Dear Radio, I’m Not Impressed

by Katie Morse

Photo provided by Manav Gupta

I recently went on a road trip through Virginia for a work event. I had the pleasure of driving a car for the first time in 4 months through DC traffic, looking at cows and lush green fields, and seeing deer grazing on the side of the road.  I also listened to the radio for the first time in 4 months. That was not a pleasure.

I have fond memories of the radio from when I was a kid.  I listened to everything from the “Great Hits of the 60′s, 70′,s and 80′s!” stations to the pop, hip-hop or rock stations.  Radio was how I found out about new bands, and if I didn’t like a song, I could switch to another station and find another song playing that I did like.

Those memories went down the tube when I was driving in Virginia. I must have listened to at least 10 different stations before I found one that didn’t make me want to scream at the radio for sending such horrid music over the airwaves. The station I landed on? NPR.

Here’s what I don’t get.  The theory goes that if your songs are played on the radio, that you’ve made it.  The radio will, through the sheer power of numbers, expand your fan base and open up new opportunities. The radio seems like “the sign”, or the tipping point, if you will, of making or breaking new bands.

That model may have worked when avenues to find out about new talents were limited to seeing them live, hearing about them through a friend, browsing a record shop, or listening to the radio.

That model doesn’t work when a small thing called THE INTERNETS is figured in.

Why not?

Simple! Distribution.

I can open up any web browser and load Pandora, plug in the name of my favorite artist and be off discovering new bands in 5 seconds flat.

I can go to last.fm and search through my friends profiles, wander over to SoundCloud and not only find the latest from the likes of Imogen Heap, but also the latest from bands and producers I’ve never heard of, in places I have to Google to see if they exist.

Without leaving my desk in my (relatively speaking) tiny apartment in New York, NY, I can get lost down the rabbit of hole of discovering new music, all within a much shorter time frame than it would take me to browse through my local record shop or ask a few friends about new bands they’re digging.

So – what’s radio’s competitive advantage? It used to be that they were the ones sent the “latest and greatest”, and it used to be that they had the power to make or break new bands.

Not anymore.

Now thousands of anonymous people are voting your tracks up and down, sharing your YouTube video with friends, browsing MySpace (ok, so probably not MySpace anymore.. but follow along), and going to your Facebook Fan Page (silly Facebook!).

There are more ways to find your music online in 5 minutes today than there was in 5 days 10 years ago.

So radio, your advantage is gone.

THE INTERNETS went and changed the game. Go cry to your friends in the publishing business if you need company over your beers. They’re facing the same thing and are just as clueless as you are in many respects.

Now, I kindly request that you now step your game up accordingly, and make me want to listen to you again by curating content that can’t be described as “utter crap”. In layman’s terms, lay off playing the same song every 5 minutes and give new music a chance.

Thoughts? Comments? Am I wrong? What am I missing? Dígame in the comments, por favor.

Tagged as: distribution, internet, publishing, radio

  • http://twitter.com/bcromlish Bryan Cromlish

    Great post Katie,

    I can agree with your points — especially that radio plays terrible music (If I hear Bad Romance, one more time…), but I think radio's competitive advantage of being a discovery tool has been gone for a while.

    Radio is not really designed for the music enthusiast at all for that matter. It is designed for the person driving to work, at work and driving home from work. It is meant to be nothing more than entertaining background noise in my opinion. This is why they play the same 40 songs in a loop.

    What do you see as the future of radio? Think standard radio is on its way out? Im not convinced it is — Heck, Virgin recently bought out my local station.

  • http://candidkatie.com Katie Morse

    I'm not sure I buy into the fact that entertaining background noise has to equal playing the same 40 songs over and over and over. My parents have recently taken to complaining about their local radio stations, and they're anything BUT music enthusiasts, so in my experience the 40 songs on loop don't work for the enthusiasts or the casual listener.

    I think the fact that Virgin just bought your local station is an interesting tidbit. Virgin has access to a LOT of music, and they could quite easily turn your local marketing into a “proving ground” for some of their up and coming bands.

    Really, what I think will save radio is better content (which can lead to more people listening, or at least listening for longer, helping to increase ad revenue, etc – it's all tied together). Consumers have immediate access to music all day and all night. Just the same as we have access to mountains of content. What people have consistently shown that they're willing to pay for, though, is curated content. It's the difference between having access to 1,000 songs, and being shown 100 songs that someone thinks you'll like. It takes the work out of finding new music, or at the very least puts new music which you may enjoy in front of you. That's a very different model than the model which includes playing the same song every 20 minutes.

  • http://davidhorne.me david horne

    Agreed. I listen to Pandora more than itunes these days for the joy of discovery. Seems if they listened more than talked we would get some fresh content. Maybe based on requests, tweets, or something they can pair new music with the current hits.

  • http://www.homemadepineapplemarshmallows.wordpress.com Joanna

    Amen. Radio blows now! I can't believe they've gotten away with it THIS long. I can't comment further than that because I've given up listening and don't have enough background to say anything more enlightening :)

  • http://www.jeremymeyers.com/ Jeremy Meyers

    Sadly I think those who stream on-demand tracks or Pandora are still somewhat edge cases. there are still a ton of people getting their music cues from radio (see: Daughtry, Nickelback, Miley, Justin Bieber, 50 Cent, Lil Wayne).

    Talk to @deanland about the state of radio…audience is actually growing for music.

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