I still dearly miss the stations of my youth, which were crucial venues for hip hop culture (HOT97) and alt rock (KROCK, WFNX, ... ) in a way that youtube and soundcloud and bandcamp just aren’t.
In fact, IMO, Sirius is the savior of radio. It's where all the really good radio talent went when terrestrial radio was mostly turned into garbage. Most of the biggest names in radio from the 60's through the 90's are there.
People balk at paying for Sirius, but there is real quality entertainment there. It's not an iPod pretending to be radio like streaming services. It's actual radio, with on-air talent, and an ever-expanding library of original content.
Even on what you might think are low-interest channels like the 40's channel, or the Sinatra channel, or the Jimmy Buffet channel, or Tom Petty channel, there are new shows made daily, live concerts, and all kinds of things that "real" radio used to do, but gave up in favor of automation.
There are even hyper-niche channels like one that plays Carolina Shag (coastal North and South Carolina music from the 50's and 60's), or the one that's all independent Canadian music, or half a dozen stand-up comedy channels. Or something that I enjoy way more than I'd like to admit: Yacht Rock, which is the kinds of music that you'd imagine that a couple named Chad and Buffy would play on their yacht off the coast of Montauk. Or as the channel describes itself, "Everyone's fifth or sixth favorite soft rock songs from the 70's and 80's."
There's still excellent terrestrial radio, but you have to seek it out. WXRT/Chicago, KCSN/Northridge, KING-FM-HD2/Seattle, and KGFN/Goldfield leap to mind, but there are others.
The rise of Citicasters/Jacor/Clear Channel is what made me quit radio. But these few holdouts (some even corporate-owned!) are still producing quality radio, and if you can't find something to listen to on Sirius, then I don't know what to say.
/ Worked for 10 years in radio on-air and behind the scenes
/ Happy Sirius subscriber
What's almost UNpalatable is the audio quality: my Audi has the Sirius decoder, and it's notably awful. 17-32k stream according to Wikipedia. I guess some of the XM radios have higher rates. It's awful.
Plus I get dropouts in south metro Denver area on Sirius and never on Spotify using Verizon.
If my car had a satellite receiver, I'd probably subscribe to it for my commute.
But there seems to be a large segment of population that just want to listen to a playlist with no interuptions.
I still feel that the DJ and radio are the best form of music discovery especially on Sirius where they can stray away from the top 100
That means there is nothing. No daily/weekly newspaper, no radio. Just Jesus and a clear channel affiliate playing a national soundtrack. (And they are fiscal timebombs too.)
Basically, you live in a different country if you aren’t in a top-50/too-100 market. That’s one of the big drivers of reactionary politics.
As a child I remember radio being the same 11 songs and a ton of ads.
I completely agree.
Apart from high-quality spoken-word content (like Radio 3 and Radio 4), most radio stations are playing music which I could listen to elsewhere, in higher quality, when I want, and then they add some super low quality filler chat in between. Plus adverts!
What do you miss from them? Just that was the only way to access music back then?
Independent radio stations have DJs and a culture around them that foster new music and support independent musicians.
To pick an example, Hot97 was _the_ voice of the bronx (literally, in the case of angie martinez) and the east coast hip hop scene from more or less the beginning. DJs would meet or be introduced to or know of local artists, get their demo tapes on the air, and launched major careers as a result.
that probably makes me a grouchy old man, but the fragmentation and personalization of music does actually lead to a dilution.
This just feels like one of those “things are different” situations where nothing is better or worse, but simply not the way it was.
The legendary John Peel of BBC Radio 1 being a good example.
I still listen to BBC Radio 6 these days for the same reason, good way to find new music and to be introduced to genres you may never be exposed to by an echo-chamber algo in your favourite music app.
Lack of local news has done tons of damage to the US, since it greatly reduces the accountability of politicians, and awareness of local issues.
Of course I could also listen to my own music back then: play a mix tape or some records. I could get records at the library which I subsequently taped. While not comparable to the width and breadth of choice offered by official and 'pirate' online options now it still was a form of choice. It is just that, sometimes, it is nice not to have to make a choice other than switching the thing on, turning down the volume when some song comes by which doesn't pass the muster.
There were more programs like this: "Het Betonuur" ("beton" means concrete, they played hard rock etc.), "Stampij" (also hard rock), "De LP show" (a prosaic name which means "The LP (record) show", playing tracks of newer prog/symphonic rock/experimental artists), "Superclean Dream Machine" (even weirder music hosted by an ever weirder person), etc. I often had my tape recorder at the ready to record anything worthwhile.
I can now play the music which I heard back then at a moment's notice by using any of the online venues available to me. In many ways this is an improvement, but...
Imagine walking over a beach and finding a diamond in the sand. That would be an amazing discovery, something you'd remember for the rest of your life. Remember when you found that diamond back then? Remember what you were doing, with whom you were doing it, what came after?
Now imagine walking over a beach where there is no sand any more, only diamonds. They're everywhere, littering the streets, hiding under the thrash can. You pick one up and look at it: a diamond, big deal. You drop it and walk on...
I've even learned enough Dutch to understand the NOS news segments at the top of the hour.
For my sake, don't also lose your own radio. The separation of station from broadcasters is quirky and unique, but likely the reason it's still actually good.
Being able to play whatever you want, whenever you want, is indeed fantastic. I'm not sure I'd want to go backwards from here either. But we've solved availability, I don't think we've solve discovery - I don't think algorithmically generated playlists replace John Peel. They seem to solve "everyone else has found X and you haven't", they don't solve "X haven't been found". So we end up back in this trap of "finding" the music the labels have decided to promote, rather than the artists that deserve to be found.
It wasn't the only way to access music back then. You had recorded media and live music.
I'm not actually from around that time but I've been playing around with a Walkman recently. For me it started as retro foppery but I noticed a few distinct differences:
- You're not in total control of the radio. You can pick the station you like but you can't reorder the playlist, select specific tracks, rewind, or repeat anything. This evokes a feeling of surrender, of "letting go." While listening to the radio, you're freed from the responsibility of curating your own collection and selecting the best music for the occasion.
- Much more than the targeted algorithms of services like Spotify, you're at the mercy of the DJ. Compared to the algorithm, there's absolutely more of a connection there. If you enjoy what's on the radio, then you're sharing that enjoyment with the DJ. It's a direct analog precursor to the "space of flows," a pleasurable social bond formed between two people who don't share physical space or even traditional spoken word conversation.
- You're off the grid. The radio doesn't track your favorite artists or your location. It doesn't correlate your listening habits with your recent purchases. This makes the experience feel more elective. When you can decide to turn something on, that means you can decide to turn it off. It's different from our always-on, always-connected everyday experience.
- The endless sea of digital media sometimes induces analysis paralysis. The bigger your MP3 library, the more mental resources you must dedicate to mentally searching for the music most appropriate to your mood and surroundings. Narrowing your selection to a handful of radio stations, each one playing only a single song at a time until it ends, frees up a lot of mental resources.
- Paradoxically, being exposed to music you don't like actually refines your taste. Further, suffering through a bad song on the radio heightens your anticipation of the next song, and if you end up enjoying the next song it's a huge, satisfying relief. Compared to Spotify where you can skip past an unsatisfying song, or be reasonably sure the next song will be more to your liking based on whether you just skipped, the emotional experience is more varied and granular. It's more exciting. It's also closer to reality: contrary to what the countless ads and offers claim, you can't always get what you want and you won't always be satisfied. Annoyance, boredom, dissatisfaction, and disappointment are going to find you eventually. There's nothing better for practicing acceptance of life's unpleasant, unskippable moments than suffering through a terrible song on the radio.
Do we really need to practice for that? I would say that you are right that we can’t always have what we want, but at least in streaming music we are quite close to that (depending on tastes, some genres are quite underrepresented).
Personally I prefer to keep small isles of life without unpleasantness.
For you. My daughter finds new non-pop music just fine.
Though the best rock station around (90's/00's) was the NJ college station 89.5 WSOU, Seton Hall's Pirate Radio. Hard Rock, Punk, Hard core, Metal, etc. Awesome station if you could receive it, almost impossible to listen to in a car. I listened via hooking the roof antenna to an FM amplifier and then to my Harmon Kardon receiver I rescued from the trash and repaired. I'd to tune in, run a cassette on record and mix down the songs I liked later on. Another treat used to be this DJ, a woman with a thick european accent who played black and death metal on monday nights, Monday Night Mayhem. Discovered so many great bands from that station. Never got old, never played out the same damn metallica song like Krock. Instead you got Pantera, Meshuggah, Megadeth, Gwar, Gojira (Back when they were still Godzilla), Sick of It all, Life of Agony, and a ton more. Then at some point I stopped listening for one reason or another, there was also a big format change too. It's still around though haven't tuned in for years.
Now I just keep the radio tuned to WQXR, the public classical radio station. No ads but the pleas for donation can get a bit annoying at times. Though I have donated. Then I get my fill of weird music from roaming around peoples bandcamp profiles. You can find all sorts of stuff on there. Rock, metal, noise, electronic, you name it.
Just realized it was when napster came about plus the format change eliminated a lot of the metal so I got bored with it. Plus I discovered so much more music on napster and even got a bit more into industrial and other electronic genres.
That's far more variety than what you'd get from a local radio station.
Youtube gives you almost every song ever made. Soundcloud gives you so many great unknown and indie artists. Bandcamp also gives you a huge & worldwide selection of independent rappers, and will help you discover them via their excellent blog.
And, for hip hop specifically, there's Datpiff and all the other sites hosting mixtapes.
I can understand being nostalgic for the stations of your youth, but it pales considerably compared to what's available now.
I recently had a SiriusXM trial and it seems like all the stations now have a fixed playlist that's limited to around 60 songs at a time, it was very much like domestic radio and it wasn't uncommon to hear the same song played multiple times in the same day.
Granted, it's still significantly better than local radio (RDU MSA doesn't even have a hard rock or modern rock station) I just can't justify spending money on it when I already have streaming capabilities via my phone - but I do miss the curated content of a human actually into the material.
Hip hop culture exists on Instagram today, but it’s become a sociopathic mix of Wall Street values, luxury brand product placement and gang violence. Gucci has transformed gang wars into product sales that make rappers rich. Getting rich is the only goal.