When did radio become irrelevant to you?

Most people I know who are heavily into music have given up on radio. The formats have become stale, the playlists shrunk and the repetition is extreme. Current "hot hits" stations have a rotation of about 20 songs. Classic rock radio plays 300-400 songs ad nauseam. Popular country may as well be hair metal light with a twang. It's no wonder that for most under 30 radio was never relevant. The internet is simply a superior medium to discover music. I think radio has long lost the true music fans and desperately tries to hang on to the casual music fan by not taking chances.

Most of us over 30 do have a history with radio. It was our first means of musical discovery. Being an older Gen X'er my first memories were AM Top 40. Earliest memories around 1969. Living in a fairly small town (about 60,000) there were only a few stations. Top 40 or country. One FM station and it was classical. I fondly remember those songs, listening to Casey Kasem's AT40. By 1973 my family moved to a suburb of a large city where I discovered FM rock radio and soul stations for the first time. I would take a portable cassette player and record my favorite songs. Christmas 1976 I received my first record player which allowed me to deeper explore artists I first heard on the radio. By the late 70s my interest in Top 40 was waning. I liked less of those tunes as the years went. Disco was killing my interest in R&B. That left rock radio. The rock radio stations were at a crossroads. Some started adding artists like Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, etc which I really liked. This didn't sit well with fans of the arena rock which dominated late 70s rock radio. Bands like Foreigner, Styx and Journey. Hair metal like Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Bon Jovi soon replaced the likes of Costello and radio was pretty much dead to me. Luckily one rock station had a 2 hour program dedicated to less than mainstream stuff. The station that was cramming Eddie Money and REO Speedwagon down my throat offered up bands like the Dead Kennedys, X, Buzzcocks, Joy Division and Bauhaus for 2 hours a week. About a year later a college radio station began to dedicate a few hours to playing artists like REM, the Smiths, and the Cure. When these programs ended I pretty much lost interest in radio despite working at a Top 40 station in 87-88. I discovered new music through friends, recommendations at indie record stores and publications like NME. Radio had lost it's relevance for me long before the internet became an option. Sad because I so fondly remember those early yeras with my AM radio.

What about you?

 

I have stopped listening to music radio regularly around the turn of the century. From then on, it was talk radio only. But then, that, too, became somewhat stale as the German radio stations didn't offer much of a range of different opinions and less and less documentaries anymore than they used to. So listening regularly to spoken shows ended in around 2007. I still have a radio and pay what some would call is equal to a "media tax" for state-run media stations over here in Germany, but I don't listen to it regularly anymore.

 

When the giants like Clear Channel push the same songs artists was the end for me.

Mostly just listen to sports talk shows on the radio anymore.

 

Isn't that radio problem bit of an american thing? I do like playing radio in my car when I'm driving. My favourite rock station plays lot of old stuff but also new stuff, there are news and competitions. Then we have a station which plays only finnish pop songs. The morning show is hilarious. It's amazing what those three people can make up.

 

I'm probably eight or ten years younger than you from the sound of it, and when I was a teenager (late 80s), the radio was a lifeline. I hated the then-current top 40 stuff and was big into oldies and classic rock, and luckily I could get one of each type of station on my radio. I suppose the playlists for both formats really haven't changed all that much in the years since, but most of those now-familiar classics were new to me at the time and I couldn't get enough of them. That was kind of my lifeline all through high school. Since then, well, I won't say the radio ever became "irrelevant" to me, but it did become a lot less relevant. I got more into collecting folk and very early rock (i.e. pre-1955), both genres that hardly get any radio exposure, so why bother?

But for all that, the memories of my "musical education" back in high school are priceless to me. If I might plagiarize myself, here's a little something I wrote in an appreciation for Buddy Holly a few years ago, on another website, and every word still rings true to me and always will:

But there is value in the positive side of the image we now have of the era [the 1950s], as long as we keep it in perspective. And that image meant the world to me as a jaded teenager growing up in Reagan’s America. I have discussed that in some detail in [another entry on that site], and there’s no need for me to depress you with a reprise of that here. What does matter is how I survived those difficult years, and rock and roll oldies had everything to do with that. Whatever nastiness I had to cope with at school and at home throughout the week, late nights in my bed meant listening to Oldies 103 from Boston on my headphones and drinking in all the classics that were mostly new to me at the time. No matter how lonely I was on my own at lunch time, or how worthless certain of my teachers made me feel (most of them were great, but it’s the nasty ones that stick out in my memory now), or whatever new ways my family devised to make me feel like an emotional punching bag, closing my eyes and imagining myself at a sock-hop with my crush of the week in a poodle skirt and saddle shoes - and me in her arms - was always good for what ailed me.​

Yeah, that makes me laugh now too, and not entirely in a good way. I know a lot more about the fifties now than I did then, of course. But that’s beside the point. The point is that the very idealized image I had of those days was immensely comforting at a time in my life when not much else was, and for that reason, it had (and still has) real value for me. ​

 

When they put cassette players in car stereos and boom boxes and invented walkmen. I generally used radio to listen to music where there was no option of being my own DJ.

 

My relationship with FM largely ended when the rise of Grunge collided with the increasing banality of classic rock radio. The disappearance of alternative stations and the ability to port my own music around ended it completely.

Edit: The classic rock stations largely refused to play much new music at the time, including of all things, U2. I remember just about spitting out my drink when a local DJ announced he was playing a track from the new U2 album, "Ash-tongue Baby." (That pretty much sums up classic rock radio to me.)

 

Clear Channel is pure evil! A Clear Channel station in say Phoenix sounds exactly like one in Dallas or Denver or Charlotte or (insert your city here).

 

For me the process started after a local music station dropped The Dr. Demento Show. Then a few years later it was my favorite station's change in format from an all rock station to a mixed bag everything that was popular at the time. It was the late 1980s and I started listening to news radio after that.

 

I gave up on the radio in the 90's, when left of the dial college rock became "alternative rock". Under the new moniker a ton of new "alternative" bands had one hit wonder albums. Suddenly bands like Deep Blue Something were supposedly worthy enough to share the same airspace as Bauhaus. Tonic was as cutting edge as The Cramps. And, grunge, with it's forced down your throat second and third tier sub-par bands.

Yep... it was the 90's.

 

actually I've gone back to listening to radio. lots of internet radio KCRW, NPR and classical and college radio at home and in the car. There is a really neat jazz program on my ride home from work. Spotify is pretty much the radio replacement and I use that everyday. Viva la radio!

 

Yep radio spent a decade trying to find the next Nirvana which led to bands like Bush, Creed and Nickleback. Nothing alternative about those bands. Pretty much the equivalent to the Poisons of the 80s as far as artistic merit goes.

 

It hasn't. I listen, typically when driving. Lots of preset, everything from "Cuting Edge Rock" to Classic Rock, to Jazz to Pop. Hear some new thing, hear some old things. I still like the radio and sometimes end up buying a CD based on what I heard on the radio.

 

I do listen to NPR. But, that's not really radio in the traditional sense.

 

Love me some Spotify! I create huge playlists, hit shuffle and that becomes my radio.

 

If we're talking about commercial radio, I haven't paid much attention to it since the mid-'80s. Public and college radio, haven't listened to much since I was in grad school in the mid-'90s. I just fell out of the habit once I got out into the workaday world, and now mainly listen to radio of any kind only when I'm driving, which isn't all that often.

On the non-trad radio front: as with some others, I've occasionally listened to Internet radio stations while surfing or at the office, and now that Spotify is finally available in Canada, I've installed the app on my iPod and have been checking out the available stations.

 

I was a dedicated listener to the John Peel show until his death, I have only recently again started listening to radio/BBC6 in the morning over the last few months. One DJ in particular reminds me why I never bothered with radio, others are better luckily, heard the new Chemical Brothers this morning which was really interesting = something that would have probably passed me by otherwise.

 

When John Peel died, late 2004.

 

Before it ever became relevant.

 

Mid 90s. I just realized that wishing they would all just STFU, was in my control. I've never looked back, and a year ago, I did the same with TV.

 

Good question. It's definitely ended for me at this present time, but I don't know when it began to end. I think it was gradual. The same handful of older songs are played in rotation... anything new that's pop just sounds awful. An Oldies Format these days is the 70s and 80s onward. No more interesting DJ's, and all pre-programmed and impersonal.

 

I haven't cared about listening to radio since I was old enough to drive myself to the record store, more than 25 years ago.

That being said, I was heavily involved in college radio and served as director of my station. But I couldn't much be bothered to listen to even my own station beyond doing quality assurance checks.

Radio was fun to work in but I always preferred listening to my own collection.

 

Define radio.

Commercial radio was never particularly relevant to me, though I did listen to a healthy amount of Philly classic rock radio (MMR and YSP) growing up in the 80s and early 90s. That was just convenience listening -- they never played what I was really into.

These days, I listen to FM radio more than ever. The greater Denver metro area (including Boulder and Fort Collins) has an amazing group of community/independent stations. Pretty much everything I listen to (including classical, Americana, jazz, progressive rock, etc.) can be found at some point during the week between 88.1 and 91.5 on the dial.

 

The list of John Peel sessions is amazing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Peel_sessions

What other radio personality would have both Napalm Death and The Smiths in their studio? Not very many.

 

Define? Basically music stations, whatever is available in your city. Doesn't have to be commercial stations. Not counting internet radio though.

Happy to hear that the Denver area does have some interesting stations. I wish radio was a lot more relevant than it is in more places.