In a streaming world where there are over 9,000 radio stations to choose from, how will people find the one they want to listen to?<\/p>\n
If I go to your car and turn the key and the radio is on, the station that starts playing is your P1<\/strong> station<\/strong> in radio jargon.\u00a0\u00a0 The reality is most people most of the time listen to the same radio station (when they have the radio on)<\/p>\n The new iHeartradio app is out<\/strong> (the version that doesn’t require you to tie your usage to Facebook) and I gave it another look.<\/p>\n The app suffers from the same problem as the original one – my directory hints at how Streaming is not like radio and people in the radio business (especially Bob Pittman) have some fundamental rethinking to do – and I’m not claiming to have a silver bullet and know the answers – I just maybe more clearly see the problems.<\/p>\n With 9,000+ listening choices (just on conventional over-the-air radio stations), will people have a P1 station and how will they choose it<\/strong>?\u00a0\u00a0 How will a person find that “right” station while driving down the road at 65 mph without becoming severely distracted?<\/p>\n You start by choosing “Live Stations”\u00a0\u00a0 (some of which are not radio, and most of which are not “Live” – unless you consider a computer playing music from a playlist with 15 minutes an hour of commercials being “alive”).<\/p>\n Once you go into the “Live” “Stations”, you next choose “Local” (based on your zip code), or Cities (which gives a long alphabetical list of every state, then every city in which Clear Channel has a radio station [and soon to include Cumulus] .\u00a0 Do I really want to know what radio stations are in Columbus Georgia?…<\/p>\n or and I can go by Genre – if I choose Classic Rock, it offers the 5 most popular – I can choose among Q104.3, Lone Star 92.5, Big 100.3, 967 The Arrow or 102.5 WDVE rocks.<\/p>\n As Parrot just pointed out in another comment, Huh?\u00a0\u00a0 I kind of guess the Lone Star 92.5 may be in Texas, but beyond that…\u00a0\u00a0 Once I get beyond the most popular 5, then what?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The player offers a “Scan” button which chooses a random “station” from the same genre…\u00a0 which just cycles between the 5 most popular, not the entire list.<\/p>\n Frequencies mean nothing in streaming radio<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 Location means almost nothing<\/em><\/strong>, particularly when the programming on the station is nationally syndicated like Glenn Beck or a music playlist selected by a programmer in San Antonio which chooses the same songs for every station in the country.<\/p>\n After the list of the 5 most popular stations, then I’m presented with the same alphabetical list of states, then cities – just filtered by the current genre.<\/p>\n iHeart needs a more robust way to find “My” station<\/strong> – the one that will become my P1 streaming station….\u00a0 perhaps let me choose to only show\u00a0 major market stations<\/em>, stations in a region of the country, stations that have played songs that I like in the last half hour, stations that currently have a live local host, etc…<\/p>\n Pandora is the end game<\/span><\/strong> for “radio”, and it’s why they are kicking Radio’s ass (along with Sirius\/XM).<\/p>\n iHeart’s other “Pandora like”\u00a0 option is to create a custom radio station that chooses music that you like based on your age, gender, location and hints you gave the app about specific songs and artists you like or don’t like.<\/p>\n Once people are not held captive to the list of government licensed<\/em> stations that own the monopoly to “serve” their city, the entire model of why people listen to radio for music breaks apart.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0 This is why the FM band is rapidly becoming the home for more News\/Talk and All news radio stations – but even there, with every Clear Channel news\/talk radio station carrying Rush Limbaugh at the same time, why do you need 100 choices for the same thing?\u00a0\u00a0 It’s the programming that matters, not the physical transmitter for a specific city.<\/strong><\/p>\n This week the U.S. Supreme Court heard the “Indecency” case about whether the FCC can or should regulate the content of Over the Air TV. (the case in which this web site was cited as an authority!)<\/p>\n Justice\u00a0 Samuel Alito sent a chill through the entire TV industry with this statement:<\/p>\n “<\/span>Broadcast TV is living on borrowed time<\/strong>. It is not going to be long before it goes the way of vinyl records and eight-track tapes,…Why not let this die a natural death?”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n People now care even less what the fuck people on radio say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a world with over 9,000 streaming radio stations, how will people find the station they want? Continue reading