About Inner Ear
Strategy, storytelling and systems for creative value.
Inner Ear helps creative, cultural and purpose-led organisations uncover the value inside their work, shape stronger stories and build systems and formats that bring audiences closer.
What Inner Ear believes
Creative work contains hidden value.
Stories deserve care, context and craft. Audiences are relationships, not just metrics. AI should accelerate insight, not replace provenance or judgement.
Value
Integrity
Clear advice, honest judgement and careful delivery.
Value
Liveness
A respect for live moments, human presence and what makes audiences feel close.
Value
Provenance
Stories rooted in context, origin and editorial care.
Provenance
Founded in Glasgow in 2000.
Inner Ear’s experience runs across digital media, music, culture, heritage, livestreaming, podcasts, interactive storytelling and creative technology. The work is grounded in long-term cultural fluency rather than startup novelty.
Dougal Perman
Co-founder and director of Inner Ear, executive producer and creative strategist. Dougal is an Innovating with AI certified AI Consultant, a member of the Creative Industries Leadership Group and chair of the CILG AI Subgroup.
He is also former chair of the Scottish Music Industry Association, with long experience across the creative economy, digital media, music, culture, AI-supported workflows and audience engagement.
Our brands and ventures
We build our own audience assets too.
Our own brands help us test, prove and refine the same strategy, storytelling and systems we bring to client work. They are part of how we learn what builds audience value over time.
Audience
Radio Magnetic
Independent digital culture publishing and audience-building, with roots in internet radio and online editorial experimentation.
Live
TRADtv
Broadcast-style cultural storytelling for traditional music, events and specialist audiences.
Story
Walking Heads
Audio tours and place-based interpretation that connect story, memory and location.
How we work
Planning. Production. Progression.
Human-led, AI-supported. Collaborative, practical and transparent. The aim is always to help useful work travel further and land more clearly.