“No one listens to terrestrial radio – radio is dead! Spotify and Apple Music have rendered terrestrial radio stations in America irrelevant”. I have heard several variations of this comment during discussions about the current music pop/rock music scene. I think it is safe to say that we all suffer from a syndrome wherein if we do not do something, we assume (incorrectly) that the world at large mirrors our preferences and does not do that same thing. We use the words “no one” rather generously. There is a common misconception that terrestrial radio in America does not wield almost absolute power in shaping popular opinion when it comes to pop/rock music. Yet, the reality paints quite a different picture.
To understand the pervasiveness of terrestrial radio today, it is critical to understand its historical role in shaping our musical preferences. The symbiotic relationship between art and its patrons dates back centuries. Artist and sculptor Michaelangelo Buonarotti’s relationship with and patronage from the Medicis of Florence has been fairly well documented. In the realm of pop/rock music in the pre-digital era, terrestrial radio airplay has been a pre-requisite for popularity of a song or of an artist/band. On the flip side, a lack of exposure on terrestrial radio relegates an artist or band to relative obscurity wherein the music act’s best-case scenario is a non-scalable niche audience. In the 80s and 90s, terrestrial radio shared this immense power with MTV. Unfortunately, the dilution of MTV’s 24-hour music video format with reality television almost coincided with the passing of the Telecommunications Deregulation Act – a piece of legislation in the US that allowed conglomerates to buy as many radio stations as they could afford to. This led to a concentration of ownership of radio stations. 80% of US radio stations were owned by 4 companies by the mid-90s. Furthermore, radio DJs were stripped of their playlist programming functions. Instead, they were provided with predefined playlists compiled by a central “authority”. Identical playlists were handed down to all stations of a specific music genre owned by a single company. This was done in a rather non-transparent manner. Historically, the value addition of DJs to the radio ecosystem has been their discerning tastes and their ability to challenge the status quo by breaking the mold and widening the notion of the word mainstream by introducing new music acts to the masses. Since the mid-90s, their value add had been replaced by “market-research driven” playlists. This problem was further exacerbated by a widespread illegal practice referred to as “Payola”. “Payola” involves radio companies being paid by record labels to play specific songs. While being paid to play songs, in itself, is not illegal, indulging in this type of arrangement without explicitly disclosing it lies comfortably outside the boundaries of legality.
Bankrolling airplay also meant that record labels were forced to focus on a smaller section of artists on their artist roster. As a result, the fraction of released music (specifically, music released since the mid-90s) that made it to the radio fell dramatically by the late 90s. All of this was done in a rather non-transparent manner and the average music radio listener was blissfully unaware of the scale of terrestrial radio’s thinly-veiled deceit. The word mainstream as it applied to pop/rock music had narrowed substantially in terms of its scope. In fact, some American acts focused their promotional efforts overseas because of this reality. A noteworthy example is the Backstreet Boys. They were selling out arenas across Europe at a time when in the US, their albums could only be found in the “import” section of music stores. The US was the last major market they conquered despite being an American band. In a nutshell, the fraction of commercially released music considered “mainstream” relative to that of earlier decades had shrunk by the early 2000s in the US.
While artists/bands with aspirations of US success undoubtedly bore the brunt of his reality, there was another category of people that felt handcuffed by this dynamic – independent curators of music that include nightclub DJs, wedding party DJs, and internet radio DJs like us at Radio Crème Brulee.
The Billboard top 40 singles chart is largely driven by songs with significant terrestrial radio airplay – even today. More importantly, the charts reflect a greater propensity towards familiarity (defined largely by terrestrial radio) as opposed to discovery through platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora. What this effectively means is that featuring songs considered obscure by the masses can be risky for any pop/rock music curator that is trying to keep his or her audience engaged. For internet radio DJs like us at Radio Crème Brulee, the worst that can happen when we feature a song that is considered OUTSIDE of the mainstream (relative to the opinions of our US listeners) is that a listener will tune out of our global 24/7 online radio broadcast. While this is far from ideal, it does not come close to the embarrassment and humiliation that a nightclub DJ or wedding DJ experiences when the inclusion of an obscure track in a playlist leads to an exodus from the dancefloor.
This is a rather unfortunate and limiting reality for a music curator or DJ whose role as a tastemaker is heavily undermined by a conglomerate-driven oligopoly whose musical selections are based on “market research” as opposed to a gut instinct and discerning tastes. Furthermore, an over-emphasis on familiar versus credible (and we get how this word can be rather subjective) makes it difficult for independent curators that might have an instinct for what is likely to get popular in the foreseeable future. For instance, we were playing the music of Adele over a year and half before she achieved mainstream popularity in the US. We introduced her to listeners on our 24/7 global online radio broadcast with her UK hit single “Chasing Pavements”. For friends of mine that do not typically tune in to our station, they asked who “Adeeeel” (a reference to the way her name is spelled) was and considered her not mainstream enough for them until she was deemed credible by Saturday Night Live and terrestrial radio airplay. It does not seem to matter one bit to these skeptics (many of whom are close friends of mine) that we were playing the music of artists such as Adele and Dua Lipa a whole year before they had broken the US market. It did not earn us even an iota of credibility in the eyes of a skeptic or casual music listener. A song was mainstream and worthy of listening if and only if terrestrial radio airplay had offered its stamp of validation via repetitive airplay on their stations across the country.
This brings us to the pertinent question – how does one end or neutralize this broken dynamic? More importantly, what group of music curators is best positioned to lead the way on counteracting the choke-hold that terrestrial radio has on public opinion as it applies to pop/rock music?
I personally believe that restaurant or bar DJs are uniquely positioned to become curators of consequence when it comes to the ability to shape public opinion for music. More often than not, patrons of a restaurant or bar are there for the food, or alcohol. Odds are, calculated risks with the music playlists at these places are unlikely to alienate patrons. More importantly, observations of guests pointing their smartphones towards the speaker to “Shazam” (i.e. identifying the song and artist via the Shazam app) songs serve as a validation of restaurants DJs’ endeavors aimed at breaking the shackles that terrestrial radio has imposed on independent curators by defining the musical realm of the word “mainstream” (i.e. universally familiar). If and when there is a critical mass of restaurant and bar DJs that curate their own playlists without being encumbered by whether or not the music is mainstream, this could dilute the power of terrestrial radio and extricate independent curators from the treacherous and restrictive web of terrestrial radio. The identity of a bar and restaurant is also defined by its atmosphere – of which the background music is a key ingredient. Hence, it also makes business sense for restaurant and bar owners to go down this path of curating their own playlists with an almost reckless abandon (we’re joking – calculated risks are better!). That being said, bar and restaurant owners that do curate their own playlists have a fear of alienating customers. I had the opportunity to engage in a conversation with Valerio Fuccilo, owner and manager of Botte Bar – a trendy Italian bar in the predominantly Greek/Slavic neighborhood of Astoria (Queens – New York). Valerio mentioned that it took him at least a couple of months after opening Botte Bar before he slowly started to test the waters with music that reflected his quintessentially European sonic sensitivities. Like any other music curator in a public venue, Valerio felt a non-trivial level of apprehension around deviating from the norm in his musical selection. Today, his music selection at Botte Bar is an invigorating cocktail of commercially viable Indie-alternative music from today and New Wave music from the 80s. According to Valerio, patrons pointing their smartphones at the speakers to figure out what song is playing is a rather common occurrence. As the playlist manager of Radio Crème Brulee, I have no qualms in admitting that a bunch of songs that I feature on our playlists were discovered by me at Botte Bar with the help of my smartphone’s Shazam app (Thanks Valerio!).
In his book “Modern Romance”, comedian Aziz Ansari highlights a widespread syndrome that he refers to as “Acquired Likability through repetition” in connection with a typical song by Cuban rapper Pitbull. Terrestrial radio’s modus operandi of playing a limited handful of songs on excessive repetition is how they breed likability through familiarity. This is directly at odds with diversity – one of the fundamental tenets of responsible media. A small class of independent curators has the ability to challenge this status quo. Will they rise to the challenge? Bar owners such as Valerio from Botte Bar already have. Will others follow suit? I most certainly hope so. If you know of other bars or restaurants that embody this spirit, please feel free to share via the comments section below.
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Fascinating article! So many good points and observations. I’m American and haven’t listened to terrestrial radio in about 20 years. I am confounded by young people (teenagers, especially) who sometimes act as though the Internet doesn’t exist; they listen to the same stations online that they would listen to if there was no Internet. Think of the millions of American One Direction fans who could have discovered their favourite band a year earlier had they been listening to international radio online (e.g., BBC Radio One, which is also terrestrial in the UK — and ad-free!). Why wouldn’t they (the teenagers) want to get a jump on things by listening to stations outside their geographical areas? Seriously, they’re missing out so much. At least Radio Creme Brulee started playing Adele and Dua Lipa while they were still new. Dua, in particular, released nothing but singles for about two years before her album came out. Anyway, preaching to the choir here, I know. Thanks again for the insightful article. I will defo check out Botte Bar when next I’m in Astoria (where my NYC flat is). Cary
@Cary: Thank you so much for the comment! You bring up an interesting point about young people behaving as though the internet does not exist. The incentive to switch mediums more often that not is likely to be driven by a recognition of the inadequacies of the current medium being used to discover music. I realize just how convoluted that last sentence was. But let’s imagine, for a second, that it is 1999. I only listen to the terrestrial radio and am satisfied with the mix, range, and repetition frequency of the music being played. Why would I look elsewhere for music? I think the larger question is why people that recognize the inadequacies of terrestrial radio stick to it. They did this in 1999 and many of them do this today. I think that inherent contradiction lies at the heart of some insight – and I wish I knew what the DNA of the solution was to address that insight/contradiction. My switch to internet radio in the early 2000s stemmed from a baseline that had been set by MTV Asia, and Channel V – primary modes of music consumption for those living in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. I had moved to that part of the world for over a decade. The baseline set by these music video channels was one that was not purely US-centric. It celebrated the diversity of artists/bands from across the globe and did not subscribe to the ageist bias that had started to permeate itself. Hence, once I returned to the US, the inadequacies of American terrestrial radio became apparent to me rather quickly and tuning into British and Scandinavian radio online (i.e. online broadcasts of terrestrial radio stations) was a no-brainer for me. That observation was not shared by many around me. So it wasn’t so much that the internet does not exist for folks in the context of music. It’s just that their need for it is not particularly strong based on their standards for what is adequate.
Your question about why teenagers wouldn’t want to get a jump on things by listening to stations outside their geographical areas is a valid one. But I think the answer might be somewhat obvious. I think the propensity towards discovery is HIGHLY exaggerated. I think most people want to be told what to listen to – and this is where terrestrial radio gets its power from. This is also why they have never felt challenged by the new mediums that have emerged in the last two decades. Until and unless curators outside the terrestrial radio bubble challenge the status quo by NOT limiting their music selection to what terrestrial radio has deemed commercially viable, this unfortunate dynamic will last far longer than it should.
We definitely started playing Dua Lipa while she was releasing single after single as opposed to a full debut album. In fact, I met her on the night that she released “Hotter than hell” at an intimate showcase gig at the McKittrick Hotel in New York City. The security guard thought we were crazy for lining up outside for a relative “nobody” at that time. Little did they know or care that “Be The One” by Dua Lip had already become a massive hit in continental Europe.
Last, but not least, definitely give Botte Bar a visit when you are in Astoria. From a musical perspective, it is the first glimmer of hope for a rising tide that will counteract the unchecked power of terrestrial radio.
Cheers for the detailed reply! I will defo check out Botte Bar next month. It’s only about a 15 minute walk from my flat. It’s amazing to me how the neighbourhood is changing. And it sounds like Botte Bar is a step in the right direction.
PS: I just got a notice that my WLIR documentary DVD arrived. Can’t wait to watch it. I also just got the Joan Jett doco (which I’ve yet to watch). Looking forward to the new one on Michael Hutchence as well. Plus the newly-restored Live Baby Live concert film coming to cinemas. It will soon be the 22nd anniversary of his death.
I got to be honest, if it was down to you that the twin horrors of Adele and Lipa broke through to join the ever-horrible masses of plague-producers spouting out their garbage since before the 90s even ended, then you truly deserve blacklisting. I can’t think why they WOULDN’T go anywhere in the US-both are pointless, with awful voices, nauseating songs and no personality or proper sound, and the former even bowed down to pressure to lose all that weight to fit in with all the other barbie sluts, which she might as well do, seeing as her ‘brand of music’ is every bit as vile as theirs. Both represent everything the tragic US goes for, and the plague of boy-named Taylor Swift will never be ending. All we needed-the 100th madonna in a row, and we still can’t even get rid of the so-called original (an ironic term for the most derivative and fake pop ‘star’ out there). Also find it hard to believe your report holds up Back Street Bozos as ‘the 1st poor-little-me’s of dying radio-their pure boyband garbage surely reeks of all that even mattered in the 90s once the 80s died.
In the UK, all the commercial stations are hell on earth, but by the same token, they play too many of the acts respected on here! I’m a great 80s fan and view if forever as the one and only last great bastion of true music, and how if anything outside the 80s works, like Ladyhawke and Hurts, it is entirely because there WAS an 80s that their sound exists, only they do it real well, as opposed to most who just suck, and that’s being nice. But then MY view of the 80s is rather different to how it’s seen commercially. ALL the things that drive me mad about that decade-i.e. the acts I can’t stand, THEY’RE the ones CONSTANTLY PLAYED AD-NAUSEUM EVERY BLOODY DAY, and they, for me, make the 80s terrible, but it’s terrible equally because people running these radios and those LISTENING to them day in day out are ALSO EQUALLY TERRIBLE as they utterly agree with this crass and truly wrong representation. The 80s had so much of what is truly worthwhile: Kim Wilde, Duran Duran, ABBA, Gemini, Blancmange, Sandra, China Crisis, A Flock Of Seagulls, Sade, Kirsty MacColl, Real Life, Bluebells, The Human League, Talk Talk, Bangles, Voice Of The Beehive, Pat Benatar, A-ha, Toyah, Altered Images, Lene Lovich, The Darling Buds, Squeeze, Grace Jones, Sheena Easton, Pseudo Echo, Thompson Twins, Kids In The Kitchen, Mondo Rock, Cock Robin, Information Society, Then Jerico, The Dream Academy, Deborah Harry, Natasha England, Propaganda, Act, Nick Heyward, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, New Order, Ultravox, Erasure, The Go-Betweens, Level 42, The Smiths, Shakespears Sister, Aztec Camera, Suzanne Vega, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Sparks, Tears For Fears, Big Country, U2, Alison Moyet, Yazoo, Black, Belinda Carlisle, Jane WIedlin, Roxette and I really think Kim Wilde needs be mentioned again! Now there you go, how is THAT difficult. A perfect love of mainstream AND arty, as the 2 often went hand-in-hand before the twin horror or Madogga and S/A/W changed things for the worse, then on came the 90s.
And yet IS this fine and mass body of amazing acts EVER anywhere near the airwaves?! Is it hell! Is my normal taste ever catered for and not treated like its more alien than alien?! IS IT HELL?! No, apparently, all we ever bought, loved , revered and supported in the 80s according to effing radio is Madonna Madonna Madonna Madonna Madonna Madonna Bagdonna Hagdonna, Slagdonna. And in between each billionth Madonna Madonna Madonna ‘song’ played every 5 effing minutes is ongoing Eurythmics/Annie Lennox, Police/Sting, Phil Collins, Jam/Style Council/Paul Weller, Madness, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Wham!/George Michael, Bryan Adams, Spandau Ballet, Michael Jackson overload. And that is IT! Nothing else, bar the awful one (s)hit blunders of horror (Starship, ‘Dirty Dancing’ soundtrack songs, Womack & Womack, Lisa Stansfield)…and this IS the 80s is it?! *&&%$$£”!!!
And people wonder why I hate radio and stupid people’s so-called idea of what the best decade is actually remembered for!? By the way, it says it all that everyone working in radio (and that includes online ones) has it termed somewhere that to NOT play Madonna EVERY DAY, EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR, EVERY YEAR FOREVER EFFING MORE is sacrilege of the very highest order when the opposite is actually what it is. Boy, if I could relive the 80s again, I would stop that awful day in 1984 ever happening, and I’d find a way to fool everyone into thinking that the great, criminally underappreciated Kim Wilde IS actually Madonna, then SHE’D be the one getting all the non-stop plays, mentions, fake fawning overs, suck-up adulation and overplay overload and I’d never ever have to waste so much of my life telling the world all this!!!
Bottom line is radio sucks and has done for ever, and as the US have only ever dug their own acts and they’re extremely limited view of what music actually is, no wonder their radio sucks, but then, here in the UK, it’s virtually as bad. I had to change the dial to Jackie, which is about the best I’m ever going to get-and they suck most of the time anyway, but do have the slight ability to surprise now and then, but it’s still a tiny cog in the wheel that is simply the world madonna machine! No wonder we’re doomed when the antichrist of music (yes you heard that right) is the one the world continually emblazons as the ultimate star! The descent into hell is just around the corner!
Now this list seems normal. How could this EVER
@Mark: Hey Mark, my sincere apologies for the very delayed acknowledgment of your comment. I appreciate the time you take to write these and hence I feel pretty guilty for not having responded sooner. I’ve been traveling for the last couple of months so it’s been a little hard for me to sit down and play catch-up on these.
I figured I would address the comment on Adele and Dua Lipa first. Yes, it is true that we played their music on our station while they will still relative non-entities in the context of the American musical mainstream (which admittedly has not been a beacon of musical credibility for a long time), but I don’t think we can take credit for them getting popular in America. The point I was making with those two examples is that, we tend to equate scale of a music discovery platform to its credibility in the realm of musical curation. That equivalence is not always appropriate and less so in recent years. The point is they were considered uncool by some naysayers (of our station) when we played them before they got popular in the US – and soon as they got popular in the US, those same naysayers started worshipping both these artists. It gives us all a sense of the immense opinion-shaping power that a large platform has. I’m not necessarily a fan of everything Adele and Dua Lipa release and I don’t think they’re necessarily the most consistent artists in terms of musical output. That being said, I do like a bunch of their songs.
As for us getting blacklisted as a radio station, I’m hoping some of the other music we feature on our radio station (especially artists/bands such as China Crisis and Kim Wilde) would at least somewhat compensate for the fact that we also play artists like Adele and Dua Lipa. Some of these song recommendations have come from you and we’re better off for it as a radio station and are thankful to you for your input. The challenge with a broadcast radio station is that it is impossible to cater to the tastes of everyone that tunes in and it is inevitable that the listeners are going to comes across at least some songs or artists that they don’t like. That being said, I am hoping there is more they like in comparison with what they dislike. My hope is also that people understand that we do have a very strong curatorial ethic (one that is rooted in a commitment to diversity in the realm of pop music) and even if it means sometimes slipping in songs that may not be to one’s taste, we do hope that the overarching philosophy behind what we do as a radio station is at least somewhat obvious.
I also echo the view that the 80s is a lot more than the narrow slice of that decade that we hear on excessive repetition today on 80s radio. I’m looking at the list of artists that you listed here. I’ll confess I don’t play all of them but I do play a lot of them like Kim Wilde, Duran Duran, Sade, Human league, The Bangles, Pat Benatar, a-ha, Thompson Twins, Level 42, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Ultravox, The Smiths, Shakespear’s Sister, Suzanne Vega, OMD, Tears for Fears, Belinda Carlisle, Roxette, and Jane Wiedlin. We do NOT restrict our song selections to the obvious ones by these acts. We routinely play some rare-for-radio surprises but there’s also plenty that we play from the list of acts that you don’t seem to like very much – such as The Police/Sting, Phil Collins, George Michael (he is my musical idol), Spandau Ballet, Michael Jackson, Style Council, Pet Shop Boys, and Depeche Mode. We lie on both sides of that spectrum. That being said, I do believe radio can be such a powerful medium and in very many ways it’s a shame that the people with the largest radio platforms are lacking in ambition and don’t aspire to be nearly as great as they can be. Therein lies the tragedy and the lost opportunity.
With all the claims of streaming and algorithms being soulless and driving the spark out of music tastes, I do get that (depends on how a certain platform is used), but I feel that terrestrial radio is a far worse offender. Its influence is often downplayed, but it still shapes the listening habits of millions. Think about kids and teens without access to streaming, workers in environments where FM radio is always playing, or lower-income listeners without premium subscriptions. For them, radio remains a primary source of music. And when stations rotate the same limited playlists day after day, it doesn’t just bore people—it reshapes collective memory. It tells us what’s worth remembering. It limits what counts.
Consider the one-hit wonder phenomenon, which I feel is completely manufactured. Many of the susceptible artists aren’t truly one-hit wonders—they have multiple songs with hit potential, but were just reduced to one song by American radio. Dexys Midnight Runners are more than “Come On Eileen.” a-ha have a deep, successful catalog that stretches well beyond “Take On Me.” But good luck hearing “Geno” or “The Sun Always Shines on T.V.” on U.S FM radio.
It’s a pattern that affects even those artists with multiple high-charting songs. Take Tears for Fears: “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and “Shout” still get airtime, and deservedly so. But what about “Head Over Heels”? Or “Sowing the Seeds of Love”? Both were huge, accessible hits. Yet radio ignores them—deciding, quietly, that they’re less iconic, less safe, less worthy of repeating. Radio isn’t designed for discovery.
Streaming, for all its faults, offers a different kind of engagement that, compared to radio, feels liberating. It might lead you to “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”—but then you can explore the rest of Simple Minds’ discography. You can dig into full albums, explore subgenres, follow rabbit holes. Streaming encourages curiosity. It rewards it. Radio, by contrast, penalizes curiosity by offering sameness. It tells you what to hear. Streaming lets you decide where to go next.
No, streaming isn’t the pinnacle of music discovery—but it’s a powerful launchpad. When used intentionally, it can help you explore an artist’s evolution, a decade’s soundscape, or a whole genre’s history. It gives you the tools to build your own musical map, instead of inheriting one shaped by gatekeepers. That’s not something to take lightly.
While many listeners passively accept whatever Spotify’s homepage offers, others use streaming as just one tool in a much broader discovery process. I’m in that latter camp. Though I’m part of Gen Z, Spotify has never been my go-to for new music. In fact, I’ve disengaged with its algorithm so thoroughly that I haven’t received a Spotify Wrapped whatsoever in years—and back when I did, it didn’t reflect my actual listening. Discover Weekly and Release Radar? Either totally empty or filled with strange, irrelevant picks. These days, Spotify serves more as a supplement than a guide—a piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture. And as for the “first 30 seconds” myth? Well, when scouting out new songs, I usually start at the 0:45-1:00 mark.
My real discoveries come from elsewhere, especially my ever-growing CD collection. Since last fall, that collection has exploded—driven in large part by the “NOW Yearbook” series from Now That’s What I Call Music UK. Each Yearbook captures around 80 of a given year’s biggest UK hits, spread across four CDs. The UK charts are far more varied than the U.S ones, to begin with. And the Yearbooks go further: each core edition is followed about a month or two later by a “NOW Yearbook Extra” with three more discs (~60 additional tracks). More recently, “Vault” editions have started appearing, offering even deeper cuts—songs that never charted or were largely forgotten. It’s an astonishing level of year-specific curation, more comprehensive and thoughtful than anything I’ve seen on Spotify.
Listening to them feels like opening a time capsule. I wasn’t around for the eras these albums highlight, but the Yearbooks let me experience those years in high resolution—not just the major hits, but the full musical landscape, and in a distinctive character that’s completely absent from the US charts. Tracks that spark faint teenhood memories often share space with incredible songs I never knew existed. It’s immersive, thoughtful, and archival. It allows for a kind of nuanced musical time travel that no algorithm can replicate.
Other platforms haven’t kept up. After 12 years of listenership, I gave up on Pandora in 2025. Instead of evolving with me, it got stuck—looping the same “liked” songs over and over, frozen in a version of my taste I’d already outgrown. It was meant to adapt; instead, it plateaued.
@Sammie: Absolutely echoing the view that terrestrial radio is a far worse offender at least from an exposure standpoint. That being said, there is nothing fundamentally flawed about the broadcast radio format. It is what was done to the format in the US starting in the mid-90s that ran this once-great medium into the metaphorical dumpster. They basically took a distributed network of thousands of curators (each of whom had scale in terms of the audience they were reaching) and reduced them to a kingmaker group of less than 10 folks that shared outsized curatorial power getting to opinion-shape for the single largest consumer market for recorded music in the world – namely, the US.
I echo your view that on-demand streaming, if used well, can truly be a great avenue for music discovery. I think the slice of music listeners that use on-demand streaming the way you do lie in the minority. The vast majority go to preset playlists created by corporate curators – which is basically what was happening at conglomerate-owned radio. The only difference is that the power structure has shifted to playlists with a skip button. It is also worth nothing that the innate desire for music discovery is highly exaggerated. Pop music is still very much a “bandwagon effect” interest (contrary to what most people are willing to admit). Something is “cool” because someone with curatorial power or influencing power said it was. I have seen this from experience of running Radio Crème Brulee. I was playing the music of artists such as Adele and Dua Lipa long before they got popular in the US and I had friends turning their nose up against this music – but as soon as these songs got popular via terrestrial radio, these same friends found themselves loving these exact same songs! The vast number of music listeners need their opinions shaped but have been conveniently duped into believing that their personal preferences influence curators of consequence.
Since you mentioned a-ha, we play songs from almost ALL of their albums on our radio broadcast! Also agreeing with your assessment of what they have reduced Tears for Fears’ radio fodder to.
Please share more about what you start at the 0:45 or 1:00 mark. I am super intrigued about this. Why skip the intro?
I grew up obsessed with the Now UK series. The mere mention of it takes me back to middle school (I did my pre-college schooling in India – moved there when I was 4). I am glad there is one other American besides me that understands just how much varied the UK charts are relative to the US charts.
Pandora was great but it had one fatal flaw – and that was that it could not store used-based “memory” of what a user had listened to. As a result, the songs started to repeat a lot. This was alleviated by two approaches:
a. Seeding a station with a song as opposed to an artist (The Pandora founder Tim Westergren suggested this during one of his Town Hall meetings – he used to do those in random places such as a classroom at MIT or a small Indie movie theater).
b. Only clicking “thumbs down” and NOT “thumbs down”.
In the same realm, another article that I penned that might of interest to you are as follows (in case you have NOT read it yet):
https://www.radiocremebrulee.com/music-industry/should-spotify-be-the-single-destination-for-music-discovery/
I wish more listeners took your approach to music discovery. You really are part of a tiny minority – but I am so glad this minority exists!
Well, the 0:45-1:00 thing is something that I’ve just done, I never really came up with a rationale behind it. I don’t know when or how it started, really. Best thing I can come up with is that sometimes a song has one vibe for the intro and another for the rest…? Maybe all the prog-rock I listened to during my bachelor’s conditioned me to expect that.
As for Pandora I was quite an aggressive thumbs-downer. I did thumbs-up but that was conditional; only songs I FELT like wanting to hear again and again.
I love the Now UK selection much better than Now US. I used to collect Now US about 5 yrs. ago but UK had a leg up when they started rolling out those Yearbooks during my bachelor’s (Even though I didn’t start getting my hands on them till more recently). Also the fact that the usual numbered issues are 2 CD’s for UK vs. 1 for US, and there are many special compilations ranging from 3 to 5 CD’s, it’s just more thorough and obviously diverse. Once I have built my Yearbook collection substantially maybe I’ll pursue some of the actual numbered editions. I love how those compilations not only detail the obvious hits but they also boost new music from legacy artists….”Break the man” is on #111!