Young listeners tune out radio in search for new music

Boston Globe ^ | 07/20/09 | Joseph P Kahn and James Reed

[raccoonradio]

Browsing through new releases at a downtown record store, Chet Mohr of Somerville admitted that commercial radio is far down his source list for finding new music. Where precisely does radio rank? Somewhere between irrelevant and are-you-kidding-me, Mohr indicated.

“I’m into local bands and record labels, and they don’t get played on the radio much,’’ said Mohr, a 23-year-old guitar enthusiast and bank employee who hopes to form his own rock band. To broaden his musical palate, Mohr relies on bloggers, Internet message boards, web publications, friends, and social networking sites.

Sam Davies, 16, a student at Needham High School, searches for new iPod tunes on sites like Pandora Radio, an Internet service that streams customized play lists. Turn on the car radio? “Almost never,’’ Davies said. “I plug in my iPod. It’s got 6,000 songs on it.’’

For music-oriented terrestrial radio stations, comments like these have a distinctly funereal ring. Other than Radio Disney, KISS-108, and other stations appealing to grade-school and preteen tastes, or college radio stations with weak broadcast signals and niche audiences, the medium’s message can be summed up this way: change happens. And among its biggest consequences is the changing way younger people find new music they love - and love to share.

Has commercial music radio become so moribund it no longer serves as pop tastemaker whatsoever? Or does it just seem that way in light of last week’s announcement that WBCN-FM, once the agenda setter for an entire region of hip rock fans and record buyers, is switching to a sports-talk format? Is satellite radio, ad-free and genre-specific, the last, best hope for drawing trend-setting younger listeners to the radio dial?

In short, is music on the radio a lost cause?

[raccoonradio]

I've been a DJ on a college radio station since 1981 and have done a blues show since 1988. Most of my listeners tend to be a bit older but here is what's up with younger listeners...radio still can break new music but its influence is going down.

[dirtboy]

The stuff I heard on radio nowadays is abysmal. And it isn’t just me (48 years old) - I works with some guys in their late twenties and they say the music coming out on radio nowadays largely sucks as well. There is always good music out there - but what is being pushed forward is lame-assed chippy pop, from pinheads who get all impressed with their cutsey lyrics but somehow forget to write a song to go with it.

[raccoonradio]

I still have fun doing my blues show even if it is for a niche audience. Yesterday on air I was talking about the demise of WBCN and remembering how Charles Laquidara would have a contest every day, Mishegas, and you had to “do the funky chicken” if you lost. So I thought, hmm, I oughta play that tune (by Rufus Thomas) but not sure our station has it...well there’s always YouTube. Sure enough, I found it there and since we have a comp. (actually, two) wired into the board I played the tune right off that.

But even blues fans have other options: BB King’s Bluesville on XM/Sirius; Ipod and mp3 downloads, all-blues stations on HD radio etc

[raccoonradio]

I’m 47 btw :)

[dirtboy]

Blues does have some options. BTW, there is good blues show you can catch on the web from WXPN in Philly:

http://xpn.org/xpn-programs/blues-show

The host has been doing it for decades and covers the entire gamut of the genre.

[jeffc]

I haven't listened to the radio in the car for . . . . over 10 years, and the last of those years was talk radio - no music. KLOL (Houston) used to be a great AOR station back in the '80s, but it soon dropped off into, I don't know what.
I try to listen to internet radio (classic rock) while playing TDU, but I find myself frequently changing stations, as almost stations (seem to) play the same songs over and over and over.
Someday I'll have to break down and buy the CDs and make my own playlists. Someday . . . .

[chrisser]

Part of the problem is that every time a station with a slightly different playlist gains any popularity in a market, Clear Channel buys them out and converts them to one of their bland play lists.

Now, I’m not saying Clear Channel should be regulated, but I don’t understand why they are so insistent on pushing seven flavors of bland to audiences who are almost universally tuning out.

We have a local country station that runs commercials touting their “HD” channel that plays “classic country”. They make it sound pretty good. I always ask myself why they don’t play those tunes on their main station, instead of the repeated pap they play instead.

[raccoonradio]

I do listen to a lot of talk myself (Ingraham, Howie Carr, Phil Hendrie, Dan Rea in Boston) and sports. I do have a bit more variety in the car as I have XM. I am interested enough in music radio though that I enjoy some shows--for example Vermont Public Radio's oldies show My Place, etc.

Here is yours truly on the air at my college radio station (and yup, note the raccoon as in my FR screen name) :)

[CougarGA7]

The thing that really ticks me off is that we cant seem to keep the Bob and Tom Show on the air here in Albuquerque.

[KarlInOhio]

Far too many stations are programmed remotely with the only staff for multiple stations is an engineer to make sure the computers can download the programs and keep feeding the program to the antennas. The old days of having local bands being interviews and their records played are long gone replaced by a few companies feeding essentially the same playlist to every station in the country. Zzzzzzzz!

[Publius Valerius]

I do have a bit more variety in the car as I have XM.

I really liked XM. Then it got bought by Sirius. I have not been pleased with the results.

[raccoonradio]

Right, except maybe on small college stations like mine. For example, I had on a guy from a band that did New Orleans/
cajun music. They were doing a staged reading of a play about Hurricane Katrina. I had the guy on for about an hour and
10 minutes; he didn’t play live (we did play songs from his
albums) but we just had fun talking; other times I have had bands down there to play live, or the local music show just before me has done so. Rare, though, on radio as a whole.

Stations like mine do have a commitment to exposing local
music. We also have only 130 watts (but do streamcast)...

[Travis T. OJustice]

? Or does it just seem that way in light of last week’s announcement that WBCN-FM, once the agenda setter for an entire region of hip rock fans and record buyers, is switching to a sports-talk format?

Are you chittin me? Wow.

[KarlInOhio]

Stations like mine do have a commitment to exposing local music. We also have only 130 watts (but do streamcast)...

I think my college station was 8 watts. You could hear it from most of the parking lots, except for the overflow lot down the hill from the campus. < /slight exageration>

There was a Cincinnati alternative station that was great for local bands, but their transmitter/antenna/license were bought by a big corporation and homogenized. They kept their name and became an internet only station for a while. Now they've started broadcasting on a public station's second HD channel, but I don't have an HD radio so I don't know what the broadcast is like.

[jeffc]

Here is yours truly on the air at my college radio station (and yup, note the raccoon as in my FR screen name) :)

Does the raccoon know Jessica Rabbit? LOL!

[fightin bronco]

Now, I get my new music from XM, Itunes, or Amazon. I haven't listened to local radio (music) since I got XM three years ago.

I do agree with some posts that there are some great independent stations out there. My favorite is the Seton Hall College station. Unfortunately, I haven't lived in NJ in eight years so I have missed it.

[raccoonradio]

Ha! “He’s not bad...he’s just drawn that way!”