, has written a fascinating post about it on his blog.