Sorry, but I BUY music. I'd rather have something physical in my hands to look at/read liner notes whatever when listening to it. And yes they DO buy streaming music [unless they have the freebie versions.] Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, etc. almost all CHARGE a monthly fee for their "premium" service. i.e. no ads. And I didn't say "Well, streaming's here, guess I have to get rid of my personal music collection now."
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1090 XEPRS Has Gone Back to Oldies Plus Wolfman - L.A. Daily News
- Thread starter Daryl Lynn L.A.
- Start date
You can do whatever you want. But you mentioned high school kids, and ask them how many buy CDs
People stream today in place of buying CDs.
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Yeah, why would anyone in their mind buy the "same song" over and over by paying a monthly fee? Seems like a total waste of money. Buy a download once for $1.29 or .99 for an inferior version and you can hear it as many times as you want for the same price. Just like owning a CD single or 45. Buy hey, I stream for free by listening to music I don't own on YouTube. Well.....actually it's not free, you pay a monthy fee to have internet! 🤣
I can speak to that.. i had someone training with me whos a high school student.... shes never bought a CD, never used one
The advantage of an online service is that (in nearly all services) you can make all manner of playlists. You can have a "Friday After Work" one and a "Hangover" one and a "With my Wife / Girlfriend (or both)" list or a "Safe Family Trip" one. And so on, ad infinitum.
You can have the same song on several lists... or not. You can get a sampling of new songs in some systems. The possibilities are infinite and the is no shuffling and selecting and the system is ideal for undistracted in-car use or for listening when out jogging or at the gym with earbuds.
Everything else is way to much work. If I am going to do a custom playlist for every hour, I want to get paid for it; that is called "Music Director" and is not free.
I'm really surprised that anyone has trouble grasping this concept.
In 1974, a single LP was $5.98 list. Adjusted for inflation, that's $38.18.
For less than one-third of the price of a single album each month (Apple Music...always ad-free...is $10.99, Spotify's ad-free tier is $11.99), I have access to literally EVERY album and single currently licensed for release in North America. Both services have more than 100 million songs.
I can listen to what I want, whenever I want without having to actually purchase it. If I listen to something I don't like, I'm not out anything, because that $11.99 is also buying me everything I do, and things I haven't heard yet that I will.
I do my music listening over coffee in the morning while catching up on correspondence and stuff like this. So far this morning, it's been Steely Dan's Countdown To Ectasy, Milton Nascimento's Courage, Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark and James Taylor's Covers.
If I'm still at it and I keep lazily going alphabetically, Beyonce's Cowboy Carter is next.
I can play them from my desktop Mac (which has great speakers), my laptop, my iPad, or my iPhone, which means I can play them walking, on a plane or while driving.
I'm an outlier in using Apple Music for albums, but I came up in the album era. To me, singles were the teaser to get you to buy the LP.
Most people use it for individual songs, and as David says, you can build any playlist imaginable, or use the quite good ones that are already pre-curated. And Apple Music even builds playlists for me without my asking---based on what I play most...I see "New Music Mix", "Heavy Rotation Mix" and "Favorite Mix", which I haven't even looked at yet.
In 1974, a single LP was $5.98 list. Adjusted for inflation, that's $38.18.
For less than one-third of the price of a single album each month (Apple Music...always ad-free...is $10.99, Spotify's ad-free tier is $11.99), I have access to literally EVERY album and single currently licensed for release in North America. Both services have more than 100 million songs.
I can listen to what I want, whenever I want without having to actually purchase it. If I listen to something I don't like, I'm not out anything, because that $11.99 is also buying me everything I do, and things I haven't heard yet that I will.
I do my music listening over coffee in the morning while catching up on correspondence and stuff like this. So far this morning, it's been Steely Dan's Countdown To Ectasy, Milton Nascimento's Courage, Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark and James Taylor's Covers.
If I'm still at it and I keep lazily going alphabetically, Beyonce's Cowboy Carter is next.
I can play them from my desktop Mac (which has great speakers), my laptop, my iPad, or my iPhone, which means I can play them walking, on a plane or while driving.
I'm an outlier in using Apple Music for albums, but I came up in the album era. To me, singles were the teaser to get you to buy the LP.
Most people use it for individual songs, and as David says, you can build any playlist imaginable, or use the quite good ones that are already pre-curated. And Apple Music even builds playlists for me without my asking---based on what I play most...I see "New Music Mix", "Heavy Rotation Mix" and "Favorite Mix", which I haven't even looked at yet.
Yup. The money I pay for my Spotify subscription is probably the best money I spend every month. I get more value from it than my newspaper subscription or my gym membership!
You have pointed out the versatility of those services. I was focusing on personalized playlists, but add in the ability to call each song individually or use the pre-built playlists give multiple ways of using the services.
I'd love to know how the individual curated playlists are done, as I suspect that they have data on what songs people who like one song also like and can use some form of AI to create playlists by compatibility and even song-to-song fit.
A week ago Tuesday, my wife and I took our daughter and grandbaby to San Francisco and spent the day in the city before dropping them at SFO for their flight home to Georgia.
On the drive back to our house (about 2 1/2 hours because we left SFO around 6:00 p.m.), I decided to try "Michael Hagerty's Station" for the first time. Apple put it together based on what I've played over the years and attempted to extrapolate my tastes.
Since it's a "station", you can't look at a list. So I just hit "play" and figured we'd see how well Apple knows me.
It started off very strong for the first half-hour, a pretty much flawless mix of 50s, 60s and 70s jazz and R&B groups like Average White Band and Tower of Power, with excellent flow between tracks. After that, though, it tried to fold in other genres I like and kinda lost the thread.
To be fair, though, my tastes are very eclectic. Back in the day when Pandora first hit, I gave that a try. For those who haven't, you give them a few favorite songs and it tries to come up with a "station" that matches your taste. You "thumbs up" the ones you like and "thumbs down" the ones you don't.
I'm sure it was doing exactly what the algorithm said would make the most sense, but it never held past the fifth song.
My joke is that after 20 minutes, Pandora would stop playing music and start sobbing "What do you WANT from me???"
My daughter, in her teens at the time, said that no matter what she started with, the fifth song would always be Swedish Death Metal.
My wife and I were talking on a long drive how amazing it is that you can listen to any song or album you want, when you want in today's world. But that didn't kill radio. The reason music radio is failing us is that you get the same overly research records, in high rotation and, more importantly, what happens "between the records" isn't funny, isn't innovative, isn't spontaneous, isn't unpredictable, isn't interesting and isn't fun. THAT is why many of us look and long for older radio formats to - not necessarily copy - but to garner lessons from those formats. Of course, when there are eight minutes of commercials between the music that doesn't help either.
Sorry I'm late to the show. I'm not sure how the weekend schedule is working, but the Spanish language Catholic programming, Monte Maria, runs from 7 PM until Noon (weekdays) - then the station runs three hours of jukebox music with mostly unknown newer pop songs using the Barix Audio Stream program "Barix Audio over IP." It sounds like a filler/placeholder format until something better can be sold into the slot. Once an hour they run a station ID, some Spanish PSAs and some English PSAs voiced by the Production Director at Local Media San Diego. At 3 they start the El Chingon oldies show with mostly 60s/70s, some 50s and some 80s. Then at 5, they run two hours of Wolfman Jack, taped, which seems to be featuring 60s/70s and some 80s music as well.
@MarioMania, you might be able to get some of the later English programming in a month or two when it starts getting dark earlier and the skywave signal gets going earlier. That is , if this current format is still chugging along by then.
It depends where you are and what music you want. You can't talk about music radio without first talking about the music. If you're talking Top 40, then by definition, you're talking small playlists in heavy rotation. The songs in heavy rotation get played once every 2 hours. If you're talking AAA, it's very different. There's usually no repetition. Some hip-hop stations have over 1000 songs in rotation. As for what's between the records, once again, it depends on the formats. Country radio typically will have better DJs. Some active rock stations, such as KISN and WMMS, give more time to the DJs than other formats. This thread is about MeTV FM, which is a syndicated oldies format with no DJs at all. Some who want a more human presentation prefer KCSN. There are lots of choices, and lots of approaches. If you want to hear music you haven't heard in a while, try KEXP. If commercials bother you, those last two are non-commercial.
So rather than speaking in generalizations, why not get specific, and tell us who you listen to and why.
Those lessons won't apply to the marketplace today. Why? Because there was a major disruption in both radio & records about 25 years ago. The way we consume music changed completely as a result, and both radio & records have been suffering as a result. The record business was built on physical copies that people bought in stores and brought home to listen on home stereos. That entire system has been disrupted. The physical business has shrunk. Most people stream. And the home stereo business is gone. All that has affected radio and what people expect from their radios. It's not the same as it was 30 years ago.
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I've spent over 50 years working in various formats. I am a fan of good radio. I consider radio to be one of the "arts". The closest thing - and it has its flaws - that has anything going on "between the records" of value are SOME of the Sirius/XM channels - where I can find deep cuts, innovative programming and people who don't just read cards between the records. And it's a sad state where most of those innovators on the air on Sirius come from other "arts" and not from radio backgrounds. We've lost our way creatively and over researching to chase the money is killing an industry I truly do love.
Then maybe the mistake you've made was doing radio for money. I see you volunteer for an LPFM. That's a good start. Some people do radio for money. Others do it for the art. They each coexist on the radio dial. You just have to know where to look. The commercial radio industry was always about the money. That's why public radio was created in 1967. Around that same time, you had community radio, inspired by the late Lorenzo Milam. I agree with what you say about Sirius. Thanks to Steven Van Zant & Kid Leo, there are some very creative stations there. But a lot of people still aren't happy because it's linear radio. Young people want DIY radio, not curated linear radio. So everybody wants something different. Hard to program broadcasting when people want me-casting.
"Underground Garage" and "Outlaw Country" are two of the most innovative on the Sirius system. There are a few others as well. You're right that young people are gone from listening to any radio. We should ask: Who's fault is that? I'm guessing most here would rather blame the "changing times" than a lack of any innovation on the part of the bean counters that make up radio today. I think it's both.
Also the bitrates on the Sirius channels aren’t that great.
I agree, but the Kingsmen's "Louie, Louie", George Jones or the Sex Pistols don't need the bitrates Mozart does
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I started out doing it for nothing. I went fifty some years working in some pretty creative radio venues and MADE money and, yes, now I'm doing it for free again - in my retirement. I've had a great radio life.
There are bean counters at Sirius too. There are bean counters at Spotify. There are bean counters at the record labels. I know because I talk with all of them. And there's innovation happening in broadcasting, although you may not notice it. Don't kid yourself. It's all about making money. Even the artists want to make money. I don't blame anything. It's nobody's "fault." Things happen. The times changed in the 1920s. They changed again in the 1940s. They changed again in the 1960s. Then they really started to change in the 1980s. The year was 1988, when the great schism between radio & records happened. That was the year when many of the founding companies of radio left the industry. Then came the 90s and the internet.
So sure, the times have changed, but that's not why young people aren't listening to radio. They're not looking for innovation or creativity. They're looking to MAKE creativity on their own. They are the DO generation. You can play all the creative radio you love, and they'll be bored. Because they have the tools to do radio themselves. In the old days, the cost of doing radio was prohibitive. You needed studios and expensive equipment and towers and transmitters. Now you don't need any of that. You can do everything in your laptop and deliver it straight to people. Same thing with record labels. They used to make music for radio airplay. That was their only way to reach people. They signed a few artists because radio only played a few artists. It was very expensive. Then the internet came, and they can bypass radio completely. Record labels sign lots of artists, because they don't sell millions anymore. They sell to individual fan bases. Every artist makes a little money, and together they make enough. That may be the future of radio. We'll see,
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