Comments

1
What a snob, what makes them bad not sung by hippies.
2
The only decent radio is public radio. And most of that is shit too.

Commercial radio stations can't play good music. They just play what some asshole decides is popular and what is safe for their sponsors.
3
"what makes them bad not sung by hippies."

That and all the songs are the same played out no talent crap endlessly looped. Listen to 20 minutes and you've heard it all.

How can anyone with a brain listen to that shit?
4
Hell, I'm excited and I won't even be here after August. I hope Austin gets some cool new radio too.

@1, Thank you for that eloquent and insightful commentary, Seattle14. Truly your disdain for the hackneyed "question mark" has paved an entirely new stylistic way for media criticism, and I'm sure the reminder that "hippies" once existed is something we could all stand to think on.
5
I'd really like the return of something that used to be called "Progressive Radio" from back in the 1970s. That's when D.J.'s were allowed to talk...for five or ten minutes if they wanted to, about music or issues. And they could play any cut on the album or a whole side. It was a complete ethos in which you could spend an auditory life.
6
I love KZOK HD channel 2 :)

But they're 68kW and still cuts out in Belltown, can't imagine 100W transmitters will be very impressive in our hilly city :/
7
Posted by news intern Ansel Herz


Someone explain why you aren't already carrying your own byline and are no longer an intern? Your stuff is the best of any of them in years.
8
@3 Some of us don't care so strenuously about music. I wish I did. I have tried and continue to try to listen to many varieties of music, but I just don't seem to experience the same intense feelings about music that other people I know do. I enjoy lots of music, including a lot of the shitty stuff on the radio, but I am bad at discerning quality music. I never feel like going to concerts and when I do I don't think I have the same level of enjoyment as the other people there. I'm like a two-buck-chuck drinker of music: if you give me the good stuff I'll love it, but you can give me the shitty stuff and I'll probably be about as happy

I'm always for more variety and I'm not a fan of consolidation and there are days where I am tired of the same old, but for the most part I just can't reach that same level of caring about music that so many seem to. I accept that many people do have discerning tastes and enjoy music in a different way than I do, but I wonder if that is the norm or not.

Too bad it isn't really hip to be square.
9
Low-power radio stations are swell, but no substitute for busting up the oligopolies.
10
@8, I'm in ur weirdly amusical 'hood. It never, ever occurs to me to put tunes on while I'm at home. I've bought only a handful of albums since college, and exactly one from iTunes Music Store. I like a lot of different stuff (even hip-hop has begun to grow on me in the last ten years, appropriate since it's now on the way out—or gone, I don't really know) when people say "You should listen to this; I think you'll like it." But it kinda drives me nuts when people have music playing in a work environment. I've pushed the position before that if management is okay with people listening (i.e. safe and doesn't interfere with productivity), they should have to do it via earbuds. I've always had a hard time understanding lyrics and I usually think they're bad or ridiculous poetry. Yet so many people seem to find such deep meaning in them.
11
Fuck low power radio. It's time to challenge the licenses of Clear Channel and the other mega-networks. Those licenses are granted to the broadcaster for free and intended to be used for public benefit. If a broadcaster isn't serving the public, the FCC is supposed to entertain challenges to their license when it comes up for renewal.

What we need is an organized group to start drawing up challenges and filing suits. That's the only way to put the radio spectrum back the way it belongs, in a diverse group of local broadcasters serving their listeners.
12
I thoroughly support anything that destroys Clearchannel.
13
@11
..hear hear !
14
@11 and @12: Word.
15
This sounds neat, but I have to wonder how many people actively listen to (or even own) an actual radio at home anymore. Or is this going to be another one of "those" things, like vinyl, typewriters and homemade whiskey?
16
@15 Well, I listen to radio. It's King FM's Evening Show and Music Through the Night for me (actually really awesome if you're a classical music fan and you've already heard all the standards), as well as a touch of NPR's morning news and ESPN's late-night sports news, and the occasional Rush Limbaugh. (Yes, I'm a liberal who enjoys Rush Limbaugh, though not as much as I used to.)

What I don't listen to, at least on purpose, is music other than classical (or, rarely, jazz). If I'm driving a car, I might check out what they're swinging nowadays over at KEXP, but that's about it. Classic rock? Whatever the new mainstream rap is at KUBE 93? Top forty? Eighties music? (Kill me now.) 90's mainstream? The newer pop music? Country music for more than twenty minutes? You'd have to either be paying me or holding me captive at some sort of waiting room. I don't actually think people listen to this voluntarily on their free time. That's what iPhones/iPods and internet music sites are for. And radio commercials are torture, let's be honest. So, in that sense, I agree with you. I wonder if most people listening to music through the radio are stuck at work or in the doctor's office.

On the plus side, I get to find out what's good and what's bad. Justin Timberlake? Katie Perry? Taylor Swift? Train? Coldplay? Nickelback? Maroon 5? Radio has demonstrated to me that they suck. Over and over again. (And there's also the stuff I've always known sucks, like Bon Jovi.) But on the other hand, that one damn, girly Vanessa Carlton song they play on easy listening served as a gateway to her music and now I'm a big fan of hers. So sometimes (rarely) it works.

But, of course, they don't play her other songs on the radio.
17
@15 We actively listen to local radio three to four hours a week, as in walk over to the console and push buttons and turn the tuning dial, but those are public radio programs.

International radio, as in downloadable podcasts, six hours a week.

My family is sensitive to music. Sometimes I wish we weren't: If I shopped for groceries alone I would probably have my personal mp3 player with me. I am convinced the music in the supermarkets is an anti-loitering measure.

Twelve-sixteen years ago it used to be fun while road-tripping to be pushing buttons on the AM/FM radio to see what comes up. Now we're so apprehensive of "bat(shit) country" commercial radio offerings that we compulsively load up our thumb drives with 200 hours worth of music and podcast content when we drive, but our music tastes are much more varied than commercial radio program directors will provide.
18
"Some of us don't care so strenuously about music. I wish I did."

Because you just don't know where to find good music. If I only listened to whats on MTV or commercial radio I wouldn't really like music either.

19
"I've bought only a handful of albums since college, and exactly one from iTunes Music Store."

You must be a fun and interesting person.
20
S'okay. You're probably not anyone I'd choose to hang around with either, and that's not even knowing what music you like.
21
@18 ah, just a troll. Now I wish I hadn't bothered trying to formulate my thoughts in a coherent fashion. At least it will be useful for actual discussion with real life people I know who are way into music.
22
The reason there is not good radio is because the masses of idiots like the two posters above wouldn't listen to it anyway.

Try the AM stations. That boring and bland crap will go with your ignorant non music appreciating tastes.

Please wait...

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