Traditional Radio Faces a Grim Future

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Megalith

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A new study published by the head of New York University’s Steinhart Music Business Program argues that traditional radio has failed to engage with Generation Z and is due for an upgrade: people born after 1995, who will account for 40% of all consumers in the US by 2020, have little interest in traditional media, including radio, having grown up in an on-demand digital environment. It is unclear what radio can do to innovate in order to survive.

AM/FM radio is in the midst of a massive drop-off as a music-discovery tool by younger generations, with self-reported listening to AM/FM radio among teens aged 13 and up declining by almost 50 percentage points between 2005 and 2016. Music discovery as a whole is moving away from AM/FM radio and toward YouTube, Spotify and Pandora, especially among younger listeners, with 19% of a 2017 study of surveyed listeners citing it as a source for keeping up-to-date with music — down from 28% the previous year. Among 12-24 year olds who find music discovery important, AM/FM radio (50%) becomes even less influential, trailing YouTube (80%), Spotify (59%), and Pandora (53%).
 
Geez I recall when FM was amazing and way better than AM. Then 4 tracks, 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs, and so on.

And my Mom recalls when they only had AM radio, no TV sets yet in the 30s.

Things change, too bad most of today's music sucks compared to 1970-2005ish.
 
Not to mention how terrible radio programming has been for the past 20 years. Playing the same songs while even killing those late night blocks that had alternate programming where you could actually hear new/different music. Hell the local "metal" station here would qualify as a classic rock station since 90% of what they play is from the '90's.

It is a pretty sad state of affairs. You can do a lot better finding new music on YouTube or SoundCloud or Bandcamp, let alone the big streaming services. Radio is only useful for me to listen to a baseball game when I'm driving.
 
Gotta agree there. I'm a Sirus/XM guy that leans towards Lithium and occasionally some Classic Rewind/Vinyl.
 
Only listen to FM for sports radio and then most of the time I just stream it. FM sucks for music, it's the same mainstream crap all day everyday. So many better choices elsewhere.
 
I went from listening to a Seattle rock station (99.9 KISW) to a Canadian station (96.9 Jac FM) because KISW is mostly talk shows with some music here and there, and the music they play is repetitive. The Canadian station has a ton of variety and I don't hear the same song twice in the same day, and their morning talk show is hilariously bad, because they're so damn polite.
 
Ok, so in DFW you don't really have a lot of choices on FM. All the top 40 stations play the same songs endlessly (93.3, 102.1, 102.9, 103.7, 106.1 and 3 others I probably missed). The only "rock" station is 97.1 "The Eagle", and they are a sad sad shadow of what they used to be. Pick 20 "rock" songs and hit repeat (and even in 2017, too much f*cking Nirvana.... please give it up). 92.5 is classic rock and they play the same 20 eagles / zep / SRV songs on repeat.
There are 2 or 3 country stations I'm aware of, but not a country fan.
Probably 5 or more Tejano stations that all sound the same to me.
A couple of rap / R&B stations (94.5, etc)


Leaves us with...

1 classical station (wrr 101.1) which I listen to a fair amount when driving in traffic to combat road rage.
KNTU 88.1 plays jazz sometimes, but it's the college station in Denton and low power at that, reception is usually not great.
KXT 91.7 is a public channel (sister of KERA TV 13) and they play some local-ish music and you tend to hear things first there... but eventually the Clearchannel / Iheart channels pick up on those, and you never want to hear those songs again. KXT is a WINNER except when they are in pledge drive mode. That gets OLD quick. I have thrown them a couple bucks every now and then.

So in a MAJOR market like DFW, there are 3 channels I listen to. Sometimes 1080 AM news radio for traffic and news.

Honorable mention to 89.3 KNON, another public station, but they play such a random assortment of music you never know what you're going to get. One day it's New Orleans style blues / jazz (yea!) next day it's south american throat music (WTF?).

So when you have ONE major company that owns 90% of the radio stations, guess what... they all play the same music.

I was sad when they killed off 102.1 The Edge, but by the time of it's demise it was in the Clearchannel death spiral anyway, same 20 songs on repeat.
Also miss the "smooth jazz" station (Oasis?) been gone a while. Yeah the Sade and Kenny G gets old, but I used to listen to that at bedtime, LOL.

Gee I cannot imagine why anyone would choose ANY other source of music than radio.
 
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LOLOL

yea from canada here, radio is actually pretty decent up here in the north... good for traffic, good for morning shows.. although they do replay things over and over, it was really bad a few years ago.. they have toned that down on most stations now.
 
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Burticus said:
Ok, so in DFW you don't really have a lot of choices on FM. All the top 40 stations play the same songs endlessly (93.3, 102.1, 102.9, 103.7, 106.1 and 3 others I probably missed). The only "rock" station is 97.1 "The Eagle", and they are a sad sad shadow of what they used to be. Pick 20 "rock" songs and hit repeat (and even in 2017, too much f*cking Nirvana.... please give it up). 92.5 is classic rock and they play the same 20 eagles / zep / SRV songs on repeat.
There are 2 or 3 country stations I'm aware of, but not a country fan.
Probably 5 or more Tejano stations that all sound the same to me.


Leaves us with...

1 classical station (wrr 101.1) which I listen to a fair amount when driving in traffic to combat road rage.
KNTU 88.1 plays jazz sometimes, but it's the college station in Denton and low power at that, reception is usually not great.
KXT 91.7 is a public channel (sister of KERA TV 13) and they play some local-ish music and you tend to hear things first there... but eventually the Clearchannel / Iheart channels pick up on those, and you never want to hear those songs again. KXT is a WINNER except when they are in pledge drive mode. That gets OLD quick. I have thrown them a couple bucks every now and then.

So in a MAJOR market like DFW, there are 3 channels I listen to. Sometimes 1080 AM news radio for traffic and news.

Honorable mention to 89.3 KNON, another public station, but they play such a random assortment of music you never know what you're going to get. One day it's New Orleans style blues (yea!) next day it's south american throat music (WTF?).

So when you have ONE major company that owns 90% of the radio stations, guess what... they all play the same music.

I was sad when they killed off 102.1 The Edge, but by the time of it's demise it was in the Clearchannel death spiral anyway, same 20 songs on repeat.
Also miss the "smooth jazz" station (Oasis?) been gone a while. Yeah the Sade and Kenny G gets old, but I used to listen to that at bedtime, LOL.

Gee I cannot imagine why anyone would choose ANY other source of music than radio.
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Fellow DFW person here too. When I'm not listening to podcasts or Pandora, I listen to 103.3(ESPN), 91.7(KXT), 97.1, and 90.1(NPR) during my drive to and/from work.
 
I but and listen to a lot of books from Audible and podcasts these days on my drives. I cant remember the last time I listened to the radio.
 
Yeah it's 3 minutes of music, then 10 minutes of commercials. Even "commercial free" hours aren't commercial free on ANY station, they just only have commercials for their own station, which are still fucking commercials. Also doesn't help there's a lack of good music to fill the airwaves.
 
I'm perfectly ok with OTA going away. Honestly, they should just reclaim the frequency ranges from both OTA radio and TV and repurpose them for 2-way IP/Cellular traffic.
 
Since the source article was written by a music business professor, he only deals with the music choice. But there's another possibly more important factor--the commercials. People growing up nowadays have become accustomed to commercial-free programming sources. Heck, I'm 66 and I won't watch or listen to any source that has commercials. So unless the radio industry can come up with a source of revenue that doesn't involve interrupting the programming with endless commercials, the downward spiral will continue and music choice won't save it.
 
The problem with radio is all the talking 'headless' who prattle on thinking they are funny. This is especially so driving to work and all the 'breakfast' shows are on. More relaxing to just listen to your own music. And no advertisements for products and services I would never use or be interested in.
 
When I turn on the radio, it is to listen to music with a couple of quick weather spots every hour. In the morning, there are almost no music stations in my area that don't have some silly morning show regurgitating the same shtick they have been for the last 50 years or so. Forget about gen z, they are losing x and y as well. The boomers are starting to die off and the silent gen has been busy dying off for decades, radio might not be a thing for whatever gen comes after Z.
 
dwd999 said:
Since the source article was written by a music business professor, he only deals with the music choice. But there's another possibly more important factor--the commercials. People growing up nowadays have become accustomed to commercial-free programming sources. Heck, I'm 66 and I won't watch or listen to any source that has commercials. So unless the radio industry can come up with a source of revenue that doesn't involve interrupting the programming with endless commercials, the downward spiral will continue and music choice won't save it.
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I don't know. I could live with commercials if they were somewhat limited and the programming was good. When I was a kid, WPLJ had commercials, but they also had huge blocks (sometimes going hours) without commercials. As I recall, stations like WNEW let their DJ's program their blocks and as a result, you often got very different music depending on what DJ was on the air.

That's been gone for a long time. With that said, the big audiences were typically in top-40 which was whittled down to top 30 and I believe is now down to a top 20. That's great for some, but gets old pretty quick. Even in the 70s I can remember getting sick of My Sharona (sp) after a week or too of hearing it a few times a day (and now hits probably get played every hour or 2).

For now i've got satellite (6/month after tax makes it worth while...20/month not so much). A lot of times I just stream www.radioparadise.com Sometimes it gets a bit too slow, but most of the time it's a nice mix of new rock, old rock, world music with the occasional classical or jazz piece and no repeated songs during the day (7 plays a week is very heavy rotation).

Garrick said:
The problem with radio is all the talking 'headless' who prattle on thinking they are funny. This is especially so driving to work and all the 'breakfast' shows are on. More relaxing to just listen to your own music. And no advertisements for products and services I would never use or be interested in.
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I agree, but there must be a huge market for these shows, because playing music is cheaper than paying a personality.
 
RealBeast said:
....
Things change, too bad most of today's music sucks compared to 1970-2005ish.
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I think that the percent of good music today is about the same as in the past. The bad crap gets quickly forgotten. The good stuff survives to make the best of lists in future years. In 2047, folks will be complaining about the modern crap and be longing for the good music from the 2010s.

Most radio stations have gone down the path of more commercials are better, similar to most TV networks, and are suffering the same problems of listener fatigue.
 
I listen to my local classic rock station more then anything else. I don't mind the commercials.

I think the problem with broadcast radio in lots of regions is that the stations are shit. It's either shitty pop music or some talk show crap. Give me a good rock station and I don't bother with other stuff. Living in Chicago 97.1 The Drive is an amazing station..

And when I still lived in the 48 states I loved Sirius/XM BTW. Drive anywhere in the country and you always have the same great content. I've been stuck on Hawaii however and the satellites don't have coverage outside the 48 states.
 
Gorankar said:
In the morning, there are almost no music stations in my area that don't have some silly morning show regurgitating the same shtick they have been for the last 50 years or so.
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Yep! Bo and Jim are still on the morning air on 92.5 KZPS in DFW. They have been doing the EXACT SAME SHIT on 5 or 10 different radio stations since the early 80's. Congrats to them for sticking it out this long, jumping from station to station. But I swear they sound exactly the same and pull the same silly stunts they did when I listened to them on whatever station as a kid (Q102)
 
I remember the days when Casey Kasem has his top 40s? Good stuff. Probably the only thing I enjoyed- radio wise from my kid days. That and hearing about Britney Spears turning 18.

I stopped listening to the radio when it became evident that most of the advertisements were about male enhancement or Low-T testing. SirusXM would be the closest thing to a radio I'd listen to these days if given a choice.
 
I swore up and down for years I wouldn't pay a subscription for radio. However all the radio stations around here that actually played music and not crap are gone. There are only 4 things on any FM station here; Country, top 40, christian and rap. I've grudgingly subscribed to Sirius to avoid riding in silence.
 
RealBeast said:
Geez I recall when FM was amazing and way better than AM. Then 4 tracks, 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs, and so on.

And my Mom recalls when they only had AM radio, no TV sets yet in the 30s.

Things change, too bad most of today's music sucks compared to 1970-2005ish.
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Than Howard stern left and now who the fucks gives a shit.

Unless you like to grab ass. Than you MIGHT.
 
Not that I qualify for the demographic in question since I was born in 85, but I love FM. I just hate the 10 minutes of commercials that always seem to be sync'd to all 6 presets somehow. I seem to remember this being pretty constant though even during highschool, maybe it was just slightly less, who knows. I've never been able to stand "morning shows" even when I had ManCow in Chicago during the 90's and 00's.

Honestly I think both FM and streaming on pandora/spotify can suffer from repetitiveness.
 
Many years ago, many, many years ago, we had actual human DJ's who could play what he/she wanted, talk about stuff between songs, take calls from listeners, play Stairway if they had to drop a deuce, etc. Yes, there were problems, like the "payola" scandal, but, in general, radio worked. And then radio got fucked up by corporate greed. Companies like Clear Channel, or its' failed attempt to "clear" the hate by rebranding themselves as "I Heart Radio," just made radio as homogenous as Walmart. Everything now sounds the same, regardless of where you are. Some would call that Progress.
 
I Primarily Listen to Sirius/XM in the car. Octane or the new Turbo station. This is mainly because where I live, in Northwest Alabama there isn't much to choose from in the way of FM stations. a couple country stations, a classic rock station, a Pop station and that is about it. When I travel to Nashville for the weekends I Prefer the HD radio stations they have there.
 
IcePickFreak said:
What can they do at this point? Most people are carrying around their entire music library in their pocket. Of course it doesn't help that every radio station seems to have a 10 song playlist that they play over and over and over.
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They should just start broadcasting ads 24/7 to make up for the lost of revenue with the music playing in the background! That should fix it!
 
Pretty sick of most FM stations because they're just an advertising platform, no matter what you're listening to.

If it's the music, it's an ad for the popular music. In between that music are the alternating adverts for stuff unrelated to music.

Either way some business pays to choose what you hear, and it's just so fucking boring.
 
That's cause none of those youngins drive a car until their 25 and then they live in their parents basement until they are 35. Driving a car is were generation X and older got most of their radio playtime!
 
ManofGod said:
However, it is FM stations that do music only that are not doing so well, at least to me. I cannot tell you the last time I listened to any music only FM station.
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Well, they occasionally have music breaks in-between the commercials.

Radio is unbareable and they shouldn't see it as a switch to "on-demand" as they should see it as a switch to other avenues that have less advertising. Kinda like a lot of other media delivery methods. The amount of advertising has always been a turn-off (and only gotten worse), yet GenZ just happens to have alternatives to it.

If you listen to certain stations here in Vegas, you're guaranteed to hear the Goettl/Sunny Plumber commercials 4+ times per hour. His spots play every commercial break.
 
Don't remember the last time I listened to music on the radio. Only thing I use the radio for (in my car) is talk shows or the news.

Don't like all the modern noise they try to pass off as music, so I have every thing I'd ever want to listen to on a USB thumb drive.
It's plugged into the USB port on the car and I can bring up any playlist I want with a simple voice command.
No commercials, no garbage, just music I like.
 
Wyodiver said:
Many years ago, many, many years ago, we had actual human DJ's who could play what he/she wanted, talk about stuff between songs, take calls from listeners, play Stairway if they had to drop a deuce, etc. Yes, there were problems, like the "payola" scandal, but, in general, radio worked. And then radio got fucked up by corporate greed. Companies like Clear Channel, or its' failed attempt to "clear" the hate by rebranding themselves as "I Heart Radio," just made radio as homogenous as Walmart. Everything now sounds the same, regardless of where you are. Some would call that Progress.
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A lot of it is local voice tracking (pre-recorded voice cuts between songs/ads) or satellite nowadays in medium and small markets. It doesn't make business sense to have a live DJ anymore when a computer can run the station 24/7.
 
They're profiling the wrong people. The ads broadcast are not for young people who can't afford the shit, and the people that listen to radio all day are adults working, not kids at school.

I used to go the usb stick, upgraded stereo so can do micro sd card now, but really, even with all of that music, even access to am/fm/digital radio as well, most of my driving is listening to my car. Makes the best music ever.
 
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