Radio stations

[copier addict]

Why do radio station pick about 40 songs and just play the shit out of them until you are completely sick of them? Why can't they play a variety of songs like they used to? I still listen to the radio as I drive along and it is quite annoying hearing the same songs day after day. We have a couple classic rock stations in my area and I will flip between them and they both seem to pick their own 40 songs, so I do get some variety that way. The one station is trying to pass off Oasis as classic rock. lol. I sent them an email about that.
Thanks for listening.
Rant over.

[KenB]

Why do radio station pick about 40 songs and just play the shit out of them until you are completely sick of them? Why can't they play a variety of songs like they used to? I still listen to the radio as I drive along and it is quite annoying hearing the same songs day after day. We have a couple classic rock stations in my area and I will flip between them and they both seem to pick their own 40 songs, so I do get some variety that way. The one station is trying to pass off Oasis as classic rock. lol. I sent them an email about that.
Thanks for listening.
Rant over.
Amen, Brother!

Radio is just the same handful of songs over and over, and it seems that if a station has some kind of promotion going with a particular artist, their stuff gets played even more. (If that's even possible.)

Satellite radio is a slight improvement, but not much. I have (or now had) it in my car, but I just could not decide that it was worth the subscription fee once my trial was over (90 days came with the car when I bought it.)

On a somewhat unrelated note, my wife and I have now had 4 cars with XM, from the factory, and it just seems that the sound quality is overall terrible. No static or noise, but no high or low end; it just sounds blah. No gain to speak of, either. As dirty and as filthy as an FM signal is, it still seems much livelier than satellite. Plus, I've not yet been blessed with HD FM, which sounds even better.

[Vincent128]

Insert Tom Petty's The Last DJ...

I don't even try radio anymore. I still have my Sansa Fuze with its open source replacement firmware on it that i use to listen to music on. Fortunately all our service cars have an Aux in. Here at the shop I have an old laptop that i put Mint on and its runs Pithos all day.

[guitar9199]

I bounce between talk radio, the local college rock station, and my MP3 player or CD. I just can't with "Top 40" anymore, and the local "Hard Rock" station is playing stuff that has me scratching my head!!

...Keep in mind, CCR, Aerosmith, Cream and Led Zeppelin were all "Top 40" radio when I was growing up!!

[Coptech]

I remember a friend calling the local radio station asking "do you take requests"? They said "sure, no problem". So he told them "I don't ever want to hear that last song again"!

[KenB]

Keep in mind, CCR, Aerosmith, Cream and Led Zeppelin were all "Top 40" radio when I was growing up!!
Ahhh, the good 'ol days!!

Back in the day, I was more into the "Country Rock": Eagles, Outlaws, Flying Burrito Brothers, Firefall, Dan Fogelberg...those were my favorites back then.

It seems like the "Classic Rock" stations are trying to fill the old "Top 40" void.

Same here with the "Progressive Rock". Just a bit over the top.

[NeoMatrix]

Amen, Brother!


On a somewhat unrelated note, my wife and I have now had 4 cars with XM, from the factory, and it just seems that the sound quality is overall terrible. No static or noise, but no high or low end; it just sounds blah. No gain to speak of, either. As dirty and as filthy as an FM signal is, it still seems much livelier than satellite. Plus, I've not yet been blessed with HD FM, which sounds even better.

Seriously you have a dirty FM signal ?
FM(Frequency Modulation) is one of the clearest modulation modes.

I would understand if you said dirty AM (Amplitude Modulation )
or as its known today "Ancient modulation" ...

AM is very susceptible to ignition coil an spark gap noise from the vehicles operation. It was/is quite common for the suppression capacitor on the ignition coil or distributor to fail and therefor transmit EMF noise through the cars Radio. You could easily tell the caps had failed because the noise was in time with the RPM of the car.

Most FM radio station here in out location are clean clear and have fully stereo high quality reception. You will always suffer station loss when out of range, but the reception quality is still good just low in volume.

I've never heard of HD FM... I have heard of Digital FM which (in my opinion) will be a very sad day if it ever makes its way into
our broadcast zones. Digital TV is very hit-miss broken pixelated noise spiked quality, and so too(I feel) Digital Radio will be the same.

interesting...

PS. Love Mid-Night Oil ,the Eagles , AC/DC (others) in my day...
I'm more country music these day...:)

[fixthecopier]

Radio stations are either part of a big corporation, or a small company using consultants. I remember my local station, years ago, seemed to think the only song Aerosmith ever recorded was "Love in an Elevator". They played it so much, I quit listening to them for a couple of years. Every time I would turn them on, they would play that damm song within 10 minutes. Free form radio is a thing of the past.

[gneebore]

Radio stations are either part of a big corporation, or a small company using consultants. I remember my local station, years ago, seemed to think the only song Aerosmith ever recorded was "Love in an Elevator". They played it so much, I quit listening to them for a couple of years. Every time I would turn them on, they would play that damm song within 10 minutes. Free form radio is a thing of the past.

Two years ago my drive territory increased quite a bit like average 125 miles in three directions. One day while halfway between three different broadcast centers of the state I found the exact same songs playing at the same time on three different stations with a large bandwidth difference, 93.5, 101.5, 107.4, fm radio bands as an illustration. One station in Augusta Ga. One in Columbia, SC, and one in Charleston, SC. . A coincidence if just one song at one time every now and then. All three were playing the same rotation at the same time. The announcer dj's were actually different for each station and the local commercials were also different of course. Then one day I actually overheard a syndication cue about the upcoming play list for subscribed stations in the next week. Now these stations were classic rock. Which to them was rock from the 70-80's. The playlist was being piped via phone or cable or satellite. Much easier for the central source to keep records of the playlist for royalty payments. And a lot easier if the number of songs played over and over was kept to around forty or fifty instead of hundreds. Eventually found out the Charleston station was a customer. Which is where I overheard the syndication play list. The other two stations were not a part of the same corporation as the Charleston company.


Not really surprising once I thought about it, talk radio is syndicated so why not music. Cheaper and the stations do not have to maintain physical copies of their music. Think back to when WKRP was on the air and the dj's actually had to put records on a turntable. Yeah been around long enough that one of my early customers was a radio station in Miami Beach. And they had hundreds of discs in racks to select from.

[mrwho]

Service car radio's been broken for a couple of years - don't miss it a bit. I usually sing to myself and yell at other drivers to keep myself entertained...

[Lagonda]

I raid the ABC and BBC for podcasts, sensible discussions between well educated knowledgeable people keep me sane in Brisbane traffic. That and my addiction to British comedy from the golden years of radio, Hancock's Half Hour, Round the Horne and of course The Goons.

[jonhiker]

i usually listen to one of the local NPR stations that plays jazz, blues, soul, and R&B. The variety is nice, the pledge breaks can be a little over the top, though. I alternate with a couple of other music stations, as well. My territory is small, so I do not have a lot of driving between calls.

[JVergin]

We have a couple stations here in Omaha which play a pretty good variety of rock from 60s to now, or just 60s to 80s if you're not interested in the newer stuff. I can't stand to listen to top 40 stations anymore.

[Iowatech]

If there is a major university nearby, you might see if they have a student run radio station. Sometimes they aren't too good, but every once in a while you come up with a gem. At least I did, later on at night at least.
For what it is worth, here's what remains of what was essentially a commercial FM station that was run like a college station here:
KFMH_99_PLUS - Triton Digital Standard Live Radio Player (http://player.tritondigital.com/14321)
Sigh. It was so much better listening to that on FM back in the '80s and '90s.

[Vincent128]

https://youtu.be/hjg39XRkjVc

[theengel]

I haven't listened to FM in years. I listen to a few talk shows, and I listen to my iphone. Before the iphone, it was my own CDs or tapes.

[Iowatech]

https://youtu.be/hjg39XRkjVc

Well done!
(For some reason I actually like this version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDiCJkITtes) better, but that's probably stupid.)