They brought an iHeartradio station to Baltimore. The mix was fun, lots of famous 80’s and 90’s.
I wrote some code to scrape their “now playing”. The entire catalog was just over 600 hundred songs. 600 Unique songs in a year.
The top rock station plays more unique songs than that in a week
…are the “few dozen” songs the top 40…?
Well minimum a “few dozen” would have to be at least 36 songs lol
Lmao never seen Dillon in a meme like this, especially the vid being like a decade old now, good stuff.
This is why radio died. Rock stations playing Aerosmith, guns and roses and ac/DC on repeat. Instead of 5 minutes of something new. By 2010 most if us were leaving fm for pre-downloaded music, 2015 apps were widely available, by 2020, what even was radio
They walked to their own Graves and pulled the trigger
Companies like iheartradio and others killed radio. I got to experience a little taste of the old days just before it all transitioned. There was an actual person. In a studio. Behind a mic. It was so much fun. Now it’s all syndicated, pre-recorded, pre-packaged bullshit sent out to 1,000 stations that all sound the same, playing at its preset time in an empty studio.
As annoying as this is, it’s not really the radio station’s fault. Broadcast licenses for songs are cartoonishly expensive, so most stations can only afford to hold so many at a time.
So like most problems in the music industry, it’s due to the greed of the record companies.
Back in the day I ran a small Shout cast server. Once had around 40 listeners. It made teenage me happy. In a broken voice, between tracks, I’d pretend to be a radio guy on my cheap desktop microphone (those white/grey/cream sticks, you know the ones I’m sure).
“Yo yo yo, that was a SICK beat, let’s get on down to some more funky tunes!!!”Fun memories.
Seems like half the music on the radio nowadays sounds bored, depressed, or is a rehash/cover of an already existing song that’s also half-baked.
Same with classic rock stations, I swear to fucking god Boston’s 100.7 plays Turn the Page by Bob Seger or Metallica’s cover daily at like 7:45am. That’s usually followed by one of 3 AC/DC songs then 10-15 minutes of commercials since iHeartRadio bought them a while ago.
Years ago when I was carrying shingles for a job the guys always had the local ‘top 40’ station on. The station played the same songs in the same order with the same break timings for weeks. This was in the days before computers could run everything so it wasn’t that. All told it came out to around 6.5-7 hours before the loop would start again. Just enough to time shift the part of the loop you heard each day so you wouldn’t notice if you were commuting. But it was enough to make you want to jump off the roof listening all day every day.
On a less related note, I did not expect to see this meme format in 2025. Not that I mind tho ^^
Already following them
They even do live shows in their studio along with interviews of the bands, really great station
I stream it to my car when I remember to. I miss Washington and its’ radio.
Any NPR music station is gonna be awesome. KEXP is probably one of the GOATs. KCMP in Minneapolis, KTBG in KC, KOPN in Columbia, Missouri, KVOQ in Denver.
Honestly, it’s the listener supported/community run radio stations that are the best.
Listener support doesn’t mean they are NPR. Hate to nitpick most of the time but NPR can get bent for their corporate shilling.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned listener supported radio/community run. As a separate statement.
Honestly, it’s the listener supported/community run radio stations that are the best.
I only mentioned NPR because that’s just something the average North American can relate to. Also KEXP is affiliated with NPR. So it felt relevant to mention.
The only affiliation KEXP has is with the University of Washington.
And NPR handles the music licensing for the station. You can see them mentioned in multiple NPR annual reports as a member station, going as far back as 2001 when the affiliation started. Then as recently as 2011, after that NPR stopped reporting the NPR stations. Also there’s a managed list on Wikipedia of all affiliated stations. Prior to 2001 though it had no affiliation with NPR.
If anyone’s is interested in a stream of modern rock that is devoted to new music, I can introduce you to the dj before he does a stream. I spoke with Alan Cross (From the Ongoing History of rock and roll) via email briefly about this DJ and Alan already knew who he was and there is video interview between the two of them as well
If interested send me a message, don’t want to promote a link to something I support through patreon without permission, but I’m happy to share to anyone that’s interested.
Last week was his first live show in a long time, and I’m glad he has decided to continue.
Don’t get me started on XM/Sirius/whatever
Most stations, despite a live DJ (I think), play the same 40-50 songs all day everyday, often on the same timetable. So if you heard say Free Bird at 2pm, you’ll hear it the following day at the same time within 20ish min. And I’d imagine every station is like this.
It came free in my truck for a year, sweet. The only reason I kept it was because I was able to keep swinging the $6/month thing, and I really only want to tune into the Dead channel whenever I please, and only because Lemieux has an excellent rotation of live shows. But even they play the same studio cuts at the same time of day. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m still rebuilding my music server, I’d likely have dropped them, but still, any mainstream radio service is pretty much poopy.
Somewhat related—oldies stations are like this, except with “new” songs entering the rotation periodically. Of course, when the end of the year rolls around they play the “Top 100 songs of the year” which are essentially the same set of songs in a haphazard order.
I didn’t mind it so much because it was much better than listening to the low hum of showcase coolers of a mom-and-pop grocery store. However, it was pretty jarring when I heard them play a song I distinctly remember hearing on the radio as a kid riding in the back of the van getting dropped off for 1st grade (or some such young age)
However, it was pretty jarring when I heard them play a song I distinctly remember hearing on the radio as a kid riding in the back of the van getting dropped off for 1st grade (or some such young age)
Shit, I remember tuning in to KLOS (So Cal classic rock) a while back and being super confused as to why they were playing Nirvana. As Bob Dylan said, “The times, they are a-changin”
I have been enjoying the Alex Cooper and John Mayer channels on Sirius, along with the comedy channels (still has a problem with repeating tracks you describe though) . I’ll never have to get rid of it due to parents letting me use their subscription for streaming, but I’d almost pay for them.
We have a radio station in my home town that used to call itself “Mix 100” (their frequency was 100.1). I figured it was because they played the same 100 songs and each of the songs they played were ones I’d heard 100 times before.
me listening to the same song 10 tines in a row every day: 😊
