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?
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.
