With the exception of concerts I feel like a lot of the things you listed are irrelevant why listen to the radio which maybe will play something I like when I can listen to shit I know I like on youtube music, why bother with the big record labels when smaller ones may do well enough, hell you dont even need a label if you dont plan on any merch, what relevence is a discman when I can have 500 songs on my phone. We are in a golden age of music, it’s just a lot more indie. I can listen to Tyr, Hulkoff, and Danheim with ease even though in the 90s they’d have been largely restricted to Scandinavia.
Much like with videogames the 90s was a glorious era for music but to act like we are in the dark ages is foolish, the dark ages for music was easily the early to mid 2000s.
It isn’t necessarily about instant gratification though, as far back as 8-Track folks have been able to choose what music they listened to which to me suggest that the instant I want to listen to x isn’t the driving factor. My personal money on the downfall of radio is that there are simply better options that fill the same niche, talk radio was replaced by podcasts and radio stations was replaced by setting YouTube to autoplay.
I say this all as someone who plays with and collects old tech, Radios biggest advantage was that it was cheap and wide reaching but was always on a losing battle. The second we were able to standardize a large scale format that could maintain relevence it was in many ways inevitably doomed, we standardized pretty damned well with MP3. My personal hope is that radio gets deregulated and gets absolutely filled with amateur and pirate stations, only radio station I ever like was a pirate station circa 2008 which played whatever folks submitted on his website I wish to see that everywhere.
With the exception of concerts I feel like a lot of the things you listed are irrelevant why listen to the radio which maybe will play something I like when I can listen to shit I know I like on youtube music, why bother with the big record labels when smaller ones may do well enough, hell you dont even need a label if you dont plan on any merch, what relevence is a discman when I can have 500 songs on my phone. We are in a golden age of music, it’s just a lot more indie. I can listen to Tyr, Hulkoff, and Danheim with ease even though in the 90s they’d have been largely restricted to Scandinavia.
Much like with videogames the 90s was a glorious era for music but to act like we are in the dark ages is foolish, the dark ages for music was easily the early to mid 2000s.
Why listen to the radio? I guess that’s what has been lost… there wasn’t instant gratification. It was the thrill of hearing the song we loved.
It isn’t necessarily about instant gratification though, as far back as 8-Track folks have been able to choose what music they listened to which to me suggest that the instant I want to listen to x isn’t the driving factor. My personal money on the downfall of radio is that there are simply better options that fill the same niche, talk radio was replaced by podcasts and radio stations was replaced by setting YouTube to autoplay.
I say this all as someone who plays with and collects old tech, Radios biggest advantage was that it was cheap and wide reaching but was always on a losing battle. The second we were able to standardize a large scale format that could maintain relevence it was in many ways inevitably doomed, we standardized pretty damned well with MP3. My personal hope is that radio gets deregulated and gets absolutely filled with amateur and pirate stations, only radio station I ever like was a pirate station circa 2008 which played whatever folks submitted on his website I wish to see that everywhere.