Many comments are focusing on music but the thing I tried to get across in the article was that good radio wasn't primarily about the music, it was about fun and connection. A good DJ kept you from just turning the radio off when you heard that same hit the fourth time today -- you wanted to keep listening because the DJ made it fun. It made homework and hobbies feel a lot less lonely. A Spotify playlist sure as heck can't do that.

It used to be if you were driving down the road and heard a song you liked

Hearing a song you liked on the radio hit harder then playing it yourself because you knew that there was another human nearby at that moment in time that had picked it out and played it. You were physically tethered to them through invisible waves through the sky. Lonely road trips felt less lonely. Late night work shifts felt less alienating because there was somebody ELSE working late.

A counter to radio remaining relevant is “I can listen to whatever I want, via this digital technology”.

Fine - but young people don’t yet have a complete mental map of what culture they enjoy.

In the UK, funding for libraries and the arts (public radio, the BBC) has been increasingly cut in the name of austerity. I think that’s true in the US too.

Despite this, young people have an unprecedented amount of access to culture. Or, at least, any form of culture that can be digitally replicated.

Soulseek and Anna’s Archive are wonderful projects. But they only have as much utility as the person using them can put into the search bar.

We’re increasingly entrusting cultural education - what to put into the search bar - to algorithms that are designed not (as the BBC’s mission statement is) to “inform, educate, and entertain”, but to retain attention.

Even worse: many of these (eg, Spotify) hide real access behind subscription fees. If you grew up broke, like I did, you will understand how inaccessible this real access is.

The most motivated young people will continue to find the workarounds piracy offers, and to find other routes for cultural education.

Any young person who isn’t in that upper percentile of motivatedness might increasingly be left out. You can attribute that to a choice they have made - I think that’s wrong.

I think the joy of broadening one’s horizons is available to all, and is also difficult to learn and a strain to continue to practice. I think it must be taught.

I think this is especially true and important when everyone has a constantly-available option of algorithmically-selected pleasantness.

Human radio DJs are not optimized for pleasantness, or to serve you relevant ads based on your conversations with them. At their best, DJs are educators.

Anyone who grew up listening to radio knows that, and knows the pleasure that comes from learning not to change the channel when something new and uncomfortable-feeling comes on, just in case it ends up being something you fall in love with.

I just drove home, and spent 20 minutes listening to a host on the radio talking to a researcher about evolved preferences for non-mates in humans. It was pretty interesting, and not something I'd have stumbled upon otherwise.

Lately I have been getting back in to internet radio, mostly via Elisa in KDE. Here is my favorite internet stream: https://hawaiireggaenetwork.com/

The main channel "RNZ National" is a mix of news bulletins [1], panels featuring interesting people [2], and episodes of the numerous high-quality podcasts they produce [3].

The really channel one is "RNZ Concert" through - it's just msuic. They have a best-in-class audio team who record concerts (e.g. choirs, orchestra, or anything else) as well as getting famous artists in to their studio to record their own music or a cover. Played for free all the time with no ads! It was super exciting as a kid in a community choir when we got the chance to be recorded by RNZ, and then find out roughly when it would be on so we sat by the radio in anticipation all day waiting for it to play. It also made getting to the finals of choir nationals [4] extra exciting knowing your performance there would be played nationwide.

[1]: Interestingly, despite us having reasonably good private competition for news here, the government-funded news source was recently votes the most trusted in the country - I reckon it's because they aren't beholden to advertisers: https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/04/17/rising-trust-should-keep-p... [2]: Regularly including top politicians like the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, top academics, CEOs, investors, and the like [3]: https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcasts [4]: Yes competitive classical choir is a thing here, and it's treated just as seriously as rugby or any other code. You might travel will your high school choir all the way across the country to perform at Finale. https://nzcf.org.nz/events/nzcf-events/big-sing

The local NPR backed station the Current is good but their audio quality is terrible, even their HD stream is muffled and wonky. They also eliminated many of the DJs I had grown to like and I never got that same connection with their replacement, which definitely impacted how I listen.

I listen to Radio 4 through the day when I'm working on things that don't need my full concentration.

It's the alarm that wakes me at 0630 and I often listen to the news before bed.

Adverts drive me insane. It's a national treasure and I'd pay the licence fee again just for R4 + Sounds.

It’s great because they stream online so when I’m back home and don’t know what to listen to, it’s always an option.

For those interested - https://itapemafm.com.br/

I just Googled and it turns out it was https://wkdu.org/ 91.7 FM, Drexel University college radio! Woohoo something is alive out there !!

And I just found the playlist of the exact show I listened to, on Thursday July 16th - https://wkdu.org/playlist/71388

Wait! Except for one major improvement. There is a station CJNY ("The Journey") at 106.3 FM, which is run by Indigenous people:

https://www.cjnyfm.ca/about/

* If you're in your 50s and listening to the radio you're probably rich and we want you!

* More live DJs for sure

That said, if you're going to listen on your iPhone there are plenty of good DJs there too. dandelionradio.com for me.

Automation / machines tend to make things more efficient and we shouldn’t shy away from automation, but they can also reduce the human connection. I think the same thing will happen with AI generated art - l human generated art can be a spiritual experience meaning you can connect with another human through art - but if a masterpiece like Cypress Trees in Wheat Fields is AI generated, there isn’t a connection with the human artist. Consequently we must consciously turn to other places to keep human connection strong.

I don't really know how successful they are but since their inception 13 years ago I've probably listened to them more than all other stations combined. And I donate to them.

What if there was a radio station that was entirely listener supported?

What if there was a radio station that let its volunteer DJs play whatever they wanted to play, and say whatever they wanted to say? Within FCC laws, of course.

WFMU is the answer. 1 terrestrial broadcast, 3 internet livestreams, 20 years of archives online and available for listening.

Recently a DJ with excellent music taste and a deep radio-perfect voice died. I was devastated when I got the news. The two remaining radio shows in his slot were something I'll remember forever. One unbelievably raw, as it was only two days since he died, the other beautiful, as everyone came with music and stories to remember him.

You don't get this connection over streaming.

RIP Bob Rusche

A bog standard Sony radio would run for a long, long time on a few AA batteries. Back then, you could also pick up the audio portion of UHF and VHF analog TV too. It was the main lifeline for news and local updates.

Radio is a fantastic technology that is being wasted. Cheap to transmit, cheap to receive, and covers a wide area. It would be great to see a radio renaissance. Maybe the Zoomers reconnecting to older technologies will revive it.

8 Ball Radio - https://8ballradio.nyc

Radio Free Brooklyn - https://www.radiofreebrooklyn.org

Who else has favorites to share?

https://echoes.org/

What was fun about it was his irreverent sense of humor, the silly contests he'd run, the ads that made no sense, and all the drugged out band members he'd invite to the station.

I still have several cassettes of Brain Pain. Lost treasures, I presume. I wound up buying many of the albums he spun.

There's definitely still demand for quality radio shows but I guess it just makes more money if you play whatever the big studios pay you to play. But its the same thing with television as well; many indie channels on YouTube produce MUCH better content than anything you can see on the traditional TV or Netflix.

Well, that's where a lot of this type of content is (seemingly, at least) alive and well right now. Satellite appears to be here to stay, and can provide tremendous value on long drives. Particularly if you're doing a lot of them.

I'd love to see more FM stations return to human DJs, and human curated playlists. But until/unless that happens, we still need somewhere for those skills to be utilized and refined.

https://www.iheart.com/live/wkrp-10724/

Most people today can hardly remember when radio was curated live. Perhaps if you were near a small station you might have had the experience. Most major markets were completely corporate by the early 90s.

I know, my first career pick was radio, and by the time I was in college at a college radio station in the late 90s. That career path was dead unless I wanted to be in marketing or sales, which I had no interest in.

Little factoid about my username, it was my pirate station call letters from when I was running my own small station with a hand built FM transmitter in the 90s.

Like as in spinning discs.

Can someone be a disc jockey and not know they are not disk jockeys? Not sure. Or maybe I'm mistaken

Human DJs at still around on college radio.

My solution is a small, self hosted PWA that simply has a list of a few dozen of my favorite internet radio stations. Loads quickly, no sign in or subscription, no add, just music. In the past month I have hardly even opened Spotify!

Today there’s KCRW locally and it’s good though getting blander.

I recently went to renew my legal callsign, and apparently now email is a required attribute; if an email from them "bounces" then you get your callsign revoked.

My PO Box is no longer enough for them. I don't use email anymore. Radio silence.

>"Onair decorum prevents honest expression of how I really feel..."

>So I guess it's a gonna be a final:

>73//silentkeyKG5???//onmyfinalrogerALLCLEAR>>>rogerroger

----

Ya'll can go to hell, too.

When I was digging through old VHS tapes, I digitized a couple TV spots and put them on youtube; passing them along to Jim.

Best advice I got when I got to San Jose was from an old recruiter - she must have been 30!

She said the Bay Area is big, but the Silicon Valley is small.

I think about her advice a lot.

The radio world is even smaller. I tried out at WZZQ when I was in high school, but didn't make the cut.

Meanwhile the government still throws money at NPR on FM, but sadly they've quit playing classical music all day like they once did and are instead pummeling the airwaves with leftist crap. Supposedly CPB will cease funding NPR but I'll believe it when NPR dies.

I'd like a mostly-classical right-leaning FM station, please, to listen to before my pecker falls off from the leftist shite spewing from NPR.

Compound that with heavy advertising (for some stations) , and the "duty cycle" is even lower. It reminds me of those billboard trucks that drive up and down las Vegas, just burning gasoline, creating traffic, so you can see their ads.

And a very American/mainstream-centric view of things. Radio (especially from the view of things in 2009) in more niche/underground circles was and in some regards still is a driving force of music curation and community in other parts of the world like the UK, parts of the EU and beyond.

Does radio have to be on the FM band? Do we count streaming like via YouTube, twitch and other platforms the same as Radio? I'd say yes. And in that regard, the spirit of radio and the format/feel the author recalls still very much exists.

And if I wasn't actively driving a car at the moment, I probably had something I could be doing with a computer, perhaps involving a YouTube video, or just listening to my own extremely idiosyncratic music choices, that was more interesting than a local radio station, even if I technically owned some kind of device that could receive an FM signal.

Soon enough I had a smartphone and then a smartphone with a mobile internet connection whose cap was generous enough that I didn't need to think hard about how I was using it. And it turns out that having the entire internet available to me on a handheld device subsumes everything I might get out of listening to a radio station - including the modality of listening to audio while I'm doing something else, which might well come from an internet radio station anywhere in the world.

It occurs to me when I listen to a podcast while I'm working out at the gym or driving a car today (via my phone) that the actual auditory experience of this isn't drastically different than how people were consuming talk radio shows decades ago (down the fact that many of them have ads). The techniques for speaking in an engaging way to an audience, or having an engaging conversation between multiple people, are still valid; many podcasts I listen to address listener messages on the program, just like a weekly radio show might do - some even try to replicate the experience of a listener calling in live on a phone.

The business models that work today are of course drastically different than the ones that worked on radio decades ago, and the fact that audience isn't at all limited by physical location means that the sorts of audio content that gets streamed over the internet today are systematically different from what would've been the case on a radio show. I think this is mostly for the better though - more variety, more democratic access to the medium, and no FCC to regulate what you can and cannot legally say on regulated radio spectrum.

As far as I'm concerned, everything that's good about the content of AM/FM radio has been replicated on the general internet, and I have no particular reason to care if the radio signal carrying it to my ears comes from a licensed FM station or the 5G connection from my phone to a cell phone tower.

I don't agree with this premise. FM Radio is definitely more corporate today, but I grew up in the 90s and my memories of FM radio are not fond.

For my whole life it has always been materially the same, shitty, experience: occasional good songs interleaved with mediocre ones and a hefty dose of annoying unskippable ads.

The difference is that when I was a kid we didn't have streaming or even mp3 players so we just had to put up with the ads. Today I can just play songs locally off my phone via Bluetooth. No ads, no DJs, just the music I enjoy.

Theres also a local christian radio station I am only aware of because the guy fixing my fence was blasting it on his stereo. They were taking donations the entire time. I am sincerely not interested but they seem to deliver what their listeners want too.

There's so much good radio to be had since the arrival of the internet. Not even talking about online-only, but actual radio stations who also stream. Maybe there's less cool broadcast stations in any given area, but our overall exposure via internet is incredible. Just search for free-form radio. If you have a college in your area, you probably have interesting radio and DJs on the airwaves.

The article ends with giving up, ipod + KPFA news, which just seems wild. Never has there been a time where there's more music available.

Weren't they allowed to have "normal" names like anywhere else in the world?