[Gud]

I couldn't disagree more.

Most radio stations only played the most blandest junk music, even from great artists. Seems they would rotate the top 3 songs even from the absolute most popular musicians. I must have heard Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden >500 times on the rock stations in Stockholm. The Prowler? 0. Maybe some 3am DJ could play some cool songs on occasion, like you said.

There was always very little variety.

[Retric]

Always extends before you were born and things used to be different. Even fairly recently the exceptions were awesome. Over 25 years ago a friend setup a fairly expensive satellite dish system specifically to be able to listen to WFMU. It’s a NYC station he loved that was being rebroadcast for people who left the area.

The station wasn’t something I was particularly into but nobody is doing that to listen to Clearchannel crap.

[yellowapple]

Most, but not all. There are still stations out there bucking those trends.

A local example is "Easy 104.1" here in Reno. I stumbled on it by complete accident about a month ago, and after said month's worth of daily listening I haven't heard a single song played twice. Everything from funk to R&B to alternative rock to adult contemporary to new wave and everything in between, from the 1960's to the 2000's. Songs I've never heard before, songs I've last heard years ago, songs that I last heard yesterday. Loreena McKennitt's "The Mummers' Dance" came on today and that's a song that'd been playing in my head for multiple decades with no idea whatsoever what it's called or any of the words in it (eliminating any possibility of looking it up); now I've finally found it thanks to some random radio station that plays everything that the other stations don't. And if that ain't enough, the "commercial breaks" usually are just one commercial - or hell, often half of a commercial.

[Projectiboga]

Before the mid 1980s radio was much different. Basically MTV started the era of music industry consolidation and the Billboard charts getting corrupted. Before the mid 80s there was more regional music and the charts pulled from most cities. Then they switched to just 8 or 12 markets and incorporated other factors that allowed for a #1 based on Corporate influence.

[vrighter]

To be honest, I only ever turn the radio in my car on once a month or so, specifically because of this reason. You listen for one hour, you're all set for the month. You've heard everything that channel will play all month long. On repeat, with ads every 2 or 3 songs.

[devilbunny]

Since you are, I assume, Swedish, this has essentially no relevance to your life, but if you get bored, and you have some way to access it, Mississippi Public Broadcasting made a movie ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31805076/ ) about an FM station that broadcast from 1968-81 in the modest-sized market of Jackson, Mississippi (uh, about 250-300k people at the time).

Because of the way a lot of stuff around broadcasting works, a small-ish life insurance company ended up with a 100 kW FM station (along with their existing TV and AM stations), a lawsuit challenging their AM, FM, and TV licenses over their (implicitly and explicitly racist) behavior, and as a result, a bunch of very diverse DJ's, mostly in their 20s, with almost no oversight.

When the station was sold, the new owners immediately switched to country, which AFAIK it still is. The fact that local bands at the time wrote songs about it should give you a hint. Yes, the movie is a big late-Boomer/early-GenX reminiscence-fest, but there's a lot of interesting detail there. The DJ's partnered up with producers, bringing big shows to a relatively small city. Some started a record store. One ended up in charge of organizing group tours to concerts in near-ish cities (still 3 hours away in any direction) because, as he put it in the movie, he had a better weed connection than anyone else at the station and so could actually bring enough for everyone.

[iancmceachern]

I couldn't disagree more.

It sounds like you were listening to top 40 stations exclusively.

Gotta check out the good stuff, stations like KBCO in Colorado or any of the more local, music focused stations

[davidalayachew]

But then it is no longer an apples to apples comparison. This is Spotify. Spotify is the embodiment of the top radio stations idea.

By that metric, Spotify is actually doing better than they did, if memory serves.

[iancmceachern]

Spotify is both in one.

The modern equivalent would be a curated stream, station, etc.

[butlike]

Primetime was very different than late night

[dingnuts]

yeah it's a hilarious complaint seeing as most radio stations have been a playlist on shuffle with algorithmically determined tracks and no real DJ for over twenty years. It's not different at all from most terrestrial radio. (shout-out to KEXP and KUTX for bucking the trend)

[svnt]

GP is talking about more than 20 years ago, I think.

You could time-travel into the future by moving your radii from somewhere else to a musical cultural center like New York or Seattle. People would pay for subscription services to listen to radio stations from those areas.

[mrgoldenbrown]

Some of us on HN are old enough to have grown up on radio more than 20 years ago. It's not ancient history, it's within our lifetime. We experienced the consolidation and genericization you are complaining about personally as we saw our favorite local stations get ruined.