remaking radio

[alocispepraluger102]

http://allthingsd.com/20131018/seismic-shifts-remake-the-radio-industry/

"The U.S. census confirms broadcast radio listening is declining, compounded by broadcasters’ unremarkable influence in the online streaming space. According to Triton Digital, at any given moment among online listeners (M-F 6am-8pm), Pandora has more than twice the audience of all of the radio stations owned by Clear Channel, CBS, Cumulus, Entercom and the next seven broadcasting companies combined. Factor in tens of millions listening to iTunes radio, Google Play, Spotify, XBox Music, Rhapsody and other audio startups (not measured by Triton), not to mention SiriusXM and the explosive growth of streaming on smartphones, it’s clear that broadcast radio’s monopoly has ended.

As the velocity of change accelerates, broadcasters need the equivalent of the Manhattan Project for content — particularly original online content. And among the increasingly crowded personalized radio/on-demand music services, companies that couple their appealing personalized/on-demand attributes with extraordinary original content will break out from the pack just as HBO and Discovery did."

[BillF]

For what it's worth, here's one listener's experience. Since I signed up for Spotify about 6 months ago, there has been a serious decline in my jazz radio listening. I used to listen to radio primarily to hear new sounds - jazz I hadn't heard before. Things discovered in this way often led to album purchases - or should I say, album acquisition? On Spotify there is enough unheard stuff to keep me discovering new sounds till the end of my days and I listen so much on it that I have little time left for jazz radio. Album acquisition has also been largely replaced by the adding of good new discoveries to my Spotify playlists. These, however, may not be entirely reliable - often tracks are omitted from albums and tracks can disappear after a few months, so there's still hope for CDs!

[alocispepraluger102]

likewise, bill. the romance and grandeur of radio is now but a skeleton long side the road.

the witness(on the passing of things)

In a stable which is almost in the shadow of the new stone church, a man with gray eyes and gray beard, lying amidst the odor of the animals, humbly seeks death as one would seek sleep. The day, faithful to vast and secret laws, is shifting and confusing the shadows inside the poor shelter; outside are the plowed fields and a ditch clogged with dead leaves and the tracks of a wolf in the black mud where the forests begin. The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten. He is awakened by the bells tolling the Angelus. In the kingdoms of England the ringing of bells is now one of the customs of the evening, but this man, as a child, has seen the face of Woden, the divine horror and exultation, the crude wooden idol hung with Roman coins and heavy clothing, the sacrificing of horses, dogs and prisoners. Before dawn he will die and with him will die, and never return, the last immediate images of these pagan rites; the world will be a little poorer when this Saxon has died. Deeds which populate the dimensions of space and which reach their end when someone dies may cause us wonderment, but one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies in every final agony, unless there is a universal memory as the theosophists have conjectured. In time there was a day that extinguished the last eyes to see Christ; the battle of Junin and the love of Helen died with the death of a man. What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? The voice of Mace- donio Fernandez, the image of a red horse in the vacant lot at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulphur in the drawer of a mahogany desk? --Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths

[mjzee]

I long ago lost the allure of radio. I lived in various places in NYC where the radio experience was frequently punctuated by static. Even in the car, we now listen to Sirius/XM. Radio, at least aimed at adults, does need to rethink what it needs to do to survive. Attractive on-air personalities are one, fewer commercials are another.