Radio Is Dead

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.