As Ubiquitous Availability Becomes Reality
A wave of change is approaching the terrestrial and satellite radio industry—like a tsunami headed for shore. Sirius XM is fighting to retain paying subscribers. Radio conglomerates face plunging revenues, rising costs and eroding listenership. But there are additional, perhaps insurmountable factors undermining radio’s future.
The radio business is largely built upon two foundations.
Scarcity—terrestrial radio is built upon demand for a limited number of FCC licenses.
Barrier To Entry— costs to purchase a frequency plus operate are substantial.
Enter the Internet. Startup costs become basic—a URL web address, some readily available low cost software, content and music royalties. Scarcity and barriers to entry are no longer part of this equation. In this morning’s subscriber-only @MusicRow an article about streaming radio says that over half of teens 13-17 are already using the quickly proliferating number of available online services.
Now imagine that in addition to getting the signal on your computer and mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) Internet is also available on your car radio. As ubiquitous availability becomes reality, virtual Internet stations will mushroom overnight.
Kenny Chesney is surfing this wave of change with his newly launched No Shoes Radio channel (www.noshoesradio.com) which features the artist’s music, plus a diverse sampling of other artists and formats. Demand from fans was so high that over 50,000 streams were served on launch, temporarily freezing the servers in the process. “It’s…knowing that you’re still in sync with the fans,” said Chesney. Commenting upon the launch glitch he said, “When you try something that people tell you is crazy, in the back of your mind you’re glad there was so much demand.”
So where is this going?
Will it change the country music business which is still tied tightly to country radio exposure and the radio charts?
Will a changing radio landscape open up playlists and expand the format’s diversity?
What do you think?
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What I miss (and what others may miss) in the radio landscape these days is a sense of locality. If radio, through conglomerate ownership, voice tracking, and syndicated programming becomes as apart from communities as Pandora and Slacker then listeners will find little distinction between their local signals and online services originating from who knows where. I always am a little more interested in programming that I know originates in my area, even if it is just that the music was chosen by someone from where I live and especially if other aspects of programming reflects an interest in my community. When I hear an evening shift at one of our Nashville stations go hours without a reference to a local street, person, event, etc it’s certainly no more interesting than listening to a few hours of Jango.
I’m not sure where this leaves our format except I wonder if 20 years from now we will hear fewer songs about calling DJ’s to make requests because we will all know that the local stations are merely a node for blanded out average national tastes and the guy on duty is just there to make sure the feed stays connected.
If we consider community to be central to the themes of country music (and it is based on the number of songs about small towns) maybe a good thing for us to do would be to mount a campaign to bring back ownership limits for broadcast media and encourage live local programming. Between a local kid on his first on air gig and the syndicated John Tesh, I will take the kid everytime. Between John Tesh and Pandora, it’s a toss up. Actually, I’ll take Pandora.
It’s not what I think. It’s what I know. Kids and young adults do not listen to the radio. Why should they? Radio is something you have on while driving in your car. My offspring, 24-30 years of age, don’t pay any attention to radio. If it’s on it’s just background noise. They get their entertainment from their phones and iPods, Facebook and Twitter, but not MySpace. The three remaining record labels are becoming more and more irrelevant and continue to loose significant amounts of market share very quarter. Recorded music is so ubiquitous and so easily available that it has become a commodity of little monetary value. That’s the elephant in the room- RECORDED MUSIC HAS NO MONETARY VALUE and RADIO IS DEAD! iTunes has completely taken over the business. Sony, EMI, Warner- all walking corpses. RIP.
Grassroots from the root up is coming full-circle yet again.Live local programming ties in with familial interests.The times they are changing and he who us not busy being born is busy dying.
As long as radio plays the same 2 female artists in the top 5 24/7/365, forget it. If they would play more of the underplayed artists like Kellie Pickler then I’d be interested. The latest example, Best Days Of Your Life is #5 on Callout and it just barely made #9 on radio. So listeners said it deserves top 5 but some stations didn’t even put it in their top 40 yet they have 2 or 3 old songs by the same artists above. Something’s not right with this picture.
What planet are you living on. Talk radio is what we listen to in Chattanooga and believe it or not not everyone is in aww of crap like I-pods and all these web-sites I mean get off your behind and get out of the house. Vinyl Records are making a comeback and was suprised at the amount of persons my age who were in a vintage shop over the past couple of months looking for music we like. No-one listens to radio cause it is directed at tweens and teenagers and the music is crap so go figure! Nashville went downhill when MTV Networks purchased Operaland and closed it and changed CMT forever!
I don’t care what you think I like what I like I will catch my local music shows and watch Hee-haw tonight Yeah buddy get er dune hehehe.
How true, how true. Radio as you and I knew it is dead. Move on to the new formats Nashville labels or your fate is inevitable. Like the comment above that quotes Bob Dylan..”he who is not busy being born..is busy dying”. Yes THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN!!!
I remember the last time radio died. It was in the 60’s and some stations played what was called “underground” music.That music and those formats brought up a new “band” that was supposed to be worthless called FM. “Radio” will soon be even more “everywhere”, on your computer, phone, you name it. But be careful, soon all these ubiquitous online channels will be charging you for content. We are all in the throes of a huge sea change. Listen. I’ll talk about it on the radio!
When I want to hear a cool country song, I turn on my radio in my car, millions of us stll do. Yes, I do get tired of the commercials, but someone has to pay for it, and thanks to radio, writers still get paid. Take that away, and you will lose a lot of great songs.
Radio is losing so much ground that many of the big Corporations are getting ready to exit, when that happens, locals may own the stations again.