[parpfish]

There’s a human connection element to old radio that streaming will never replicate. And I worry that it’s gone from modern automated radio too.

It used to be if you were driving down the road and heard a song you liked

Hearing a song you liked on the radio hit harder then playing it yourself because you knew that there was another human nearby at that moment in time that had picked it out and played it. You were physically tethered to them through invisible waves through the sky. Lonely road trips felt less lonely. Late night work shifts felt less alienating because there was somebody ELSE working late.

[olsondv]

Or at a stop light and the car next to you is listening/singing to the same song. Never happens anymore.

[maccard]

It absolutely does - allegedly there’s 6 million listeners to the biggest breakfast radio show in the UK and 4 million to the second biggest. That’s 10 million in a country of about 55 million adults.

[rhplus]

Unfortunately, they broadcast on DAB so there’s a strong chance that two car radios next to each other are buffering differently and out of sync.

[johnflan]

It’s interesting that the DAB rollout completely failed in Ireland and we are back to fully analog FM

[maccard]

At least my car is still using FM radio - 98.2MHz

[antisthenes]

If I turn up my volume loud enough, then the car next to me is going to be listening to the same song I am :)

[lostlogin]

If you really want a reaction here, announce that you use your phone speaker or a Bluetooth one out in public.

[safety1st]

In the 90s I knew a guy in high school who walked around the school in a black trenchcoat with portable speakers tucked inside that were continuously playing Western movie themes. I can only imagine how that bit of creativity would go over these days.

[jraph]

I suppose it was rare enough and somewhat fun in the 90s. Maybe that guy was doing this for others to enjoy as well, or to appear singular (whether it worked or not).

Nowadays it wouldn't appear particularly exotic (portable speakers are ubiquitous) and people playing loud music (from speakers or phones) seem to do this for themselves without caring about the surrounding people, that's just highly egotistical and self-centered. It's usually not music I personally like too.

That's not fun, it's just annoying. There's already too much noise in our cities.

But if you do it right, playing (singular) music for others, reading the room and all, I'm sure it can still work.

[inigyou]

Sometimes, but not too often, in Berlin of all places you encounter someone biking around with a massive speaker attached to their bike blaring (obviously) techno

Not always a bike. Sometimes just a trolley or a handcart or a custom jerry-rigged contraption.

[bluGill]

In the US "boom boxes" went out with the 1970s. They need to get with the times.

Okay, in all seriousness: boom boxes were a thing in the 1970s and early 1980s. There are still people who use the latest generation of them, but thankfully not nearly as many. These days people cranking music in a public place are generally doing it as part of a group that all want to hear the same thing. (and in back then the group wanting to hear the same music was the common case)

[maxerickson]

Here, in a small US town, the most frequent public music is one or two people ~destroying the speaker on their phone.

Second is probably motorcycles blasting it over the engine noise.

[inigyou]

Oh I've never seen a boom box around. It's always, like, a box of car batteries and a speaker on top. Clearly DIY.

[setsewerd]

You see this type of thing daily in Brooklyn NY still, but instead of techno it's any genre, primarily hip hop, reggaeton, or afrobeats.

[netsharc]

When I opened https://radio.garden/ and spun the globe the first time, I tuned to a radio station somewhere in Africa, and it gave me tingles to think that in Lagos at that same moment, some bus driver was surely listening to the same music.

[OsrsNeedsf2P]

Younger generation get this connection out of live streaming

[herpdyderp]

Never in my life has radio in my country played music I wanted to listen to. The first thing I did when I bought my first car was disconnect the antenna entirely.

[moffkalast]

Country issue.

[forlorn_mammoth]

> You were physically tethered to them through invisible waves through the sky

We've got a thing, and that's a-called radar love

We've got a wave in the air...

Radar love

[mobilene]

Yes! Exactly this. I'm the OP and I wrote about this specifically as well.

https://blog.jimgrey.net/2023/01/10/connecting-through-the-e...

[unethical_ban]

Yes, and I agree with a sibling comment that livestreaming is the modern equivalent, if not in ease or quality but in spirit. It's also why, despite having many movies in my library, I enjoy turning on TCM to watch old classics. I know that thousands of people at any given time are probably watching the same piece of history I am, right then.

[paganel]

You can still listen to the radio while driving, many people still do that, I still do that. I agree though that in essence streaming is a very alienating experience.

[bluGill]

Many people do, but I don't get it. The typical station has a tiny playlist that they have had on repeat for a decade now. I haven't turned the radio on in years, and never was a regular listener, but I can still tell you what song will be next if you turn it on (for the stations that are played most often in public)

[parpfish]

Yeah, but most current corporate radio sucks. It’s not a human broadcasting and allowing their idiosyncratic tastes to sneak in. Nationwide each station is just shuffling one of three or four playlists of inoffensive songs picked because nobody hates it (but nobody loves it)

[mr_toad]

The rush hours are the worst. You're lucky if you hear two songs in 30 minutes it's so crammed full of ads.

[altmanaltman]

I don't know. I mean if that is the criteria then livestreams surely fix this because there is another human at that moment in time also and you can even interact with them. Or do you like the passive interaction that they should just play music and shut up

[charcircuit]

This still exists today. When a new song gets released on YouTube for example a group of people close to it in latent space gets it recommended. By seeing a recommendation of a song in your feed you are part of a cohort of people with similar tastes.

[kevin_thibedeau]

That is the core issue. Only a preselected cohort are exposed to new media. That limits common experiences to digital islands rather than shared among the masses.

[NuclearPM]

How is this an issue at all?