The argument is certainly there – people, especially younger consumers, want to stream content they choose to listen to now rather than having it curated and decided for them by radio stations and DJs.
According to a study by Larry Miller, director of New York University’s Steinhardt Music Business program, there are many threats facing radio at the moment. These include, but are not limited to:
- Digital services severely crowding traditional AM/FM radio
- Younger listeners instead seeking out new content through the likes of YouTube and Spotify, especially now that Spotify also hosts podcasts
- Car makers marginalising radio on their dashboards (this is important as cars used to be a very popular setting for people to listen to the radio)
- Smart speakers shaping people’s demands and making them less likely to choose the radio over Spotify, podcasts, etc.
It’s hard to argue with these concerns. As humans, we are moving towards a more on-demand based culture, something which radio (and traditional television) have failed to keep up with. Maybe the future is in podcasts, where episodes can be any length and are not subject to as many strict regulations.
However, this may not necessarily be the case. Maybe all radio needs to do is adapt, to not simply view itself as a distribution service but to view itself as a form of content. This is an argument that Mixcloud’s Ben Lawrence and BBC Radio 1’s Kate Holder made at a panel on the future of radio at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam in 2017.
“Looking at streaming as a competitor, in terms of taking people’s time, absolutely it is (a challenge)… but actually, in terms of the concept of a streaming service, I don’t necessarily see it 100% as a competitive thing. Audiences use them in different ways… Radio’s appeal is you can stumble across things that you wouldn’t hear otherwise. Hopefully people will hear bands they love, and then they’ll go and look for them on streaming services” said Holder.
Lawrence argued that “In the future people won’t be listening at all in FM or AM, or DAB. If you think about how radio is distributed through that media at the moment, it’s a lot in-car and a lot at home… Streaming is only really a threat to incumbents if they don’t see it as the feature. if they try and silo themselves and say ‘we’re radio, we don’t really do streaming’…”.
I agree with these arguments somewhat. I think that if radio stations manage to adapt to audiences new methods of consuming content, they will do rather well for themselves. Podcasts are certainly evidence of this. As well as this, listening to live radio is still an engaging and pleasurable activity. When I’m driving my car, I like to stick on the radio as I find it more interesting to hear new content than to stick on the same CD I’ve heard tens of times before when I wasn’t driving (although maybe this is a sign of the antiquated audio system in my car, as I still can’t plug my phone in through an auxiliary cable).
I think that yes, the traditional format of radio is losing its appeal in popularity. However, this doesn’t mean radio as an art form has to!
Bibliography
- Sanchez, D., 2017. Radio Is Dead In 10 Years. This Study Proves It.. [online] Digital Music News. Available at: <https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/08/31/radio-dead-musonomics-study/> [Accessed 4 February 2022].
- Dredge, S., 2017. ‘People say radio is dead. Actually, radio as content is exploding…’ – Music Ally. [online] Musically.com. Available at: <https://musically.com/2017/02/23/radio-dead-content-exploding/> [Accessed 4 February 2022].