Asymptomatic

Hey Wait, Is Radio Dead?

October 15, 2007 7:47am · 4 Comments · , and

Today at Woot they're selling a 30GB Zune for $99, so when the clock flipped last night, I bought one. At some point in that process the whole MP3/radio idea mix leaked into my consciousness, and I ended up dreaming about it. When I woke up this morning, I was asking myself, "Is radio dead?"

One of the significant contributors to this thought is the release of Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows. It's not about the album itself - I don't have it, and am wondering if I even want to bother given that my thoughts about Radiohead deserve a full post of their own - but another question I had asked myself about it: Is the album getting radio airtime?

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Radiohead is a reasonably big name in music. Will radio stations play the album they've released online outside of the traditional distribution chain? The model for radio is usually to be courted by the music industry to play new music, especially of bands that people may want to hear on the air. The purpose is to generate money in advertising because people will not tune away from the ads between songs if they think a song they will want to hear comes next. So will radio stations play In Rainbows?

Another thing to consider is the music industry's reaction to a station that does play In Rainbows. Traditional distribution channels may balk at stations that subvert the usual supply chain. In other words, they won't give their new music to stations that play "freed" music, and so stations (because they want to be able to play that music to support their advertising) won't play the freed music so that they keep getting more top 40 from the record labels.

I wonder if there are statistics about how many people use MP3 players in their cars rather than listen to the radio. With the support in many new cars for accessory ports, I think the number may be climbing significantly. I recall hearing bad things about the adoption rate of HD radio, something that could potentially attract listeners to the medium. Stations in my area have it. But why listen to ads when you can listen to pre-recorded, personalized content? Perhaps radio should have done something different with the HD technology than digitally rebroadcasting the same stuff they do on their regular stations.

I listen to radio all the time in the car. I listen to the AM news station. And when I don't listen to that, it's the MP3 player in my phone or CDs that I have burned of my own music.

I'm reminded that not everyone is so technically savvy. I recall a humorous memory of riding in someone's car where the car radio had a warning label "Anti-Theft Device" very prominently displayed next to the tape deck.

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Comments

  1. Comment test.

  2. Not sure why but my comment from the other post is appearing here, too...?

    Lately I have been listening to the radio more since there's a very annoying issue with my FM transmitter but up until that I did prefer to choose my own music for a couple of reasons. One being that the mood I was in required music that's not played on stations (or a station in range, long distance traveling for example) and secondly, like you mentioned, to avoid the commercials. I cannot stand radio commercials or talk shows for that matter. It just drives me buggy. Husband is a different matter, there are times he wants to hear commercials. Who knows why?

    That's just me, but I don't think radio will be fully dying out any time soon.

    :)

  3. When cassette tapes hit the market, it didn't kill radio or album sales. Why would Mp3s?

  4. Harry -- Because the production medium is completely different.

    For a band to produce CDs and cassettes, it practically requires that they sign their soul over to a record company. The reason is that without the label's money, media production, and distribution chains, the band wouldn't sell enough physical album media to recoup the costs of producing it.

    With mp3's though, bands can record one digital copy for the cost of studio time - something they're likely able to earn and save enough money for on their own, if they're worth the play time - and then distribute it widely over the internet to many more people than would ever hear their song on narrow channel FM radio.

    I don't think radio is dead, really. I think radio, like the rest of the music industry, needs shaking up as to their revenue source and their purpose. There will be people who use radio for music for a while yet, but every child born from now on will know better what an mp3 player is than the static from a distant radio station.

    In the future, FM frequencies could potentially be recalled by the government for all-digital transmission of computer network broadcasts of data, which could include radio, but wouldn't be limited at all to the handful of artists that the almighty record conglomerates have approved for our ears. Playing music alone is a waste of the bandwidth in the channel.

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