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I was going to talk about my movement into other genres. I got through my country experiment and now I'll start the blues road next.
Not much time so while most of my listening has focused on the old Chicago Blues scene here's a more recent artist - Seasick Steve. This track has one mean boogie in it.
Mark Ramsey over at Hear 2.0 discusses the Perfect Storm of woes for terrestrial radio. He lists off 7 major factors that are cutting into radio's strength. I want to look at 2 and add an 8th.
His #5 are the disincentives to streaming. Oddly enough if your stream isn't a 100% match to your broadcast then it is no longer your radio station for ratings. The industry rating system actually makes it harder for the industry to adapt to stream their stations on the web. You don't have to kill radio, it is committing suicide with it's own rules.
His #6 is about the coming waves of future listeners of radio or more correctly non-listeners. Basically people under 25 have awful radio listening habits and one doesn't "develop" the radio habit.It isn't hard to see that my 4 year old son will grow up without radio in his life thanks to CD's, iPod's and streaming music around the house. He's another nail in the coffin of radio in a decade.
I'd add a #8, content changes. It is very easy to rail on Clear Channel and Infinity for gutting radio of anything interesting. It is also very true. That is gone but another thing gone content-wise is the focus on music. Most people listen to the radio in the car and "drive time" has turned into bad DJ comedy hour on too many stations. When Howard Stern blasted a swath through the ratings everyone followed him into the breech with Stern-lite DJ yuck-monkeys. I'm not a Stern fan but his schtick is light years better than the local station DJ's trying to ape his bit - especially when those stations get wildly self-referential. There's room for Stern, obviously, but there's room for music and my anecdotal evidence says a lot of folks left terrestrial radio when it no longer fed their musical needs.
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Great post. I went over and read the article as well. Very interesting. To me it's all in what the station is playing that has driven me and others like me away. In my town there's really only one traditional radio station I can stomach because at least they play a few good songs but even then I get tired of hearing the same 1 or 2 radio friendly songs from the great bands, let's hear some variety folks. Personal Jesus is an ok song but how about Black Celebration or Strange Love.
I love the Clash but when the local Classic rock station added London Calling and Train in Vain to it's play list a little piece of me died. All of a sudden the guy who is dying to hear You shook me all night long for the third time in two days is a punk rock aficionado. They couldn't wait to add Nirvana to their play list as well. 10 years is old enough to make it classic rock right?The future is the internet and right now the best example of that is woxy.com. The best station in the world and as someone who craves new music as well as hearing a few old favourites now and then, this station is a god send.
I love my iPod. It is trite and simple but the darn thing just does what I want it to do and it does it well. The use of the device does have some unintended consequences.
For me the biggest of those is that I tend to to get "locked" into the songs on the iPod. I've got the mighty 4 gig type unit so my process has been that each of my 350-ish CD's get 1-2 songs and certain favored discs (London Calling) and some miscellaneous Greatest Hits albums get more than 2. This results in me having a collection on the iPod that is both wide and very shallow.
Baby 81 is BRMC's most recent disc. The album is great and when I listened to it at first I loved "Weapon of Choice", "Berlin" and "Took Out a Loan". I liked the disc enough I tossed 3 songs on the iPod. Thing is that a couple of months later those were still really the only songs on that disc I knew.
I finally took the time to listen to the rest of the excellent CD and I realized that the best song on the disc is "Need Some Air". Great tune but because the iPod sort of defines my "view" of an album now it was off the radar. I similarly revisted the Gourd's Noble Creatures in the same way and realzied that album was also really good all the way through. Anyways, have listen to a live version of "Need Some Air".
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Great post. I have found myself going back to listening to CD's in my car recently after I realized I wasn't giving my newer albums a chance because I would throw them on my mp3 player with a bunch of old favs and they would get lost in the mix. Something more satisfying about listening to a CD in the car over and over again. Still grab the mp3 for long trips as well as some CD's but for day trips and drives to and from work it's CD's all the way. I've been able to get into the new Spoon, Queens of the Stoneage and Stars much easier because of this.
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This is definitely a different genre for me. Thanks for sharing.