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> so DJs had to break new songs, styles, and have a wide array of music offered (within the theme of the station).

I'm an older Zoomer and this was never the case for radio in my lifetime [1]. I heard "college radio stations" being a bastion of this but I've never listened to one myself.

One of the earliest internet services I remember loving was Pandora because it recommended me artists I never heard on the radio and was the start of my love of music.

[1] I'm guessing it was related to all radio stations being owned by the same companies.

3 comments

Late Gen-X/Early Millennial here; there was a time before the consolidation of radio stations and invasion of iHeartMedia (at the time named Clear Channel) where DJs had the final word in what got played and most were quite good at introducing new music. Here's my experience form the outside of the industry: once consolidation started there was a push to use canned (pre-recorded) intros, outros, and interstitial announcements to reduce costs. Stations often kept some talk shows, but few kept real DJs. This let stations use a small number of voice actors for a large number of stations. Combined with centrally controlled playlists they were able to push the costs down and increase profits to the point that older style stations with bespoke DJs couldn't compete financially and either adopted the same model or they sold out.

EDIT: I may be misremembering, but there used to be a limit on how many stations a company could own in a given market.

You are correct. There used to be a limit. Radio was deregulated in the 90s and by the early 2000s local DJ selected music was essentially gone.

Yep. I recall this happening. Let's all praise DEREGULATION and the dollars it brought us.

I recently switched off Amazon Music and went back to Pandora (must have started using it in like 2010 and then gone on a 13 or so year long diversion into the on-demand streaming services).

I guess it isn’t surprising because it is their core value proposition, but the Pandora discovery algorithm seems so much better than the competition, at least to my ears.

I miss the ability to hyper-focus and play an album over and over, but on the other hand, it is probably better not to burn out on an album, and anyway, if I really want to, I can buy the album I guess.

Pandora + Bandcamp reminds me of what the internet looked like it could be. Sad that Amazon and their ilk have to silo everything.

Last.fm was pretty good too. I wonder how they are holding up…

Pandora was my go-to circa 2007-2009 and I haven't thought about it in years. Looking back, I discovered a disproportionate amount of the music I like in that timeframe... I'm honestly kind of surprised they're still around (and, if I'm reading your comment correctly, haven't morphed into something entirely unrecognizable in the meantime?)

I don’t know much about their business model under the hood, but from my point of view they seem pretty similar to back then.

It was funny to log in and see all my old stations from a decade plus ago, still working.

I use Pandora and subscribe to Premium which allows me to listen to albums on demand. When I started out as a free user after I gave up on Youtube in the background apps, I didn't like Spotify because it kept forcing me to listen to awful songs that it pushes on everybody instead of what I actually wanted to listen to. Pandora was a much better experience as a free user because their "radio" plays music similar to what you've already told it you like.

How does Spotify "force" you to listen to stuff? I have a very different experience. Pandora (many years ago when I tried it) did not let you choose what you wanted to play (e.g. am album) and Spotify did (and still does). I have hundreds of my own playlists on Spotify, and my listening time is split between those, Spotify's "daily mix" playlists (generated from your personal music tastes) and occasionally "discover weekly" (one way I discover new music). I like choosing what music I listen to.

Dude... THANK YOU. I just logged back into Pandora and the recommendations are just as excellent as I remember. I also remember discovering some of my absolute favorite songs/albums via Pandora.

One thing that Pandora has is GENRE based stations. I don't know of any other service that can do that. This will be a game changer for when I dive into new genres.

Correct - this sort of thing was basically over-and-done by the mid 90s.