new thread
Definitely my favorite classic rock station:
Link didn't take:
http://player.streamtheworld.com/liveplayer.php?callsign=WLUPFM
Hi Bill,
Sounds like that station has possibilities but from my experience rock radio has been going downhill for as long as I can remember.Problem is they get stuck in the same song rotations playing the same few songs from each artist.Take Areosmith for example.With all the albums they put out you'd think they could dedicate a day just to them but instead play the same few songs over and over.Guess they feel people would get offended if they played one of their more obscure tunes! lol.Then there is Satellite Radio, which is an improvement, but I still can't get over paying to listen to the radio plus they use special radios that you have to buy.Sadly I stopped listening to music over the air and would prefer it over the internet.Actually I listen more to talk radio being its conversation between real people and some of the topics can be interesting.Cheers
Mârk
Hi Mark,
I've tried Pandora. They may have hundreds of thousands of songs, but what they have in your genre can be very limited. Like you, I find accessing the satellite stations a nuisance. We get them over our TV from Dish Network with our TV package, making them essentially free, but I seldom listen to them.
Another option is to go to YouTube and pick exactly which song you want to hear next. That is too much work, and I end up in my own rut, missing out on songs I don't think of. That's also a problem if I were to load an iPod. I remember feeding stacks of 45s to my record player when I was a kid, and getting music from YouTube is like that. This constant interruption kept one from just settling back and enjoying the music.
When I've tried it all, I find myself drifting back to traditional radio stations. Sure, they have commercials, but I am not only getting the music for free, I am getting the selection of the music for free. Similarly, I could surf the web to get my news, but I prefer to pick up a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle. I pay for it, but I am paying for the compilation of the news as well as the news itself. Surfing the web, I'd get stuck in a rut and miss out hearing about stuff I'd like to know about.
Creators of music or news have to be paid (hell, they deserve to be paid), or we wouldn't have much music or news. The model of letting advertisers pay for it has been around now for centuries, and it works very well. That model will be around long after we all are dead and gone.
There are regional differences on what rock station play. That was brought out well in the article I linked above. I moved out here to San Francisco in 1979, but I have never heard any station here that I liked as much as the Chicago rock stations I came of age with. Now that all the major stations are streamed, I can have my pick of the Chicago stations, or stations anywhere else!
Many of the stations now, including WLUP The Loop, are owned by large chains. They are successful because they have the resources to research what their listeners in their local regions want to hear.
Bill
Hi Bill,
I hear what you saying about tradition rock radio but I don't like being fed repetition on a regular basis.Also I don't like what they might call "research" into what people want to hear.I can see sticking to a certain theme of music and the artists linked to that theme but I feel they should let the DJ have the power to pick from the entire library of that particular groups works instead of the so called "hits".Yea I've heard all the hits but maybe I'd like to hear some of the other less known tunes.You particularly can feel the rotation if you listen to the radio long enough.Maybe they think the average listener only tunes in for an hour or so, who knows.
I recall many years ago, back in the 80s,when I was thrilled with the format change of a particular college radio station,WSOU.That station, thanks to the students at the time,lobbied for a Heavy Metal format which they got.Kind of amazing considering the radio station was part of Seton Hall University.LOL.I just LOVED listening to the different DJs and the tunes they played against the norms.The artists weren't just "local yocals" but well know musicians.They would scour the music libraries of these groups and throw out the coolest tunes.The DJs also would mock the commercial stations for their limited playlists.Anyway I know that's college but in my view the commercial way doesn't work for me as I haven't tuned in for years.Cheers
Mârk
By the late 1960s, rock DJs were seldom allowed to pick their own music, except at small town and college stations. Even at those, there were rules such as "you can only play records that belong to the station" and "you have to follow rotation rules".
Some stations have strange rules. WZRD in Chicago had a rule that once WLS played a song, it was verboten on WZRD! They wanted to be an alternative.
One common scheme was to categorize the music such as fast, slow, male vocal, etc., and then write the categories on a round piece of cardboard that encircled the studio clock. You played whatever category the big hand of the clock pointed to! I kid you not. Another scheme was to mark off the songs you played on a list, and what hour you played them in. DJs with later shifts could not play a song if it had been played in the last four (or whatever) hours. One station I worked at had all the oldies in a wall full of cubbyholes, and once you played a song you put it back in a different place on the wall. This meant no one could play it again until the program director came in and moved all the "played" songs back into the "unplayed" section. This happened about twice a month. The result of these schemes was that sometimes the station played lots of great hits and other times most of what it aired was garbage.
I was the morning man at the University of Illinois station, WPGU, and the "songs played" list was cleared every day at 6 a.m., the time my shift started. I could play anything I wanted, but I had to keep peace with the jocks who came in later. Otherwise, my shift would have all the most popular hits, and they'd be left with the scraps.
As for college stations, a majority of their target age group have a particular genre they like. That often tends to be the format for the college station. Other students whine that they want to play country music, black music, etc. Sometimes such stations block out certain hours to satisfy those students, but this can confuse the listeners and hurt the overall ratings of the station, because listeners don't know what they will hear on the station when.
Some stations have tried playing one artist for 24 hours like someone on here suggested. KLOK in San Francisco did that with Neil Diamond records one day in the 1980s. It did not go over well at all. Even a popular group like the Beatles will tire listeners out. Although it's been tried, there are no long-running popular stations that are "All Beatles, All The Time".
Bill
Actually years ago there were stations that did that. Sadly those stations are now gone.
My music is from the 60s and 70s. Very few stations are still
playing that music. Everythying else is either the music of today, sports, news, talk, or lease time.
Radio is doing a great job of shooting themselves in the foot.
Guess they feel people would get offended if they played one of their more obscure tunes! lol.Then there is Satellite Radio, which is an improvement, but I still can't get over paying to listen to the radio plus they use special radios that you have to buy.Sadly I stopped listening to music over the air and would prefer it over the internet.Actually I listen more to talk radio being its conversation between real people and some of the topics can be interesting.Cheers
One thing you'll notice if you travel around the country is radio
follows a specific formula. If you find a station you like,
there are dozens more with the same format and the exact same songs. And you'll have one guy in Omaha NB or some other city
"pretending" to be a local voice. Or you'll have stations
that will have no voice at all and just run music during the day.
Radio is rapidly reaching the point where it conceeding the market to mp3s, internet radio (Pandora), or cds. Also radio today has too many commercials, and too many "infomercials" pretending to be news. Personally I think any radio station that runs "infomercials" should lose their license. "Infomercials" on tv can have a disclaimer on the screen, radio doesn't do that. I espeically hate "infomercials" for financial investments, most of the time they aren't giving financial advice, they want you
to give them your business so they can earn money on the
fees they charge.
"Great radio station for old hippies"
Yep. At the age of 59 and with long hair that would be me.
Grey hair and all.
I definitely find that the local classic rock station rotates through the same old tunes. My solution is to listen to a station in another city (ANY other city) using iHeartRadio or TuneIn. I have stations in NY city, Detroit and St. Louis bookmarked, for instance.
In the case of the TuneIn, it isn't just limited to the US. Nor indeed am I from the US. OTOH, I have had a hard time finding a decent classic rock station in the UK.
About the most interesting I have come up with is to listen to the classic rock version of Radio Veronica, which of course is Dutch. I can't understand the the DJ, but who cares!
I used to listen to Radio Veronica when they were a pirate on a ship in the North Sea, and had no idea what they were saying then either. Nowadays they play up to date music, but they also have a separate station that corresponds chronologically to the stuff I used to listen to back then, more or less.
My favorite listen is wwuh from the University of Hartford.
It's not college radio but community radio so it is more regularly formated in various time slots, but still offers a wide variety of music. Every thing from classic to death just pick your favorite.
Bruce
Damn, I thought you meant funeral announcements! [wink]
Where I grew up the local radio station had a program every morning called "The Baptist Hour". It included announcements of all of the deaths that had occurred in the county. A common joke was, "Every morning I listen to the Baptist Hour, and if I don't hear my name, I get up!"
Bill
LOL, that's really funny! I'm amazed they would announce EVERYone who had died in the entire country -- that's a heck of a lot of people!