I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of months and perhaps I am behind the times with it, but why does music radio still exist?
Traditional radio stations that play a mixture of music and news with a DJ that makes announcements.
Why are they still around?
With the rise of music on demand from the likes of Apple’s iTunes and other media distribution systems the traditional music album died about two years ago. Now albums are just a remnant, like traditional newspapers, of an old convenience for disseminating data to the masses in as profitable a form as possible. The reasons for the distribution system to exist dwindles with each passing day.
Radio stations are dead.
Drive time, talk radio will continue for a few more decades or so, but they will become even more niche and even more focused than they already are. General music radio stations, even those distributed through satellite systems such as Sirius and XM? Dead!
The institution, the system, the infrastructure, still exists, the reason for them to exist has gone away. Momentum keeps radio stations around for the time being. The problem they solved has gone.
Look around you, make sure you aren’t working in a job that has become a solution without a problem, and if you are, move on.
I agree in most respects. Radio in the UK is dying already. Driving across England there are many parts of the journey where you can only get one station (BBC Radio 1) which is a terrible teenagers station.
They have tried with DAB in the UK but noone is buying into it. At home radio is broadcast over satelitte and is still going quite strong but if I want to listen to music there are much better streaming stations out there that are internet only.
It’s only a matter of time before the stations we have at the moment start to dwindle with smaller and smaller budgets as people move away from the medium and advertisers will pay less and less as the number of listeners drops.
I don’t know what it’s like in the US but here in blighty they are trying to make it last as long as possible by adding as much online and interactive content as possible – which raises the question “why?” when there is so much better out there why would I want to listen to Absolute Radio or BBC stations when I can listen to the music I WANT to listen to with specialised internet streaming sites.
They should free up the air waves and give it to the public to use.