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Radio Is the Worst Place To Listen To Music, Says Jay Z (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: In a candid interview between Frank Ocean and Jay Z that aired on Apple Music's Beats 1 radio station last week, the latter spent a good portion mourning the golden days of radio, where he got his own start in the 1990s as a hip-hop artist. Said Jay, about modern radio: "It's pretty much an advertisement model. You take these pop stations, they're reaching 18-34 young, white females. So they're playing music based on those tastes. And then they're taking those numbers and they're going to advertising agencies and people are paying numbers based on the audience that they have. So these places are not even based on music. Their playlist isn't based on music... A person like Bob Marley right now probably wouldn't play on a pop station. Which is crazy. It's not even about the DJ discovering what music is best. You know, music is music. The line's just been separated so much that we're lost at this point in time."
Is Jay Z admitting that his music is garbage?
there has been so much commercialization that they only play what provides them profit. There are still few radios in certain country which is independently owned and still plays old records.. for masses.
"You take these pop stations, they're reaching 18-34 young, white females."
News for nerds: White bitches hate Jay Z.
WTF?
Was radio ever anything other than that, in general? There have always been (and still are) DJ's that host radio programs that do hunt down "what music is best" (fyi, troll - that is an opinion-based issue). Everyone has the right to find that out for themselves and make their own decisions; there has never been a better time for that. There is more diversity than ever on the radio even if it is more corporate-focused, and with the internet and things like SoundCloud there is effectively no barrier for any music to reach any listener in such a context.
Sounds like he's got Kanye disease where he thinks his idea of good music is a divine mandate to push it down everyone else's throats. A lot of those "creative types" - definitely anyone who refers to themselves as a "creative" - are all alike in that regard.
I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked!
. . . of the shittiest, dumbest, least original music the world has ever seen. Seriously, fuck this guy. Why is this on Slashdot?
I don't listen to radio. I do watch MTV however. Almost all of the "hit songs" with "expensive music videos" rotating on MTV are simplistic compositions that are not the work of a "great artist". Music today is a far cry from the 20th Century - very manufactured, very simple, very made-for-money and very forgettable. Where are today's U2, Metallica, Pearl Jam and other great bands? Where are music albums with 10 tracks where 6 to 7 of those tracks are actually good? It seems to me that music has fallen victim to a "it has to make money from teens, it has to make money from teens, it has to make money from teens" mindset that produces only forgettable music tracks. Its the same thing that happened to movies - who in God's name needs to 30 same-feeling horror/comic book hero movies every year? The solution is simple - ALLOW GENUINE ARTISTS TO PRODUCE SOMETHING ACTUALLY GOOD. The rest is design-by-committee, made-for-quick-bucks trash that nobody will even remember in the 2020s. We had actually talented artists in the 20th Century. Now we have The Chainsmokers for music and film directors who can't pace a movie or frame a shot properly.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
A money-grubbing idiot who only wants your money in his arse who can't earn a penny from radio is going to put it down as the worse method to listen to anything. Now, if radio stations were forced to pay scumbags like this punk he'd be spitting a new tune.
...Seconded. Where were the mods on this one?
Jay Z is the worst music to listen to, says me.
FIFY
* plays "rappy guy killed the radio star" * to calm gti_guy down.
Exact same thing applies to regular TV (cable/satellite)
Over here in the UK, we had the mighty, the master, the supreme genius of John Peel. And boy, did he do something for music. He single-handedly launched the music careers of countless artists. There is a reason that Glastonbury, that most wonderful and muddy of places, renamed 'The New Bands Tent' to 'The John Peel Stage'. Who can you name on your local / national radio stations who actually does 'a show about music'? DJs today play songs, they don't engage with bands outside of carefully crafted commercial moments. Weird to say, really, but on this I pretty much wholesale agree with Jay Z.
While the quality of music on radio may be worse than physical mediums, the importance of Radio is that it exposes people to new music and personalities. Not all are good, not all are bad so your appreciation varies. I was exposed to countless people and musicians because of Radio. Seems to me that this person has a vested interest in pushing a particular brand of medium, so expect their opinion to be self serving and with extreme bias.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I think it's understood anything played on any radio format is as a result of a formula. Even Bob Marley who was initially marketed as a Rock band in England to the extent of having guitar riffs dubbed over the music to change the sound. This being said in my experience growing up it was always the independent small, and college radio stations who seemed to carry an authentic sound, more so because the DJ's were all working for passion and not $$.
Where I live there's a public radio station that plays a wide catalogue of new and old rock/alternative, a public radio station that plays a narrow, rotating catalog of current dance/pop from around the world and a public radio station that plays a very wide catalog of classical music. What matters is where the money comes from. If listeners chip in then they get a station that has human DJs that select tracks based on their tastes rather than marketeers monies.
I honestly blinked twice and double checked that I was on Slashdot after I've read that title. I was like, "Jay Z opinion? Here?"
So, putting aside the near zero value of an Hip-Hop artist opinion in a science website, I'm not sure what's so surprising about that statement. Internet took the crown of music entertainment and radio is trying to survive with talk show and exclusivity of new hit music. But, on a consumer point of view, I don't see the problem as we never had that much easy access to music as ever before and new artist can more easily spread their music without the recording studio. The only downside I see is about artist with smaller audience where streaming revenue are less than nothing.
Elok
and satellite radio is only slightly less dead.
Thanks clearchannel, sure wish there was some kind of anti-trust regulation that couldve kept this from happening.
I'd say prison is the worst place to listen to music.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
"It's pretty much an advertisement model. You take these pop stations, they're reaching 18-34 young, white females."
Life Below 92 - college and non-commercial stations are below 92 on the FM dial, playing some of the widest range of music that you'll ever hear.
.
Also scan the dial for a few weeks. Around here there's an alternative rock FM station that plays some tunes definitely targeted towards the pop music crowd.
Look around, the music is out there.
I agree. Any station that is playing current music has certainly limited the range of music being played. I tend to hear a lot of Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor at various times. I listen to the big station in the area for traffic reports going back and forth to work. Their depth of music is very limited, except at lunch when they accept call ins. Would never listen to that station while at work or home.
I wonder how much Jay Z would be worth if his music wasn't completely designed to pander to his target audience's preferences? Seriously, this guy is mad about the commercial aspects of a company that helps the music industry to market their art to their core demographic? I mean come on... The only art that wasn't designed for people to enjoy is usually sitting in the garbage can unless someone happened to like it or make it "hip and trendy". Art in general is designed by the artist for the consumer.
Hell, our greatest and most famous works of art in history were commisioned!
It's always been about the money, except in a few very rare cases. None of these artists would enjoy their job if they weren't getting paid for it, so the argument that radio is using music as a platform for turning a profit (through advertising) isn't really an argument at all. They're all doing the same thing.
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
else performers cannot gouge you with concert costs.
Narrowing the targeted demographic to young females is a bad marketing strategy. Besides radio, television and retail malls had the same target audience - young females who are impulsive buyers and impressionable. Television eventually became saturated with poor program material and the ads became longer and more frequent. That had no appeal to the rest of the demographic and they drove away a large body of viewers. For the last ten years there have been a growing number of viewers who gave up broadcast television and cut the cable. The only time I watch TV is in the hotel room when I am traveling, and it has gotten steadily worse - with the barrage of ads, a 90 minute movie is dragged out to three hours with literally 10 minutes of ads for every ten minutes of program (I timed it).
The same thing happened with retail malls. The only stores and products remaining in them are those that appeal to young female impressionable impulsive buyers. Again the rest of the demographic found little appeal, abandoned retail stores in droves, and major chains (Sears, Macy's, JC Penney) are closing anchor stores around the country.
I abandoned radio ten years ago because the new music no longer appeals to me and the ads were becoming longer and more frequent. There are a lot other people like myself who don't fit the demographic of young impressionable females who have also grown tired of radio. Radio (and television) is no longer about supporting refreshing new art, it is about drawing listeners to advertisers. And those advertisers pressure the marketing department to play music that draws in impulsive buyers. We hear the same brain-dead drivel being rotated over and over and over.
There's a reason why streaming services have blossomed. There's a lot of good program material that isn't getting played on television/radio, and people will go elsewhere to find them.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
KEXP... nuff' said.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Commercial radio is just like music for the masses, with the same top chart songs every two hours. Even the stations that broadcast years old music (mostly 90s and 00s) end up repeating the same songs as if the artist only have one or two hits. The radio DJs sound like Homer J. Simpson, the cuisine critic. Everything is a delight, everything is great. Sorry man - that is not my cup of tea. I like diversity, I like discovery (and also Daft Punk's record too).
If whoever this Jay person is wants to be taken seriously he should have given his last name, not just the initial. It's not like he's sharing a story on Dear Penthouse.
- Anonymous C.
But looking at hollywood or at the music industry, it seems like a major source of degradation.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
I liked him in Toys.
I don't look at the Internet alone for new music, I scan stations on drives and find things. Just like we did when I was a kid and had no internet. Using the internet for "discovery" means that you get someones recommendations based on your current taste or what's trending. That same principle occurs on the Radio, but if you scan you find new genres.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
A Jay Z CD is the worst way to listen to music.
OK, maybe the quality beats a Jay Z cassette.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Radio died January 3, 1996 with the passage of the Telecommunication Act of 1996. It basically allowed big corporations to buy up all of the smaller independent stations in a region and homogenize the content to the same bland mush that advertisers like and which generates the fewest angry letters to the station. Luckily we have the internet now so broadcast radio can go quietly into the night.
I read the internet for the articles.
I wouldn't know, but I listen to BBC 6 music on a daily basis, and it's great, introduces me to new music, and let's me listen to classic tracks.
Says the guy who has stakes in paid streaming music services.
Oh course free-to-air radio is now suddenly shit in his opinion.
I gave up on broadcast radio years ago due to the overwhelming domination of the ads. Satellite radio with no ads, or streaming my Apple Music subscription to my car audio.
He has a point, but there's much more that's contributing to the death of radio.
One of radio's big problems, IMO, is the sound quality. Standard FM is noticeably poorer sounding than a CD, or even a compressed MP3 at a decent bitrate. Reception fades in and out and you get static while driving around, etc.
The "solution" was almost worse than the problem, though.... "HD" FM radio. The way it's usually implemented, broadcasters split up its bandwidth so they could have "HD1" and "HD2" alternative stations along-side the primary one. That means there's no analog signal "backup" for any of them but the primary one. So if you're listening to one of the alternates and your signal gets too weak, it just drops out completely. And that happens a LOT because it's tough to pick them up very well when you have tall city buildings partially blocking the signal, or when you live a little too far from the transmitting tower. And if it's the primary station you've got tuned in, you hear the annoying switching back and forth between better and much worse sound quality as it locks onto the digital signal and falls back to the analog again.
My complaint is even stations unaffiliated with each other seem to be timing their commercial breaks at the same time.
How much of that is related to national radio regulators' requirement that all stations announce call letters at the same time, plus competition with other "publishers" (radio stations selling ad space) for advertisers?
with the internet and things like SoundCloud there is effectively no barrier for any music to reach any listener in such a context.
Except the price of a cellular data plan. FM radio in a vehicle needs no AT&T&T&T subscription.
"Pop stations" are not "radio". He is not describing anything new here. "Pop" stations have always sucked compared to more specialized stations that focused on a specific genre. While there certainly was a commercial aspect in the later too there was also more experimentation and a little crossover. It was not uncommon for a "rock" focused station to play a Bob Marley tune just because it was really really good.
What else is new?
Go make your OWN music.
I noticed that 10 years ago: I moved across a state line and into the big city for work, for several years, before returning home. After a while there, I realized the quoted demographic was 50% of the big city are >= 35 years of age. Yet 90% of the radio music was less than 15 years. Worse, on many city stations, that 90%, was techno and hip-hop music.
That's how most advertising works, this isn't a surprise. What's really hurt radio advertising is media cross-ownership: Television stations can now own radio stations, with one network owning 2 of the 4 local radio stations. The radio DJs no longer talk about the most watched show or best story twist. They talk about the crappy shows on their owner's television schedule, and some hours, it's repeated every 15 minutes.
If you want to live in gigantic mansions and hang on luxury yachts in the port of Cannes, the money has to come from somewhere. For a lot of people in the music industry it's all about the almighty dollar, and Jay-Z likes being labeled a "businessman"....
I couldn't name a Jay Z song if you offered to pay me a million dollars to name one, and don't know a thing about him, but he's right about radio being a terrible place to listen to music. I don't listen to broadcast radio at all, and haven't in years.
...doesn't really understand how commercial radio has worked since, well, forever.
It's never (except for the smallest enthusiast-stations) been "about the music". The 'customers' of radio (and TV, for that matter) aren't the consumers. THEY ARE THE PRODUCT BEING SOLD. The customers are the businesses that are paying for ad time.
He's a dumb shit, is that any surprise?
How's Tidal doing, dude? (answer: lost $28 million last year) http://www.esquire.com/enterta...
First year: 540k subs, lost $11 million
Last year 3 million subs, lost $28 million.
LOL.
-Styopa
But not all radio is. In cities there is usually at least one independent radio station that plays a variety of songs. I'm not sure what can be done about it other than finding a way to encourage more indie radio stations and finding a way for them to survive financially.
That said, even the "indie" music has become very narrow and the same artists and trends are followed nationwide, often times bleeding over to the pop world and vice versa (thank Pitchfork and all of the music festivals). God forbid you don't like Drake, trap, and alt-r&b. 20+ years ago there was a lot more diversity on the indie side of things despite not having the Internet to easily share and listen to music.
Large scale display advertising is dwindling. Online advertising is much more precise, it gets sellers much closer to the holy grail of only spending money on advertising to the people who actually end up buying. So if radio is becoming more fragmented like social media, surely that just means that artists have a better chance of reaching their intended audience? Instead of your traditional Irish / Brazilian Zouk fusion tune being lost in the maelstrom of generic pop music, it now finds a place to play on a niche station that has listeners who are interested in that type of music.
I swear, every day I go onto LinkedIn and see pretentious articles with headlines like "Facebook is dead," "Social media is dead" and similar bullshit. It's nothing but clickbait and has no basis in fact. Radio might be an old medium but it's going strong, and will continue to do so as long as we have to drive cars manually. When all cars become self-driving then we'll reassess the situation, but until then...
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Jay Z was of course talking about commercial radio, and he's totally right. Or so I believe... I can't remember the last time I willingly listened to commercial radio.
There are commercial-free radio stations that actually care about music (and the musicians, and the listeners), and aren't beholden to advertisers.
Of course, as has been the case for decades, there are still lots of good low-power college radio stations, with their ever-changing formats. The downside there is that you never know sort of music you're going to hear without looking at the schedule, and the format's going to change within a few hours when the next DJ comes on.
But I know of at least two commercial-free music radio stations in the US which play an amazing variety of music, new, old, popular and--most importantly--the unknown and/or obscure... and with a similar mix of music throughout the day on most weekdays.
I'm proud to be a founding member of Minnesota Public Radio's KCMP "The Current", going strong after over a decade. I no longer live in Minnesota but still listen. However, the station I now listen most often to is KEXP "Where the Music Matters". Aside from the fact that their proximity to Redmond means they're to cause things like their online playlist being crippled (relies on Azure I guess)
I've discovered SO much new music (and some old) from both of those stations, both of which stream their broadcasts 24/7.
Even in my city the local NPR affiliate has a commercial-free music channel, though currently it's only available on HD radio (or the web). Similar mix of music to the others, but with more emphasis on local artists.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
now if only rap would die, and take the wannabe whiteboiii-gangsduhs with them.
Jay Z owns a streaming service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_%28service%29
In other news, taxies are the worst way to get from point A to point B. Says Travis Kalanick.
He definitely knows what would be crap music, since that's what he "sings".
My town has several public radio stations. One is 24/7 jazz, commercial free, news free, NPR free, just jazz, no "All Things Considered", no propaganda, pure jazz. Love it.
Also have a classical NPR station, OK but every hour they interrupt with news from the Politburo. This format sucks for classical music because the programming consists of bon-bons that they can wedge between these reports from the Comintern. Longer pieces of music get short shrift in this format.
There is a great classical station without news in North Carolina, out of range for me. WCPE, theclassicalstation.org. When I'm home I'll stream it.
Good radio is great when you're driving because no fooling with iPod playlists, no wasting time dubbing stuff. No fiddling with MP3 CDs or thumb drives. Americans spend a lot of time driving, and hassle free, commercial free, news free music programming is perfect. Plus I enjoy being introduced to music that I might otherwise not have heard, had I chosen the playlist myself.
That explains why so many black musicians are jealous of mediocre white musicians. 18-34 White females are going to be biased to white musicians, even if they produce inferior music. Also why the hate for Iggy Azalea, whom copied black musicians. If it makes Jay-Z feel better, I think black musicians make better music too, but I don't listen to the radio, or buy music, so my opinion doesn't matter.
Who cares what Jay Z says?
That would be "NOT ME".
Someone please tell this self-important blowhard to shut up and fuck off.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Says njigger
All rappers having a dry spell do this "back to his roots thing" and scapegoat the "industry." He bitches about radio being about advertising instead of music (in fairness it is), but it always has been. Except, people didn't have to be as clever about it when he was a kid. Literally anyone with the right skin tone, clothing, and decent voice can become a rapper, even exceptions to that have been made thanks to auto tune. Rap is literally black people's white country music. Remember those Pepsi ads that aired ALL THE FREAKIN TIME? How many black people drink Mountain Dew, a Pepsi product? This commercialized race-based dichotomy no one wants to admit has always existed. It's always been about the money and who ever can hide their "selling out" the best wins the game.
I agree on the basis of the headline alone.
I used to listen to drive-time radio on a talk station because there was a zoo-type program in the Orlando area that I actually found kinda listenable. Over the years it go to the point where I sometimes can get to work without hearing a single second of it - nothing but commercials. And that's a 15 minute drive, at least. How the hell can you play 15 minutes of solid commercials?
Sorry, radio. You can go fuck yourself.
Long signatures suck.
He's just jealous Seattle would rather listen to Icelandic music than some old grandpa who can't sing his way out of a compostable paper bag and that we won't listen to songs from old guys who cheat on their wives.
Tough.
I buy my music direct from the musicians. Then they get half the cut.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I though MTV settled this issue in 1981.
And not from MK. I cannot express in words how little I care about what Jay Z, or any other celebrity, thinks about much of anything. Eff off, rock star. The rest of us are trying to live our lives.
Which is why I keep my MP3 library, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Prime Music on my phone, to bluetooth when I'm in the car. It's the SAME 5-6 songs by the same artists over and over and over, not to mention the commercials. We even have one station, a "classic rock" type station, that has a couple times a day a so called commercial free hour of music. Yep, not one advertisement...BUT! After every song, they have to tell you that you are listening to a commercial free hour of music, followed by their call sign, followed by them telling you to enjoy this commercial free hour of music, followed by the call sign again. And then you have the stations that seem to want to play over the music until the person(s) start singing. I gave up on commercial radio LONG ago. First started out with XM satellite radio, but, after they merged with Sirus, I gave up. They don't have commercials on some of their music stations, but they have to tell you what you are missing on some of the other channels...then they hired a bunch of sad MTV music VJ's that have to tell you they remember when so and so showed up stoned, drunk or whatever yack yack yack. Got rid of that and just use streaming through the radio now.
www.kuvo.org
Rule #1: Don't listen to African-Americans.
Rule #2: Delete this story from my RSS feeds.
When "men of science" start ranting about Jay-Z and hiphop do your bi-focals get all steamed up causing you to temporarily turn off your aphex twin windowlicker playing in audacious to go get a towlette? Really, witnessing nerds complain about Jay-Z or any aspect of actual human culture in which technology is not the driving element of the conversation is like posting a kernel update overview on worldstarhiphop. Really, just shut the fuck up. Sometimes you need to look at yourself and realize "maybe i have no real understanding of this issue and i should just keep my mouth shut" The evolution, hijacking, destruction, and resulting current state of rap music is as complex as systemd. It ranges in everything from gang roots, afrocentricism, accumulated cultural styles in various regions of the united states over decades, the crack epidemic, and of course changing demographics, the economy, technology, consoldiation, corporate greed, commercial marketing changes. Dont pretend you understand what your talking about because you understand how business works, there is alot at play here.
Nope, it died about a year earlier when KNAC left the airwaves. ;-)
You know what else happened a lot in the good ol' days? Rappers killing each other.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why do these no talent hacks seem to think they know anything just because the labels made them rich?
.... It was that way back in 1999, too. It was that way back in 1989. It was that way back in 1979. It was that way back in 1969. It certainly was that way back in 1959, reference Payola. It was that way in 1949, 1939, 1929, and like back to the second 'commerical' broadcast after 1906.
Oh, and the streaming industry is that way as well, sunshine. You're just better at concealing it.
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