This has been on my mind for years now:
Why do most radio stations insist on playing the same selection of songs over and over?
I imagine it must be a copyrights thing? Pay for usage of this particular catalogue for a year?
Don’t those DJs get absolutely sick of it after a while?
My wife and I went for a drive the other day and whatever station I was on was playing songs I loved from the 90s. And then I checked the station. Classic rock.
Then today the faint came on my Spotify and even though I listen to them quite a bit it suddenly hit me that I discovered them during the height of limewire, about 6 years after I graduated highschool so I still consider them new. Looked up when their song came out. 25 years ago. Fuck!!!
Radio stations used to have actual, human DJs. They were smart, funny and they knew what people really wanted. After the ClearChannel takeover, almost all of those stations are automated. The music playlists are decided by corporations and have no connection to the real world.
Shout out to KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle / KEXC 92.7 FM Alameda/San Francisco. All real live DJs all the time, picking amazing music across genres.
Sounds awesome!
And the Clearchannel takeover was set loose by the Telecoms Act of 1996. Prior to that, it was illegal in the US to own more than 7 units of media - any combo of radio or TV stations, magazines, newpapers, etc. There was too much media for the billionaires to own it all under the old regulations.
Jack FM was a joy to listen to - at least in the early days - because they got rid of DJs. They wanted the effect of listening to mp3s on shuffle. I have never enjoyed DJs and I think it’s pretty common. Just play music and back announce the tracks.
Good DJs can play a set and back announce the tracks. Jim Ladd on KLOS comes to mind as a DJ I would specifically tune into back in the early 00’s. This was because of the awesome sets he’d produce, intermixing top hits with b-sides and deep cuts, truly expanding my knowledge and love of classic rock.
There was a radio station who’s whole thing was that they would never play nickleback. Then one day they accidentally played nickleback. The Playlists were coming from some head office 5000 miles away, and they missed pulling a nickleback track once it got to the local station.
In the 80s, I used to be a DJ at a radio station, and had the midnight to 6 a.m. shift. In the beginning, everything was OK, we had a catalogue of about a thousands songs that I could choose and pick from. Commercially the station wasn’t successful so very soon the catalogue was reduced to 500 songs, then 250, then to 100 songs, and then to a dozen songs. It was horrible, I had to come up with ideas how am I getting a story up about this stupid handful of songs. I started reading f****g poetry out loud, my own poetry because we couldn’t buy any of the real poetry stuff. I’m not a poet ! So my salary also dropped. In the end, I had TWO songs that I could choose from: BTO’s You ain’t seen nothing yet and a shitty B side by Shakin’ Stevens. SIX HOURS to play just two songs, if it had been at least three songs, I could’ve mixed them, but you cannot mix two songs! Bloody hell.
At that point you might as well start learning guitar on air
That makes no sense? Why not play small bands that would be happy to have their music on the air for free?
For free? That sounds like communism to me!
Does the word “B-b-b-baby” give you PTSD flashbacks?
I didn’t have it that bad but I had to spend a whole night as a temp factory worker throwing hay into a machine to shred it into pet bedding and they had Culture Club - Karma Chameleon on repeat for 10hrs.
Liked the song before that night. I refused to work there again after that night.
I feel like that’s psychological torture
I had a boss in an office that decided to have an Alice in Wonderland themed pot luck. She turned on the movie on repeat. Then she just never turned off the movie. It was on a screen on low volume right in front of my desk for weeks. She had an office, I didn’t. Eventually I sent her an email saying it was phycological torture after like week 3 to have the same movie playing on repeat for 8 hours Monday thru Friday.
I also worked at a video store once that we had to play the promotional DVD on repeat. It was about 2 hours long of footage over and over and we couldn’t turn it down.
My sister worked at Abercrombie & Fitch back in their late-90s/early-00s peak. Every month or two, corporate would send a CD to be played in store during open hours. A 60-minute (or less) loop of company-sactioned pop music, all shift, every shift. I wasn’t the one working there and I still felt miserable on her behalf.
Oi mate, you got a loicense for that track?
If the station is failing and the track selection was that dire (2 fucking songs??) I’d be contacting small labels / indie labels asking for written permission to play their music and if they can send you a CD or record or whatever. Guarantee you’d get several bites from small artists that want their music heard. Hindsight 20-20 and all though.
Should’ve asked for the two songs to be: What’s New Pussycat, and It’s Not Unusual.
Calm down, John Mulaney
Blame Reagan.
Back when radio was starting, a bipartisan Congress created the FCC. Some of the rules were that no one entity could own more than one AM and one FM station in any market [later one VHF TV channel] There had to be a balance in editorial content; if the station supported Candidate A, Candidate B had to be allowed equal time.
Reagan ‘saved’ the media by deregulating it.
There had to be a balance in editorial content
This rule was was the Fairness Doctrine, and it was in effect from 1949 to 1987. So it’s fair to say that Reagan got rid of it.
if the station supported Candidate A, Candidate B had to be allowed equal time.
This is a different rule called the Equal Time Rule, and it’s still in effect today.
Recently this rule was in the news when Stephen Colbert interviewed Senate candidate James Talarico on his (now concluded) show, without offering the same interview time to Talarico’s primary opponent Jasmine Crockett. I believe in the end the interview was cut from the over-the-air broadcast to comply with the rule. (The interview segment was published on YouTube, which is not subject to the rule.)
https://bookshop.org/beta-search
Ross Thomas was a Washington reporter turned crime novelist. All his stories have a political slant.
The Fools In Town Are On Our Side is about an ex-CIA agent who is trying to make a small Southern city ‘so corrupt the pimps will vote for reform.’
Anyone who knows the difference between the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule will probably enjoy his work
All roads lead to reagan
Reagan never ruled on my country and it’s the same.
Radio stations play the same songs over and over again.
Can I assume Denmark from your username?
I don’t know enough about other countries to make an intelligent comment.
On the other hand, I could write a book on how Reagan screwed up the US media.
Before him, kids’ cartoons were highly regulated. After he came in, you started seeing full length commercials like “GI Joe” and “The Transformers.”
Cable was getting off the ground at the time, and the FCC could have reigned in Fox News.
How dare you criticize GI Joe
Here’s a great story.
Snake Eyes was one of the original Joes. He was made of all black plastic because that was the cheapest thing they could do.
Oh yes he did. The President of the United States is also the President of America’s vassals.
I don’t see how editorial content regulations impact a DJ’s catalogue?
The part about one entity being able to own all the stations in one town.
Because they are all owned by the same people.
When I worked at a warehouse almost a decade ago, the person in charge of the PA system would pipe in music from the local dad-rock radio station. I would hear the same 15 to 20 songs at least three or four times a shift. if it weren’t for the commercials I would have thought it was a mix CD on random.
Because record label media companies own 98% of radio stations via iHeartRadio, Clear Media and Audacy.
They want them to brainwash the media with their newest releases from their artists to convince them that it’s good music by playing it non stop adnauseam
Isn’t iHeart and ClearChannel the same company?
Apparently they are which makes this even worse
Radio playlists are a science like marketing. Half the budget is wasted, you’re just never sure which half.
Stations have a target audience. They will have focused grouped this. They know their favorite music, how long on average they listen, and how much they will expect to hear certain artists. The DJs are mere announcers, they have little to no choice in what they play, and they are grateful to have a job. So like anybody working in retail during Christmas, they can tune out the music in their heads.
Yeah it sucks, when I started commuting longer I started to out on the radio as I got kind if bored of my music, at first it was awesome, then like a moth th passed and I couldn’t stand it anymore, listening to ads just to hear a repeated song again.
Its like they put the same block of songs at the same time if day so when you are in traffic each day you just hear the same shuffled playlist
Don’t big record companies just have the 10 hits they manufactured in a laboratory which they test in key markets and then push out to the rest of the world. I remember when I went to Southern California I was hearing a bunch of songs I’d never heard before. A few months later those songs were being played on corporate radio in the EU.
When they tried playing different stuff, people didn’t like it.
Payola.
Radio stations play what’s popular. What’s popular is what’s on the radio. It’s a vicious fucking cycle of self-reinforcement.
Im unreasonably upset about radio in my area still playing Party Like its 1999. Its not a good song, I can see it having been fun to listen to around new years eve up until 2002. It has no business being a radio staple in the 2020s. It was written to celebrate a very specific time, it was barely good enough to do that, its time to bury it.
Not only that, Prince has SO much more material to be discovered by the average Joe. Obviously that goes for most artists but it just irks me that typical radio is somehow in it’s own bubble.
Right before David Bowie died he released blackstar which for me was a huge discovery at the time. What did the stations do when he died? Play the classics. Mfr, honour the man properly and play his new material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
TL/DR: music corps push radio to play their “fashionable” tracks.
Time to switch to a radio station that’s not bought by some big money agenda?
I recently got back into somafm again, after many many years hiatus.
In my personal time I prefer just listening to albums on a usb stick if you catch my drift. It’s at work where it bugs me.
Fun suggestion:
Slip work’s radio a usb stick, surreptitiously, some day, with better tunes and none of the crap.
And (of course) a bigger collection, that won’t loop over the same so soon.
