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Radio Listening Declining w/ Digital On Its Way Up
Redlands CRC writes "According to C|Net and The NPD Group, the number of listeners to radio media has declined by 4% against the previous year, and the number of people listening to music on their computer has risen 22%. The study has also shown that online radio station listeners have increased to 53.5 million this March, up from 45.3 million a year ago. Music streaming also saw an greater uptake in listeners this year, with an increase of 37% compared to the previous year."
Well, traditional over the air radio was bound to lose out with the digital revolution. Just take a look at shoutcast or any other popular online radio index and the number of choices is infinitely greater than over the air.
Oh, wait ...
I don't understand why RIAA wants streaming stations to pay them for what amounts to advertising for their members. Do radio stations pay to play music? I'm thinking not.
What I'd like to see is an itunes enhancement that either apple or other stations streams music and while a song is playing, there's a "buy" button so I can just download it if I like it. That would drive my purchases up through the roof. I get to hear if I like a song (more than 30 seconds worth) and the impulse factor is right there. (I've sent that suggestion in already). The streaming stations could get revenue that way too. A referal fee for following a link from a station to buy should help offset the stupid ASCAP/BMI fees to online stations.
The few times I listen to traditional radio, it annoys the piss out of me to hear something good and then not have the artist or song announced after it and have no clue how to find out to buy it. Screw em, let them all play conservative talk radio hosts 24 hours a day.
...have anything todo with the fact that most radio stations are canned and pre-programmed from a master list of the "latest hits".
{fineprint}
Notice: Latest hit has been defined as the latest album or single that the master controlling agency (see RIAA) demands be played over and over and over and over.
{/fineprint}
Three things annoy me about radio stations
1. Lame on-air "personalities" that are never critical of anything [specially sponsor related].
2. Same music over and over
3. Lame advertisements and endorsements that are for things you just don't need that much advertisement for. e.g. I don't care how often you mention it, I'm not buying a $200,000 yacht!
And seriously an mp3 player with a shuffle mode can replace the "selection" of music played on air.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Thats because most of the crap stations are out-sourced to a big company with a building full of generic DJs who just play the same record industry generated play lists and pretend to be in some town they've never heard of between songs. The whole thing is just one big advert. A few years ago, a radio station would have a massive library, now days people have an even bigger library stored in the palm of their hand and with full control over what they listen to - how can a radio compete? New music is more likely to be played online rather than a real radio station so you'll get every band, not just the ones that have been heard by a producer. All thats left is talk radio which is great and has a real future (theres never any shortage of things to talk about) ironically, radio stations seem scared to carry people like Howard Stern in the US because of the pussy FCC.
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Broadcast Radio - a few dozen stations per city.
Internet Radio - Tens of thousands of stations, if not more, plus you can listen to your favorite station in any city.
The huge variety of internet radio menas there literally is something for everyone. With more choices, there's bound to be migration to the more robust medium.
Gee, do you think maybe the reason nobody listens to radio anymore is that they fill everything with "CharlieFM" or "BobFM" or "AliceFM" or "JackFM" with pseudo-random crap and call it "variety"? Or that they replace great AM radio stations with hosts like Rick Emerson and Clyde Lewis and replace them with failing "oldies" format programming?
It's so much cheaper to lose most of your audience and deliver pre-programmed drivel without a host (or just an automated "host") from another part of the country than it is to provide customized, interested, live, provocative, intelligent local content.
I was never a fan of FM, but I did listen to AM talk radio since I was eight years old. After 20 years, I've stopped listening. The last great talk show I found was Rick Emerson's geek-oriented program and Clyde Lewis's bizarre (but better than Coast to Coast AM) program on the weekends. Now that they removed that from the Portland air-waves and I've moved to Colorado where the only talk radio states are sports, jesus and Air America, I don't even own a radio.
Radio is eating itself and will hopefully implode soon.
CBC's Quirks and Quarks
Science Friday
Bi-Weekly Astronomy Radio program hosted by David Levy
BBC Science Radio
Well this one's not a radio show but is one of my favoritesJack Horkheimer Star Hustler
This just confirms my theory that, as radio declines and digital goes up, digital will become radio with all that that implies. FCC regulation, commercials etc...
Don't believe it? Look at cable TV. When it started, you paid for cable because it had no commercials. That made sense. Commercials paid for television. If people pay for it directly, no need for commercials right? Wrong. Now we pay for cable and still have commercials.
It's only a matter of time before this happens to radio.
That said, I do listen to some stuff that's not available via broadcast (at least locally) as well, but the point was I normally prefer to listen via the computer either way. In fact, I don't listen to a couple of shows just because they're not available via the net.
Also interesting to me is that I'm increasingly listening to recordings of radio broadcasts (that weren't originally intended as "podcasts"). That's a big deal for me since I'm frequently interrupted in my listening, but I like to hear a complete program.
Yea. It's MP3 in action. It's tossing out audio data that you can hear (I have the same issue) even at high bitrates. That's why I love OGG, it doesn't toss out that particular frequency notch in comparative high bitrate settings.
Most people probably can't hear the difference between 44k and 48k audio (frequency range, not bitrate). I know I can.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
1: 44.1k and 48k are not frequency ranges, they are sampling rates.
2: You are either comparing apples to oranges (CD to DVDA), or you are listening to music on your computer equipped with a known flawed soundcard. Many many many soundcards out there (including popular SoundBlasters) can not play 44.1k material and upsample it to 48k. This is not a problem. The problem is that their hardware upsampler is broken and produces distorted sound. This would cause native 48k to sound good and 44.1k material to sound bad.
The solution to this is to upsample all your CD derived media in software. (Foobar2000 does an excellent job of this, though plug-ins are available for most any player including Winamp.)
I dub thee... Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass.
I, for one, don't need long discussions about anal sex and so forth on my morning drive to work. Neither do I care to listen about how liberals are ruining the country, even though conservatives have been in control for like 12 years now. As for the music - well, thank god for the Morning Buzz, 100.5 - but their signal is weak and I can't get it a lot. Oh yeah, and screw Clear Channel.
Vote Quimby!
Where does satellite radio fit into the picture? XM & Sirius could also be lumped into "digital listening" but they aren't mentioned in the article. Satellite radio, like online streaming, also offers a much greater variety of content than terrestrial radio with the benefit of greater portability.
This article also makes the mistake that is almost always made when comparing traditional radio to newer mediums for delivering audio entertainment. This isn't the 1940's, a very low percentage of radio's listeners are in their homes or offices. Nearly all tranditional radio listeners are in their cars. Sure people bring their iPods with them in their cars and that does provide some competition to traditional radios but the 80's technology of casette tapes probably has a bigger impact and more people are listening to CDs in their cars than an mp3 player.
I doubt very much that you can hear anything in the range 22kHz - 24 kHz, which is the only inherent improvement between 44kHz and 48kHz sampling (cf. Nyquist).
As far as I'm aware, there is no scientific evidence that any human can. Members of the Audiophile cult claim they can, but their methods are as credible as astrologers'.
Of course, mp3s (at the level of compression used in file shares) and radio broadcasts sound like crap. We're talking much more serious distortion and bandwidth limitation than this.
It may be that to your ear, for what you listen to, for a particular level of compression, OGG sounds better than mp3. That's be hard to demonstrate in any scientific way. Both methods do substantial transforms on the signal, and if one "sounds better" than the other there's no trivial explanation.
Psycho-acoustics is very complex.
From their web site: "The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is a performing rights organization which licenses and collects royalties for performance"
Radio stations PAY.
The Mall PAYS.
The elevator company PAYS.
That's why there are "studio session" musicians who play 'covers' of popular songs, give up all rights to their music so that the cheezy music playing every hour in that elevator makes money for the elevator company. The artist who recorded the original version is probably not getting a dime.
ASCAP had to listen to every dreadful hour of the crap that was aired 24/7 until they got the idea of making the content consumers keep and submit play lists.
The reason they don't announce they artist to you anymore is that they are doing it to those that count, ASCAP, on paper so they don't need to lose commercial airtime (which pays for the 'filler') to the names of the artists or the songs.
That's also why they don't announce the 'songs' at the mall or in the elevators.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I myself, due to my job, drive upwards of 10-14 hours a day. So 99% of the time im sitting in my car. I live in the bay area california, So we have quite a few broadcast radio stations, covers almost every single Music style there is. (Short of Trance/techno, which only comes on once a week in the middle of saturday night.. sigh, i love you subsonic) /SUCK/. Get with the times. Play what your customers want, or you'll lose them.
What station do I listen to? The 24/7 news station with 10 minuite Traffic and weather. If not that, I have tapes (Err im too poor to afford a CD player) of Downloaded Trance tracks you cant get anywhere else.
Do i really want to listen to howard stern talking about how hed like to fuck some dumb bimbo because she has big boobies? Or How funny it would be for two morning talkshow hosts, who laugh at themselfs cause their so damned funny, taser their lacky? No, I don't want to listen to that crap at all, it isnt funny, and if people belive it is in *FACT* entertaining, they need to be cleansed from the world, seriously. Fart jokes, big boobies, How bush is the greatest president in the world and how they (who hide behind) freespeech is the bane of the world, is NOT actual entertainment. Its drivel to be archived on 8tracks and remembered like Disco.
Yes Broadcasting industry, yes RIAA, yes the Entire music industry, you
To the RIAA/Broadcast Industry: Either Shit, or get off the pot. Seriously.
A couple months ago, I got a call at work..
"This is XXX radio 101 FM, and we're going to reward you if you listen to our station. If youre listening to our station right now you can win $1001 dollars!!!"
I told them that it wasnt nearly enough money, and if they would please call back when their station wasnt a clearchannel whore, I might think about it.
FM is so bad these days that you cant PAY me to listen to it. That should be a sign to them.