The discussion about station consolidation diminishing the influence of DJs and the organic discoverability of music was especially interesting. I'd bet that a lot of us between 35-50 noticed that period in 1996-2000 when radio changed from diverse to uniform. I'd bet that few of us know why.
Perhaps an interesting thought: Napster thrived not ONLY because it offered a better value, but because it offered suburban kids an avenue to finding more novel music. That was one of my motivations. I discovered tons of bands that played in Pennsylvania bars or Georgian bluegrass festivals just by downloading live recordings and checking them out. And because I had time at that age, I found a lot of great stuff.
No doubt! There was so much music that disappeared off of shelves, figuratively, because there was also a shift to the Best Buy model of sales, which was the top albums plus classics. Mid list bands were practically invisible. By 1998 I had to special order all the CDs I was interested in because they weren't at the stores anymore, and it was things like Motorhead!
I remember this showed up on my feed and I ignored it. I'll watch it now. I noticed that music became really uniform sometime after the late nineties, though I did like a lot of the stuff that came out in 00s, the fun ended around 2010. The best place to find new music is on your own now on streaming services.
The discussion about station consolidation diminishing the influence of DJs and the organic discoverability of music was especially interesting. I'd bet that a lot of us between 35-50 noticed that period in 1996-2000 when radio changed from diverse to uniform. I'd bet that few of us know why.
Perhaps an interesting thought: Napster thrived not ONLY because it offered a better value, but because it offered suburban kids an avenue to finding more novel music. That was one of my motivations. I discovered tons of bands that played in Pennsylvania bars or Georgian bluegrass festivals just by downloading live recordings and checking them out. And because I had time at that age, I found a lot of great stuff.
No doubt! There was so much music that disappeared off of shelves, figuratively, because there was also a shift to the Best Buy model of sales, which was the top albums plus classics. Mid list bands were practically invisible. By 1998 I had to special order all the CDs I was interested in because they weren't at the stores anymore, and it was things like Motorhead!
I remember this showed up on my feed and I ignored it. I'll watch it now. I noticed that music became really uniform sometime after the late nineties, though I did like a lot of the stuff that came out in 00s, the fun ended around 2010. The best place to find new music is on your own now on streaming services.
Was hoping you'd tackle this story from a music-centered approach, and you did not disappoint!