Does Radio Suck Ass??

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
This is kind of an off shoot on the Dark Days Are Coming thread, and maybe it belongs there, but I am thinking that this might be so complex and intersting in itself that it deserves a thread.

Friends of mine from Brazil compared radio in Virginia to radio in Brazil (Sao Paolo) and said that, basically, US radio kicked ass on Brazilian radio. Historically I would say that generally US radio kicked ass on European radio.

But lately I am not so sure, and frankly radio seems to be getting boring.

About 5 years ago, in 1998 (I think) the Congress passed a law which allowed companies to buy as many radio stations as they wanted. Historically, there had been tight controls. A company could only own a few radio stations in a few localities, athough many radio stations could rent formats.

Many argued this would be terrible, that it meant the death of radio. Small stations would get gobbled up and the format would become standardized.

5 years later three companies own 50% of the radio stations in the US, playing a "hits" format or standardizing formats across areas.

The problem is that the stations are now just advertising for music sales, and worse, radio has gotten boring. Older folks (like me- thanks Kharn for the reminder) are missing the radio stations they used to listen to, while younger listeners are not getting the tunes they want to here.

WHat do you think?
 
I no longer keep up with mainstream anymore. I used to listen to the "World Famous KROQ!!!" for a time but, meh, the rock was so-so. It got pretty tiring to talk about the same music that all my friends listen too. Of the songs that were played on radio, I found that when listening to an entire album, some songs were much better. It's a shame that "Hard To Explain" and "Someday" had to represent The Strokes' last album, when "Take It Or Leave It" was more lively, and "Seven Nation Army" was a pretty misleading tune to set an example for The White Stripes' more weaker songs. Now, I'm listening to music before my time, mostly The Ramones and The Beatles and John Lennon, just to see what I missed. I've also found some great music in bargain bins: "The Best of The Proclaimers" which is an okay album that i can listen to with my parents in the car.

I've just about forgotten about radio these days.
 
I used to work at a market research firm, I was a dialer there, giving serveys over the phone and what not. One of the main things this particular firm made money from, was this radio station serveys we did. We'd call up a list of people every two weeks, find out which radio stations they listened to and play a tape with samples on them. Then they'd rate the samples. For the stations we did this for, this is how they knew when a song was over played or when more people wanted to hear it.

Most of these people were idiots that didn't even understand the question.

I don't listen to the radio anymore, it's always just commercials and over played songs.
 
SO you are saying that the music is overplayed, or just isn't good enough.

Ok, if you are not listening to the radio for tunes, what are you listening too? What influences your choices for the music you want to buy?

How do you keep up with what's new?

I know this sounds like a marketing firm plug, but its not. Trust me. I am just a poor grad student who has an interest in this kind of stuff (I actually wrote a paper related to this on beer- excellent research dude!) This also fits with Dark Times are Coming thread on this board.
 
welsh said:
SO you are saying that the music is overplayed, or just isn't good enough.
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter how good a song it is, if you hear it too much it's kinda crappy. I like lots and lots of songs, and unfortunatly they only play a small portortion of them (for example, the radio station I most often listen to is a "classic rock" station, I like lots of "classic rock" but, for the most part, the only play about 1/5 of, and I think that's being rather generous, of the "classic rock" songs I like)

Ok, if you are not listening to the radio for tunes, what are you listening too?
Click to expand...

Nowadays, if i'm listening to the radio, then I'm driving my car. If there are comericals, which is 90% of the time, then i just turn it off. I like music but I'm a big fan of silence too.

What influences your choices for the music you want to buy?
Click to expand...

I don't buy music.

How do you keep up with what's new?
Click to expand...

I don't.
 
Radio in Oz sucks. All they ever play is christina aguilera and shakira and all that pop crap. The only radio station that doesn't play teeny bopper music is Triple J, and half the time it's just queer songs that nobody knows about.
 
I don't listen to radio anymore, and haven't for quite some time. Mainly this is due to the fact that no radio stations locally really play what I want to hear, but it's also due to the commercials and the complete idiocy of DJs (especially the "morning show" variety). I also don't like having to put up w/commercialized and formulized pabulum (especially in the form of carbon copy bands) not to mention that payola kills off everything but the biggest names when it comes to new material getting air play.

If I want to hear music, I've a 101 disc file CD player, and enough CDs to fill it 3 times over and change. I don't need to know what the newest, hottest music is, as I largely couldn't care less. I have my established artists that I listen to (ranging from Aimee Mann to Bad Religion) and I follow what they're doing on their websites and/or through amazon.com news alerts.

How do I discover new music? Serendipity, mostly. But since I like a lot of music from the '20s, '30s and '40s it's quite simple to track down material that's new to me, which -- in the final analysis -- is all that counts.

OTB
 
Good thing about us being isolated is that foreign compaines haven't got a chance to buy our radio stations and by that kill their spirit.Here radio program is excelent and i hope it will stay that way.
 
I don't listen to commercial radio, it is horrible. There is a great college station in town that I listen to almost excusively and also a good public radio station that has some good syndicated music programs. Whan I get down to Chicago there are quite a few good commercial stations but that is to be expected for such a large city.
 
actually I'm originally from New York and I visit regularly now that I live in VA. But I am amazed at how bad the radio has gotten in New York these past few years. (Apparently music is one of the things Chicago has over New York).
 
*scratches head* Though I don't think this is the subject matter welsh was aiming at, I don't listen to the radio much either...Just because I don't, I have enough CDs to listen to, and because I work in a store where we get excellent "hoes zoek" (the cover is missing) CDs in the store for a euro a piece I never have to worry.

That said, I used to listen to Classic FM a lot, they played good stuff, very little Mozart and Beethoven, a lot of Bach, Mussorgsky, Tschaikowsky and Rimsky...

The only other station in Holland worthwhile is Arrow classic rock, but that is a brilliant station at that. Geniuses on the classic rock.

Ah well...Both of these generally have a lot of music and few comments in between, by the way. It's part of the problem, as music station the Box says about Mtv "Mtv really isn't a music station, it's a life-style station that plays some music"
 
Not a big radio fan, myself, but 88.1 out of Charlottesville, Virginia, is good. On the weeknights they play a lot of modern rock and after 12 they play hardcore and metal...if I had to pick a radio station, 88.1 would be it.

Where are you in VA, again?

-Malk
 
Holy Shit!
Another C'ville native on the NMA board?

I am at UVA. Usually I listen to the local college radio, but its hard to get. Usually NPR coming out of Tech.
 
I know nothing of the quality of radio stations in USA but here in Finland the situation is very sad. We had ONE radiostation that i could consider good enough to for me to listen. Then after last christmas They dumped the former name (Radio Mafia) and started playing crappy top ten shit pop. I lived in grief for months... Then i had to start copying music cd's and download it from the internet so i could listen to something. I cant aford to buy the CD's from anywhere and if they play only crap on radio i have to get it illegally. :cry:
 
I hate radio here, because mainly everything I listen to is undergroundish, so it never gets played.

There's some alright stuff on JJJ.
 
I agree that radio has really gotten shitty. Most of the rock bands that they play nowadays all sound the same and the message is the same incessant whining that makes me want to buy tickets to their concerts so that I can show up and tell them to stop being bitches, grow some balls and shut the fuck up.

"Oh, teenage life is so difficult, I want to be more popular but I'm not cool enough. I have to live such a hard life."

I ask you, can it get any more shallow than this???

And on the flip side

Hip-Hop... Jesus...

I wonder if people really listen to the lyrics instead of playing them full blast on their stereos because it's popular. Not even weird Al Yankovich can come up with funnier, more ridiculous shit. Take the currently popular Hip-Hop artist of the week, Ludacris (get it, like ludicrous), I mean just listen to "Roll out" (that's if you can actually put up with listening to the word rollout repeated over 50 times throughout the song). 50 cents is another one album wonder. They'll eventually go the way of Master P, Juvenile, and MC Hammer, one second they're buying all this crap that they brag about in their songs, and then they're on VH1 whining about how they lost it all...

Don't get me wrong, there are several rock bands (White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age) and Hip-Hop artists (Nas, Gangstar, Mos Def, Jurassic Five) that come on the radio that are really good and that will definitely be around in the long run, but even then what you'll listen to on the radio isn't there best stuff.

The local University radio stations are pretty good, but their broadcast is pretty weak and unfortunately doesn't sound that good.
 
Hmmm, Ancient- I get the sense of great anger there.

But in memory of good music come and gone, bow heads to the loss of Warren Zevon over the weekend.

I agree about the local university stations usually having weak signals. What's also interesting is how many are playing NPR. It's like the commercial radio has gotten so crappy and centralized, that people are turning to public radio for relief!

Locally we had a problem- all the pop stations were classic rock for awhile- kind of racist when you think that music popular with black crowds wasn't being played.
 
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