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Traditional Radio Faces a Grim Future, New Study Says (variety.com)
In a 30-page report, Larry Miller, the head of New York University's Steinhart Music Business Program, argues that traditional radio has failed to engage with Generation Z -- people born after 1995 -- and that its influence and relevance will continue to be subsumed by digital services unless it upgrades. Key points made in the study include: Generation Z, which is projected to account for 40% of all consumers in the U.S. by 2020, shows little interest in traditional media, including radio, having grown up in an on-demand digital environment. AM/FM radio is in the midst of a massive drop-off as a music-discovery tool by younger generations, with self-reported listening to AM/FM radio among teens aged 13 and up declining by almost 50 percentage points between 2005 and 2016. Music discovery as a whole is moving away from AM/FM radio and toward YouTube, Spotify and Pandora, especially among younger listeners, with 19% of a 2017 study of surveyed listeners citing it as a source for keeping up-to-date with music -- down from 28% the previous year. Among 12-24 year olds who find music discovery important, AM/FM radio (50%) becomes even less influential, trailing YouTube (80%), Spotify (59%), and Pandora (53%). By 2020, 75% of new cars are expected to be "connected" to digital services, breaking radio's monopoly on the car dashboard and relegating AM/FM to just one of a series of audio options behind the wheel. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the typical car in the U.S. was 11.6 years old in 2016, which explains why radio has not yet faced its disruption event. However, drivers are buying new cars at a faster rate than ever, and new vehicles come with more installed options for digital music services.
Last time I listened to the radio in a car or at home that wasn't by accident was 1997, even then it was only because I was in someone else car or at someones house. Before that I'd only really listen to talk radio like Art Bell or shows like Brave New Waves on CBC Canada or Chris Sheppard Pirate Radio since it was hard to access electronic music where I was.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Turns out letting one company own all the radio stations in the country and letting all music be chosen by an algorithm that compares music to existing hits is not a great idea.
Radio will come back when different stations are run differently.
Yes, radio is an older technology - one option among many. But it's also the only one where you sometimes have to sit through massive amounts of advertisements to get to the actual entertainment. The ads in the free versions of apps like Pandora are nowhere near as often or as annoying.
Live music is cool when you're actually there. Listening to "live" music through a radio is sort of pointless.
As to audio dramas - that medium is far better suited to podcasts where users can listen at their leisure rather than tuning in to a scheduled broadcast.
Honestly, while RF communications as a technology has a bright future, "Radio stations" as in places broadcasting out scheduled audio programming seem like a doomed technology no matter what they do. They're not necessarily even doing anything wrong, except that nobody wants their product anymore.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
AM/FM radio is in the midst of a massive drop-off as a music-discovery tool
Radio in the US hasn't been a "Music-Discovery Tool" for the last 10-20 years since ClearChannel acquired nearly every FM station and made DJ's irrelevant.
Radio has never been a great way to discover music. It's just that until relatively recently, there hasn't really been any better alternative. Once radio programming started to get centralized, it became even worse.
At least in the old days there was some sort of connection to the local community. Most radio doesn't even have that much going for it anymore.
Just like TV, millennials (and others) tuned out because of the insane amount of ads and/or other crap, and they are not coming back.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
some 15-20 years ago when they overpaid for all their stations, had to run too many commercials to pay for them, then heavily restricted their play lists to avoid the chance someone might not like the song currently playing. Forget about discovering new music on the radio, unless you switch from your country station to a hip-hop station or somesuch. Which ain't gonna happen.
I've got a 30G USB stick in my car with a dozen or so playlists. Only time I turn the radio on is when I'm stuck in traffic for a report to figure out if I should stick it out or go another route.
The problem is the internet can do anything that radio can. Radio has only a few advantages:
1)Blankets more of the US than cellular, and works on any radio device (no network issues)
2)Easier set up for less technical users (not too many people can't use a radio tuner).
3)No direct cost to user (data costs money for many).
As time goes on, 1-3 become less of an issue, which leaves radio in the dust. There might still be stations, but they'll broadcast online.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I was driving to work about a 35 minutes trip. As usual I jumped in the car, and turned on the radio to my local classic rock station. I then proceeded to hear the sports report, news report, at least 10 commercials for products I do not want, or need, the DJ yammering on about his golf game, and going out in his boat.
I then arrived at work, having not heard any actual music.
I know what you are thinking. Change to another station.
That might work in another market, but where I live most/all the stations are owned by the same company, so there is really very little difference between them.
I went out after work and bought an iPod, and an iPod interface for my stereo. Loaded my music, set it to shuffle play, and have been shuffling along ever since. (Over 10 years)(Several cars/stereos/media players.)
I do listen to a local news only station in the morning while I am getting ready for work, but that is about the only time I ever listen to the radio.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
OK, I am a geezer to, but radio is perfect for news. That's what I use it for. I don't watch TV news - haven't for years. But on my drive to work I turn on the radio news, traffic, weather AM station. Why is it not good for news? What streaming thing should I be getting local news from? I get it for podcasts, music, etc. But News?
Netkids don't "get" commericals. That's because they suck and contrary to popular believe, the kids on your lawn aren't as dumb as the media likes to act. Nothing can save their business model, but it's likely that if we moved the tech beyond HD radio and streaming titles, new opportunities would open up to a mixed-mode digital & analog radio that had more interactivity between listener and DJ, fan ratings, show movie previews, etc.. Even if you don't use the FM band to transmit, there is an awful lot of bandwidth there to receive. There are soo many possibilities there.
as soon as they realize it's exponentially cheaper to produce
What? How is licensing, maintaining, and running a radio station "exponentially cheaper" than running a website?
I never understand all these types of articles talking about music. Literally Jack/BOB FM are the only ones playing music during rush hour. Other than that it's all dumb ass talk radio with idiots. Their jokes are dumb, no cursing, and of course they're all basically the same. And nowadays they're syndicated from who knows where.
Just wait until they're stuck in a hurricane with no internet access. That little battery/wind-up radio would be a godsend.
load "linux",8,1
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I might not listen to music on the radio at all, but I listen to NPR on the radio on a daily basis. Younger me would never have done so, but I find a lot of their content interesting and/or informative.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
For me, the importance of radio is current affairs and news. But then, I might be an old fogey at this point, as my car's radio is pretty much stuck on CBC Radio One (I'm Canadian), or one of the local NPR affiliates when I'm south of the border.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
It's not radio that faces a grim future, it's the old fashioned model of commercial radio. You get, maybe, ten minutes of music followed by tons of commercials that repeat the phone number 20 times. But the spectrum will still be useful for new types of over-the-air services. Old radio needs to die. It's nothing but commercials and right-wing hate spew.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'll echo the sentiment about Clearchannel killing the diversity that used to be available on FM radio. I moved to my current location 20 years ago. At that time there were locally owned stations that played many rock genres (hard/metal, alternative, contemporary, classic), some rap/R&B, top 40, country, talk, sports and two NPR stations - one that did news, the other was the classical/jazz station. Today, the NPR station still exists, and one of the independents, but quite literally everything else is programmed by Clearchannel. It's not only the radio programming that sucks now, but the stations used to be a big part of the live music scene, sponsoring festivals and promoting local bands, and otherwise contributing to the scene in some way. The DJs were local and knew the scene, did appearances at bars and many of were music geeks who really liked the genre they were in.
Fast forward to now, we have one NPR station that does news, the classical/jazz station is gone. The rock stations have been consolidated and homogenized, or converted to play "modern country", aka "country pop". The pop station has less diversity. There are now two sports talk stations that seem to be staffed by the world's most hateful idiot trolls that exist solely to fill the airwaves with useless drek. Local DJs only exist on some streaming stations, no longer on the air. I got a car with satellite radio and got hooked on that -- I like that the stations can be very genre specific and that there's a wide variety of styles to choose from. The DJs know their music and seem to like it. I also have a Spotify subscription and pile of podcasts to choose from. When I can choose between music that I like or talk I want to listen to, FM doesn't stand a chance, but on the other hand the vast number of streaming stations and services like Spotify make music discovery so much better now than when I was growing up -- even the best college stations from 20 years just don't hold a candle to what I have available to me now.
67 million millennials listen to radio each week, That's about 90% market penetration. Just because millennials will use other outlets to discover new music doesn't mean that existing outlets aren't used for consuming music. The Internet has become the new "local club/bar" where you'd go each week to hear new bands and genres; but consumption still is in radio.
SONOS, the largest consumer speaker company on the face of the Earth, sees a massive use of streaming FM stations over Internet - meaning if anything, FM radio's reach is increasing into the modern world. It's staying with broadcast but also streaming onto the Internet, so that a given station is no longer limited to a small geographic region but worldwide.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Almost every FM station near me has HD radio with 2 side stations, so you get up to 3 stations of content per station.
There is AM HD put doesn't appear to have been implemented, I couldn't find any hardware or AM HD radio stations.
But, some car manufacturers are still playing the "HD radio is extra" upgrade for their premium levels.
And then HD radio consortium killed off portable HD radios because they don't want people to pirate the clear signal.
I would Love an AM/FM (with HD) on my cell, but If you can't buy it, that's effectively killing it off.
It's easier for me to stream radio onto my cell phone, just so I can hear talk radio in the my car.
Corporations are ruining radio, mostly due to clear channel stranglehold.
But then, not everyone has high speed internet or mobile data across the US too.
The whole situation pisses me off.
College radio is still a great way to discover music. Scan the lower end of the FM dial and there's a good chance you'll find a music lover queuing up obscure tracks from eras gone by. If you don't live within range, check out the College/University section of iTunes' built-in Internet Radio menu. KALX (Berkeley), KXLU (Los Angeles), KRPF (Moscow, ID), KEXP (Seattle) are good places to start. Plus, NO COMMERCIALS.
Over the last couple of years, it seems like we've ditched a growing handful of perfectly reliable technologies in favor of a host of closed systems that rely completely on an internet connection. I see a massive vulnerability bubbling to the surface here.
We have people who simply cannot function without some kind of internet access. Without it, most of our industry leading experts become empty headed morons, unwilling or unable to perform whatever they are supposed to be the experts at. Most of our tools and toys are the same way, no network=no workie.
When the power goes out, these people and technologies just shut-down and stare at the ISP hardware until the power comes back on. Most don't even seem to own/include an AM/FM receiver.
This makes me sad, and a little worried. I completely understand how inferior OTA radio is when compared to things like streaming services and fancy internet connected gimmicks and such, but at the end of the day, radio will still be there when the rest of this shit is "searching for network"
When the rest of your options die because they all rely on a single point of failure (network connectivity) talking shows, commercials, and the same 20 artists over and over again will still be there, free of charge.... unless we let it die.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
In the beginning we had free, over the air, TV... then cable came along... and now we pay Netflix/Amazon/Disney for their programming...
Radio used to be free, over the air... then XM came along and soon we'll be paying youtube/Pandora/Spotify/Some-music-label to listen to their catalog.
Most people used to drink tap water too, now we pay $2/bottle because it has a picture of a mountain on it or it says it comes from a Tiny island 3000 miles away (Fiji).
For the adventurous I think a good deal of the West Coast has really good non-commercial radio choices.
-Particularly the SF Bay Area:
College: KFJC, KZSU, KSJS, KSCU, KALX for starters -with dozens of genres of music I rarely hear anything I have heard before and have found hundreds of new bands I like over the past 25 years as well as the occasional Eno song or lost or new psychedelic classic
Hippie Radio: KKUP, KPFA -sadly KFAT/KPIG is only online these days.
Classical/other: KDFC, KSCM (Jazz -ostensibly part of College of San Mateo, but not really)
In Northern California and Southern Oregon there is JPR (Jefferson Public Radio) as well as College and some Joe radio stations and I have even heard good radio in the Sacramento area.
Eugene, Portland and Seattle also have local stations and promote local and indie bands -particularly KEXP.
and I have even heard a fair amount of diversity in LA music stations -even on KROQ as well as local NPR affiliates
I'm sure that there are also clusters of independent or non profit radio stations on the east coast.
But if you're in the midwest and not in the Denver/Boulder area or Lawrence Kansas, you may be out of luck...
As long as free non-commercial radio continues to thrive where I live I have no interest in a cable-like Satellite radio subscription, which is going to tend to try to silo me into a particular genre when what I want is to hear different things all the time from 40s radio serials to afrobeat to 'The Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show' (KFJC) to Philosophy Talk (KZSU) to whatever emo or techno or trance some millennial in some tiny broadcast booth wants to throw down.
-I'm just sayin'
It's most certainly about the fidelity. As someone pushing 50 I have been collecting vinyl since I was a kid. I'm glad to see it coming back. It doesn't really bother me if you don't like it. If you can't distinguish the difference between an LP and MP3 that's your loss I'd say. Granted LP is not portable, requires a really good system to fully appreciate, takes up more space, and degrades over time. All of those are true. But for myself I find it to be a superior format. I like being able to have the full size cover art, and words I can actually see. As my eyes get older I really appreciate that more and more. Usually I record it into the PC using a firewire interface at 96k/24 to a wav file. And then file the record and play the wavs. In this way I reduce wear, and get my portability. And have sound quality that is far superior to CD let alone MP3. DVD-audio is the only digital format that comes close.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
And this is how we wind up with society as it is today. IMNSHO, it's important for people to be informed about things, and events, even if they are outside their interests or something they disagree with. If you just listen to content that you want to listen to, you're going to miss the larger picture. There is more to the world than what we are interested in personally, and it's valuable to know at least something about it.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
No direct cost to user (data costs money for many).
That's the dealbreaker. The problem with 'streaming' anything, is that it COSTS, COSTS, COSTS. You're paying for the connection. You're paying for the streaming service -- or you're taking an inferior streaming product for free. It's all a deal-breaker for me; I don't want to pay for ANY of it. I LIKE BROADCAST RADIO. It would sadden me greatly for it to go away -- but I would NOT pay for streaming digital anything. I'd sooner drive in silence, or bring my own music. I'm getting sick and bloody well tired of everything being monetized to death, by the way.