Why hasnt radio changed?

darius

richardhomer said:

darius said:

30 million songs available for free to anyone on the internet.
And still every radio station playlist consist of Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher, George Ezra and Rag And Bone Man on repeat every hour. For Alternative radio, add one old song by REM. 
It does my head in. Why are they unchanged?

Would you be happier if they played ‘Colourblind’ - or one of your other early singles?

Damn. My cover is blown.

TTBZ

chromatuna said:

6 Music is much broader although I do think that, like John Peel, they play a lot of stuff because it's 'happening' rather than because it's actually any good (old fogey alert!) 

Agreed, this is what annoys me about 6 music. Sometimes get some great stuff but there's mostly a lot of artsy wank on there.

fandango

TTBZ said:

chromatuna said:

6 Music is much broader although I do think that, like John Peel, they play a lot of stuff because it's 'happening' rather than because it's actually any good (old fogey alert!) 

Agreed, this is what annoys me about 6 music. Sometimes get some great stuff but there's mostly a lot of artsy wank on there.

Artsy wank isn't just a modern phenomena ... it's has been with us for far longer ... check out Arthur Brown or The Principal Edwards Magic Theatre for instance when they appeared on the scene very late 60's into the early 70's. Especially the latter. They made their name on pretentiousness.

Trude

I'll take pretentious, wanky art-rock over bland wallpaper pop any day of the week.

boogieman

Philly_Q said:

Planet Rock is as guilty as anyone else.  For any given artist they only ever play the best known songs.  It's all Wanted Dead Or Alive and Boys Are Back In Town.

Yup. Team Rock were so much better, a great shame it went to internet only. They still played the standard range of rawk bands, but at least they mixed it up a bit and featured some lesser known tracks. They also did prog, blues, jazz etc instead of the run of the mill chart friendly stuff. 

AlexC

I know the answer to this one - because radio is crap.
For me it’s the aural equivalent of going to a bookshop, being given a book I haven’t chosen while some annoying sod reads it aloud to me. I’ve got my own music collection, thanks all the same. Which doesn’t have people wittering on between the tracks.

scrumhalf

For those feeling nostalgic for years gone by:

https://www.uniteddj.com/

Snap

I only listen to 6Music. During the day I like it, Shaun Keaveny, Lauren Laverne, Radcliffe & Maconie, Lamacq, all play a good variety and have some good interviews and individual pieces in there too.

It can get a bit too clever for its own good over the weekend, particularly Cerys Matthew's show which for me usually plays overly obscure stuff, most of which is just rubbish.

But, if I want to discover new music I just use Spotify's radio channels, be that for a song or a band. Usually I like 80% of what comes up, if not more. Perfect.

Other than that, I'll have sport on if I'm doing some work in the garden or fannying around with tools.

Used to listen to 5live, but IMO that is pretty poor now with massively annoying presenters, apart from Tony Livesey (even if he is a Burnley fan)

Fretwired

The internet is your friend. There are zillions of radio stations you can stream playing whatever you want to listen to .. R4 is the only station I listen to on the BBC.

impmann

Planet Rock went up its own arsehole, playing the same old dross day-in-day-out - there's a limit to the number of times I can hear Sweet Home Alabama before I start wanting to kill everyone in sight (normally, less than one). It became formulaic cack with way too much dull old stuff and not enough new stuff. I didn't mourn its passing.

6 music plays too much "artsy" "wank" - well, if you mean it doesn't play Sweet Home Alabama on repeat then yes, you are right. No, there's not a lot of 'rawk' on there... thank fucking christ. Frankly, I love the fact that some shows play stuff that I don't like - or challenges my perceptions... much like John Peel did. He's held up as this demi-god by a lot of folks - me included - by to be honest he did play a lot of "unlistenable noise" (his words) and "dubious twaddle" (his words) by people that "nobody else cares about" (his words). And thank god he did... in my experience, for every five people that say they listened to his program four are lying to make themselves look cool.

Radio 1 - I'm not the target audience, as I'm older than 13, so I can't comment.

Radio 2 - I can't bear Jeremy Vine or Steve Wright (that cunt wasn't funny in the 1980s - and his 'humour' has aged as well as a rotten pear) so daytimes are just terrible. They also insist on using Richard Madeley as a stand in DJ... he makes oven-baked lettuce seem enticing. Actually he makes sucking an exhaust pipe seem a good option...

To be honest, there isn't much music on FM that's worth listening to during the day, IMHO. 6music gets my vote when I'm around a DAB radio but having tried using one in the car... its just too much a drop out zone.

EricTheWeary

Snap said:

I only listen to 6Music. During the day I like it, Shaun Keaveny, Lauren Laverne, Radcliffe & Maconie, Lamacq, all play a good variety and have some good interviews and individual pieces in there too.

It can get a bit too clever for its own good over the weekend, particularly Cerys Matthew's show which for me usually plays overly obscure stuff, most of which is just rubbish.

But, if I want to discover new music I just use Spotify's radio channels, be that for a song or a band. Usually I like 80% of what comes up, if not more. Perfect.

Other than that, I'll have sport on if I'm doing some work in the garden or fannying around with tools.

Used to listen to 5live, but IMO that is pretty poor now with massively annoying presenters, apart from Tony Livesey (even if he is a Burnley fan)

I haven't used Spotify for ages, partly because they plug certain tracks on the radio channels and you just get those all the time. Add to that I was using free Spotify and got ads so it was pretty much like a crap commercial radio station. 
I do have Google Play ( well, my son does and I can access it) which actually seems to just play the relevant stuff. 

Philly_Q

impmann said:

Planet Rock went up its own arsehole, playing the same old dross day-in-day-out - there's a limit to the number of times I can hear Sweet Home Alabama before I start wanting to kill everyone in sight (normally, less than one). It became formulaic cack with way too much dull old stuff and not enough new stuff. I didn't mourn its passing.

Has Planet Rock gone?  When did that happen?

Is my Planet Rock Marshall radio now redundant??!

UnclePsychosis

At the risk of being rude, anyone who thinks 6music is "mostly artsy wank" either hasn't listened to 6music for more than a couple of hours or has never actually encountered any real artsy wank.

Philly_Q

UnclePsychosis said:

At the risk of being rude, anyone who thinks 6music is "mostly artsy wank" either hasn't listened to 6music for more than a couple of hours or has never actually encountered any real artsy wank.

I don't know if they play "mostly artsy wank" or not, but they don't seem to play a lot of what @impmann called "rawk" and I happen to like "rawk".

I don't mind if it's "artsy wank rawk"... but it needs to be "rawk".  At least a bit "rawk".

And I'd have to say, regardless of what they play, a lot of the 6 Music presenters do seem to be artsy wankers. 

AliGorie

RTE radio channel's do it for me - refreshingly un-imperialist - We're the Great British Musical Center of the Universe. vibe.

fandango

Philly_Q said:

UnclePsychosis said:

At the risk of being rude, anyone who thinks 6music is "mostly artsy wank" either hasn't listened to 6music for more than a couple of hours or has never actually encountered any real artsy wank.

I don't know if they play "mostly artsy wank" or not, but they don't seem to play a lot of what @impmann called "rawk" and I happen to like "rawk".

I don't mind if it's "artsy wank rawk"... but it needs to be "rawk".  At least a bit "rawk".

And I'd have to say, regardless of what they play, a lot of the 6 Music presenters do seem to be artsy wankers. 

One man's artsy wank is another man's ......

Funkfingers

darius said:

Why are they unchanged?

• Cocaine impairs judgement.
• Advertisement revenue is the goal.
• Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public.
• Since it "ain't broke", nobody in the business feels motivated to fix it.
• D.J.s with any opinions or personality are verboten for fear of giving offence to lawyered-up, whiny single-/self-interest groups.

TheBigDipper

Radio?

Commercial radio exists to justify advertising prices by acquiring audience figures at the lowest production cost. If you're really lucky and find a station that hits your button, latch onto it until the time comes when they feel they can get better listening figures by changing the playlist.  I used to love the "pre-Capital" XFM before they ran out of money. I also used to love GLR before they stole it back and turned it into BBC London again - and now I don't live in London I never hear it anyway. BBC Solent is just like Radio 2 (retarded) to my ears. 

The lovely BBC has a remit to entertain and inform. It's a not-for-profit organisation. An individual person can't be entertained by everything it puts out. It's easy to attack the BBC for spending lots of money on things that a commercial station cannot.
That's the point. A commercial station would not - and we'd lose out.

I listen to 6Music when I'm looking for music radio. I'm 60. Radio 1 stopped being relevant to me decades ago. Radio 2 has always been music for people who don't really like music much, IMHO, but do like nostalgia for their youth - and I've never been able to stick with it. 

The truth, though, is I no longer find new music through the radio. The internet has replaced it for that purpose. 

Grunfeld

scrumhalf said:

You have to understand that our view of music is heavily skewed.

For most people it's something in the background and if the choice of listening is left to someone else then it's one thing less they don't have to think about.

@scrumhalf ; This. 
Radio is no different to punters and playing covers.  Punters all say they want to hear different songs but as soon as you go off piste the dancing stops. 
By definition as guitarists we are going to be more interested in music.  None of us would ever settle on a practice list of a few dozen songs -- we'd go mental with boredom.

Like Fretwired said, Internet Radio is the only decent option for music, and Spotify Discover Weekly.

robinbowes

Grunfeld said:

 and Spotify Discover Weekly.

This. I use DW a lot.

Except, it can get a bit samey or take a wrong turn based on what you're listening too. For example, I worked up a few folk/country covers with a vocalist recently and repeat listened most of the songs we were playing many times on Spotify, which totally fucked my "Discover Weekly" for a several weeks. Similarly, when I depped in a Lynyrd Skynryd tribute band I got Southern Rawk in my DIscover Weekly for *ages*!

R.