back to article YouTube video has NOT killed radio's star

Unfashionable and neglected, radio is still vital to how people discover music. A Nielsen survey of da yoof finds that radio is still the most popular route for music discovery - nine times more than the internet. It also confirms that recommendations via real-life social networks - friends and relatives - are far more …

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  1. fridaynightsmoke
    Megaphone

    Radio good for discovery

    Radio is good for discovering music precisely because it's someone else's choice. If you're just searching on Youtube then 99% of what you hear is your own choice, therefore you're unlikely to hear anything new.

    As for 'recommendations', a lot of the time people are reluctant/too busy etc to actually listen to something new, whereas on the radio you're almost forced to. The tradeoff is of course having to listen to several hours of godawful shite* to hear one good track (on average).

    *in one's opinion, YMMV

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not surprising

      90% of YouTube is absolute crap, 9% is watchable, 0.5% reasonable and 0.3 good.

      The other 0.2% hasn't made up its mind.

      So yes we look to the radio to sort the Chaff from the Wheat.

  2. DJ Smiley
    Facepalm

    Missing word: "Realise"

    "Again nearly half of those surveyed had a radio app on their smartphone (47 per cent) and 54 per cent have a music player app installed."

    Well Android comes with a radio and media playing apps as default; iPhones _WERE_originally media playing devices before they came capable of sending text/calling and blackberries have long had radio/media playing functionality too.

    Considering most teens have the newest up and coming gadgets I'd guess most of them don't realize they can play music on their phones, or just haven't stopped playing the latest angry birds game long enough to check for anything else.

    1. Tom 35

      Re: Missing word: "Realise"

      I expect 100% of smart phones have a music player app. Most feature phones can play MP3 too.

      But I don't think radio apps are all that common. I expect youtube apps are more common then radio apps.

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        Radio app

        Be nice if I could listen to the radio when in airplane mode. GPS works (and doesn't even get turned off), WiFi can be switched on, so why not the radio?

  3. S 11

    DJ's lie more than politicians! (If that's possible)

    New music is discovered by your friends' older siblings, and that's how you get introduced to it.

    In America, the radio actually kills music. Today's kids think there are only 27 bands in the world.

    1970 is the magic year in music.

    1. Tom 35

      Re: DJ's lie more than politicians! (If that's possible)

      That's just the top hits radio stations, and it's not new.

      In the 70's there were two local Radio stations popular with us kids that only played the top 40 chart songs so you would never hear anything that had not already become popular some place else. On the weekend they would play oldies... the top 40 from a year ago.

      It was Disco that made me look beyond the hit machine to find there was a lot more music out there to be found.

  4. mark 63 Silver badge

    the radio still sucks

    well you wouldnt discover bugger all listening to the music around here apart from who Simon Cowell is grooming .

    I have six analogue presets in my car radio - switch to the next when crap comes on . then after cycling a couple of times i revert to the mp3 player.

    to quote the Ataris:

    "Every now and then , I turn it on again, but its plain to see the radio still sucks"

    My digibox does let me have the kerrang channel though (audio)

    which i have discovered new music through.

    I also discovered the drop kick murphys and flogging molly through Youtube on st paddys day!

  5. Mike Brown

    radio sucks

    most analog radio stations are aweful. just churning out the same tinny pop crap.

    DAB is a little better: planet rock, and somtimes kerrang! are worth listening too.

    what amazes me about radio is that we have 60-80 years worth of music to play, and they all seem to play the same tracks. tracks released in the last 1-2 years. there are billions of tracks out there to play.

    1. Fatman

      Re: radio sucks

      In the 1970's I had considered getting into radio, and quickly dismissed that idea as misguided.

      I quickly found out all about having to kiss the asses of advertisers, and why, commercial radio is incapable of anything better than Top 40.

      It was pointed out to me that commercial radio is a business that exists solely for the purpose of serving up an audience to advertisers. Any deviation from the "approved" Top 40 hitshit list would be grounds for termination. Consequently, commercial radio, is incapable of innovation.

      I was fortunate to find that in my area was a non commercial station, where the hosts were given the freedom to pick what music genre they wanted to explore, and the depth to which they could explore it.

      I remember speaking to my uncle about this "experiment", and as a commercial broadcaster, he said it would never work. Funny, they have been on the air for over 30 years. I wonder if the AM station he worked for is still around?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Neilsen survey makes no distinction between broadcast radio and internet radio; it's entirely likely that they are saying "this bit of the internet is doing better than this other bit of the internet".

    Is "discovering new music" any sort of meaningful metric anyway? I occasionally listen to national radio and discover all sorts of new music that I detest with a passion bordering on mania....

  7. Azzy

    Half of American teens discover music through the radio?

    That explains so much. No wonder they listen to such garbage.

    Also - it's no surprise that they think digital distribution is a better deal than CDs - it's because it is. The quality is high enough on downloads that no non-audiophile is going to notice the difference, and in order to use a CD, you need to rip it first (note that this means it's going to end up compressed anyway), since most youth today don't even own a CD player - and on top of all that, CD's often cost more. Plus you have to store the CD, but I don't think that goes through the minds of teenagers - They can just toss it onto that big shelf in the middle of their room.

  8. pPPPP

    I listen to 6 music and it's fucking brilliant. Always hearing new stuff on there, including genres I'd normally not look for. Loads of old stuff I've never heard before. And virtually no manufactured crap.

    On the subject, I can't believe they dredged up the bloody Spice Girls for the Olympic closing ceremony. Inspire a generation? Fuck off. Ironically it emphasised how good the actual sport was in comparison to that crap.

    Mind you, I was in Hyde park watching Blur.

    1. Mystic Megabyte
      Happy

      Check out Late Junction on Radio 3 for stuff you would never have thought of.

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tp52

      Also some gems at VLC>View>Playlist>Internet>Jamendo Selections

      I've become quite fond of Lounge through this, nice :)

  9. earl grey
    FAIL

    Radio is a mess in the US

    Radio isn't worth bothering with in the US since they have allowed a couple of major (contributor) corporations to hoover up most stations in a listening area and I know that i can step through a dozen stations and find several of them playing the exact same thing all day long... It's a thoroughly revolting situation which causes me to switch off the radio more often than not.

    As for new music....I find a lot of it by accident on Youtube...when i've gone there for one thing only to find something else by happenstance. Delightful and easily converted to MP3 at a modest conversion rate.

    There are still no lossless downloads that i've found from the major players.

  10. J 3
    Gimp

    Yeah, what about Internet radio?

    Some Internet radio is not purely so, since it's merely another channel to distribute the exactly same thing. But other stations are Internet based. What about them?

    I myself am far from being a "yoof" now, but I have discovered all new music on the net for the past few years. I always carry my MP3 player with me in the car, and when I don't have it or the battery dies, I listen to a classic rock radio that plays very few songs I don't know -- even then they still surprise me with some unknown thing now and then. Other radio stations... I just can't stand listening to one hour of stuff I don't like just on the off chance that one interesting song might pop up. Only things on the (Internet or not) radio that I regularly listen to are specialized shows -- mostly specializing in metal, like TuffStuff (in Germany) and Backstage (in Brazil). Find plenty of new songs and bands through that.

    YouTube and the like, on the other hand, recommends stuff that is "similar" to what you are looking for, and I've discovered lots of stuff I like that way. If you have the time and are curious, you can get caught in an infinite loop that way. That way I end up finding music in other genres I like which are not related to the specialized radio shows I follow, for example classic, blues, traditional... And of course what my friends post in social networks has more than once introduced me to cool new bands (Gogol Bordello is a recentish example).

  11. Dick Emery
    Stop

    Radio is everywhere.

    Usually radio stations are playing in the background in various establishments, playing in cars, on the TV and all sorts of places and can be consumed without having to resort to looking at a computer/tablet display. I know songs that I didn't go out of my way to find but hear them another time and immediately recognize them even if I don't know the name of the artist or song name. I wonder to myself where the hell I heard it because I don't listen to much radio at home or in the car. So I must have heard them elsewhere.

  12. heyrick Silver badge

    I use Internet radio (does that count?)

    Shoutcast is great - I can pick stuff in the sorts of music that interests me, and if it gets boring/samey, I just pick something else to listen to. Found some good stuff that way, and missed some good stuff due to crappy websites and broken ID tagging not telling me what the hell the track was called! Still, it's not bad.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's a combination of sources for me

    Music radio isn't that great in Aus (apart from the ABC's classical station) so I tend to find interesting new music via the dead tree media, in this case it's Mojo mag.

    Once something takes my eye I check it out via the artist's site or YouTube. If it's any good I'll buy the CD.

    It was that combo that led me to this song. As someone else said, it's folk music played by Black Sabbath.

  14. John H Woods Silver badge

    Jango

    I absolutely love this - it's a bit like StumbleUpon for music. You either pick a genre or choose an artist, and in the latter case you hear music that other fans of the artist also like. You can vote those tracks up or down to hear more of the same.

    There are adverts, but it's fairly light, and there are new artists whose exposure you can vote up or down. The only time I listen to radio is when I have no data connection, and fortunately that's becoming increasingly rare.

  15. Fatman

    Convenience is valued over audio quality - at least for this demographic.

    Just what the labels want, people lapping up the crappy audio quality for music.

    To me, when the Amazon price for a CD is only $1.00 more than a digital download; and having known someone who got fucked by "plays for sure", I would rather have the CD, at least I don't have to worry about that server being shut down.

    What a bunch of fucking ID10Ts.

    Hey 'Reg, how about a dopey teenager icon?

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