[mekazu]

What do you think killed it? How do people find good music without having to filter through all the rubbish? Does the industry rely on advertising to sell bad music? Are "Top 40" artists built by record companies and sold on TV and/or the internet? Does good music travel through word of mouth by people in-the-know? iTunes is pretty and all but I can't picture people paying to download without having heard the music somewhere else before.

Lots of generalising to do here to answer these questions I guess but I figure there's opportunity out there for someone who can make something of the answers.

[bane]

"What do you think killed it?"

Mergers and acquisitions. The homogenizing of radio made it such that, while it played the top-40s in each major genre, it become excruciatingly boring because they'd only play the top-40s. You'd literally hear the entire selection of music they'd play within a couple of days of light listening.

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

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

Here's the history of a great example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHFS_(historic)#Abrupt_format_s...

Top-40 music is by definition the music for the largest possible audience -- or put another way for the lowest common denominator of listener. It's boring, format stamped mediocrity that favors Nickelback over any better band.

Every so often I'll surf the stations and be amazed that songs that were playing and popular 10 years ago are still playing in regular rotation. Songs that have since moved onto regular rotation in doctor's office waiting lounges and elevators.

I remember a time when you could turn on your station of choice, listen for an hour and hear 3 or 4 songs in the top-40, 3-4 in the top-100 and 3-4 new songs as they tried to bring in new material for listeners. There also used to be just better selection in stations representing slightly different formats in the same major genre, it was possible at one time to find a station that played hard rock, classic rock and alternative rock. Now it's just "rock" and all three will play Nickelback at the same time.

Here's the current top-40 in rock http://www.billboard.com/charts/rock-songs#/charts/rock-song...

At least a fourth of these bands I remember getting airplay in the 90s. These are bands so old that the beginning of their careers are starting to see some play on the classic rock stations.

Radio killed itself.

[krakensden]

I don't work in radio, I'm not a radio historian, so there's a good chance I'm violently wrong- but my pet theory is that advertising killed radio in the US. You have to fit into a small number of surprisingly rigid categories in order to participate in the big money advertising campaigns, and if you don't have those, you're liable to go dark.

There are exceptions, like the Pacifica network and oddities like KPIG, but they're few and far between.

If you're looking for some corroboration, you could check out documentaries about the early days of hip hop.

[__david__]

It's not just that, I think Clear Channel caused the true demise of radio. They own practically every radio station in the US and so there's been a massive homogenization of playlists across radio stations. College stations offer a small respite from the dreary same-ness that is corporate radio, but the stations near me don't have that much power so they only cover a small physical area and the more interesting shows aren't on during commute times.

For me, commercials are also a large issue--with TV I have a DVR and my browser has an ad-blocker, so I'm just not used to listening to commercials. They tend to start aggravating me after a very short time (10 seconds or so).

Those are the reasons I don't listen to the radio any more.

[mekazu]

You paint a pretty bleak picture. Does anybody have any examples of USA radio that is intelligent, artist focused, youth oriented, community driven, ad free, subscription free, streaming on-line, etc? There are plenty to choose from on tunein.com but I'm looking for highlights. Sorry if this is heading too far from the topic.

[krakensden]

That's a lot of qualifiers there.

KPIG is pretty great, but they have ads.

There are lots of college radio stations (check out KDVS and KALX) that are pretty amusing, but they're not so much "community driven" as "driven by the people who show up and pay their dues". That may seem like nitpicking to you, but it seems very relevant after an hour of frogs and Star Trek samples.

NPR stations, Pacifica stations, kind of sort of don't have ads, but they do have sponsors and pledge drives. They are pretty old-people oriented.

I'm sure someone who is slightly less NorCal centric can improve on this list.

[drcube]

KDHX here in St. Louis. Check it out online: http://kdhx.org/

NPR and KDHX are the only radio stations I listen to. The rest of them are literally unbearable.

edit: I used to really like XM radio a few years ago, but it was a subscription based service. And I haven't really listened to it much in a few years, so I don't know where it's at currently.

[chris11]

Colorado Public Radio started Open Air, which is a radio station focusing on new and recent music. You should check it out. Unfortunately while it streams online, offline it is just an am radio station, so I haven't listened to it much because of the poor reception.

http://www.openaircpr.org/

[DaveMebs]

KEXP pretty much fits the bill. http://www.kexp.org/

[J3L2404]

MIT's station WMBR

Boston College WZBC

Stanford KZSU

UC Santa Cruz KZSC

KUSF WNYU WUNH

Tons of great music. All free. All available on the net. Throw in Radioshift to record my favorite shows and I have more music than I can possibly have time to listen to.

Why does everyone always forget about college radio?

[mike_esspe]

For me it's friends recommendations and Last.fm, Pandora was also good until they closed their service for the outside world.

BTW, I'm using youtube to check the recommendation before getting the album.