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How much longer do music based formats on FM have?

I was talking about demographics. AAA audience is older than other genres. You can try for a younger presentation, but that won't change the demographics.

Kinda, KEXP seems to have a pretty young demographic as an AAA non-comm.

but even considering, the majority of what radio spins is what is most streamed too — but it does miss some interesting things like K-Pop.

I don’t expect radio to play what I really care about, like the new Point North song, but I do think it could broaden the playlist more at times to experiment. It had been successful in the 2000’s.
 
Kinda, KEXP seems to have a pretty young demographic as an AAA non-comm.
They're an example where an older presentation somehow attracts a younger audience. We'll see if it carries across to San Francisco.

but even considering, the majority of what radio spins is what is most streamed too — but it does miss some interesting things like K-Pop.
I don't see enough K-Pop music to fill a format. As we've discussed, iHeart handles it with a specialty show.

I don’t expect radio to play what I really care about, like the new Point North song, but I do think it could broaden the playlist more at times to experiment. It had been successful in the 2000’s.

There needs to be a pot of gold at the end of the new music rainbow, and that doesn't seem to be the case. I also believe new music needs a promotion team behind it. Otherwise there's no way to distinguish the good from the bad.
 
They're an example where an older presentation somehow attracts a younger audience. We'll see if it carries across to San Francisco.


I don't see enough K-Pop music to fill a format. As we've discussed, iHeart handles it with a specialty show.



There needs to be a pot of gold at the end of the new music rainbow, and that doesn't seem to be the case. I also believe new music needs a promotion team behind it. Otherwise there's no way to distinguish the good from the bad.
New music just needs people to listen to it. It seems that’s what TikToc has become good at. Do you need marketing departments anymore when the kids will find it themselves.
 
New music just needs people to listen to it. It seems that’s what TikToc has become good at. Do you need marketing departments anymore when the kids will find it themselves.

I use TikTok a lot and for me, the music isn't the attraction. It's the byproduct. I'm attracted by the video, and then I have to look up who's doing the music. That's a different process from radio. Radio only has the audio, and that puts all the pressure on the music. TikTok should require the music be identified, the way it was on MTV.
 
As we've discussed, iHeart handles it with a specialty show.

Handled terribly as it’s never around when im around to listen to it, haha. I just think it is strangely omitted.

I’m not talking about my local market — it has issues but that’s another topic.
 
TikTok should require the music be identified, the way it was on MTV.

It already does, bottom left corner — it’s a spinning record. Granted TikTok is like you said, not about the music. Especially with my generation.

YouTube and Spotify are the dominant places for Gen Z and Gen Alpha regarding music, discussed in person or on Discord. There is people who get popular via TikTok/Instagram though and use it to market like TX2 or Sueco
 
YouTube and Spotify are the dominant places for Gen Z and Gen Alpha regarding music, discussed in person or on Discord.

To me, that's where radio could fill a void. I know people who make a lot of money making videos for YouTube and TikTok.
 
Correct.


Yes. Why wouldn't the guy at Jiffy Lube listen to music of his choosing? The only reason is if the shop owner won't allow headphones, but will allow a boom box.
My stepson works at a Jiffy Lube, and the employee in the well has to hear the employee working under the hood. Headphones blasting different music doesn't work. Same with lots of other types of employment, you can't be lost in your own world and not hear your co-workers.
 
My stepson works at a Jiffy Lube, and the employee in the well has to hear the employee working under the hood. Headphones blasting different music doesn't work. Same with lots of other types of employment, you can't be lost in your own world and not hear your co-workers.

Very true, but smart speakers exist.
 
My point is there's nobody really lobbying for AM/FM radio or overseeing the quality of the devices. The current campaign for AM in every car isn't about the quality of the device...just retaining it in the system. Meanwhile the biggest tech companies in the world are manufacturing their own devices, and ensuring their quality. That's the environment we're in.

Bob Orban once had the novel idea of putting the entire processing and stereo encoding airchain inside one box -- the Optimod -- to reign in the distortion and poor quality many FM stations entering into the loudness wars were suffering. Recently I read about the Optimod 5950 Super Hi-Fi product that incorporates practically the entire radio station into a single box, including program playout and PPM encoding. Maybe it's time to extend the "moat" to encompass one further and final component in the overall transmission-reception system, and have radio people like Orban actually control the receivers, now that such a thing is possible, by selling AM/FM receiver chips. Let experts with decades of experience like Bob and company develop perfect, ideal receiver chips that portable radio and car manufacturers can simply solder into place, leaving them with nothing to engineer except how to transport those chips' baseband output to the speaker amplification stage and beyond.

It could be called the Optdemod.
 
Google tried (with Volvo) to lock Apple CarPlay out and saw the resistance, so now, apart from the new GM EVs, vehicles with Google Built-In support Apple CarPlay as well as Android Auto.
Quiestion: I just looked in my 2023 Macan, and there is no Android Auto option. Is that because it only offers one if it detects such a phone, or is Android just not part of the Porsche options for that year or model?
 
My wife's Volvo doesn't have Apple CarPlay, but I just go into Media mode and it plays whatever from my iPhone, including album art, podcast cover art, etc to the screen.
Ain't no big thing, really.
 
My wife's Volvo doesn't have Apple CarPlay, but I just go into Media mode and it plays whatever from my iPhone, including album art, podcast cover art, etc to the screen.
Ain't no big thing, really.
If it’s not too much info, what model year? I’d be surprised if it was after 2020.
 
If it’s not too much info, what model year? I’d be surprised if it was after 2020.

It was. Volvo went with Google Automotive for model year 2022, and it wasn’t fully-baked. Incompatible with both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

It was supposed to be fixed with an over-the-air update in a few months. It was more than a year:

 
By the way, David, thanks for the thorough response, but one correction. I didn't mean to say AM began losing listeners in 1978, but that it began losing its dominance with them over FM in 1978. That was the first year FM had more listeners than AM, and somehow in my mind, that, not the 1960s, counts as the beginning of its descending-to-earth years.
When I was in high school, there was only one FM that I'm aware of that the kids listened to. But not everyone liked album rock.

Another rock station changed from beautiful music in late 1978 and it sounded more like Top 40, even though it called itself "Charlotte's Best Rock". 61 Big WAYS was still very popular.
 
Playing music in a workplace?
I suppose one answer is 'how do they do it now?' Last time I was in downtown Seattle I got a bagel and a latte at the Westlake Starbucks. They had a really cool alt-rock mix playing on the soundsystem. I asked the clerk what the source was. It was some computer/internet music playlist (not Spotify or Pandora -- I think it may have been Starbucks related? This was October of last year). I asked who programmed it. The clerk said we all choose the main artists and genre and let the algorithm choose the rest -- something to that order.

In smaller workspaces, I'm sure that's how it's done. In the Salvadoran Restaurant they had a Pandora channel playing Salvadoran music. When people are working, they're not paying close attention to the music, after all. A lot of it is just background noise / music for the workers and/or patrons.
 
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