Where’s your guts and will to survive
And don’t you wanna keep rock & roll music alive
Mr programmer I got my hammer
And I’m gonna smash my, smash my radio
We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby if rock is gonna stay alive
-Joey Ramone
Radio was a magical thing when I was a kid. I remember listening by the dial and waiting for my favorite song to come on the radio so I could try to record it on to a cassette tape.
There are still a few great stations out there (KEXP, KFOG, Indie 103.1 and a some others). But these days traditional radio seems to be fading away. It’s been years since radio has turned me on to new music.
Earlier this year, I was bumming that Boston radio was so tired and worn out. At the time I sent out this tweet:
I remember when wbos was decent. Now they are just long in the tooth. Wish theyd broadcast the hypem popular or radio http://bit.ly/QLBj
I thought that was a good idea at the time and I still do.
Fast forward a few months and I read this morning that CBS is going to let Last.fm power a number of their radio stations. And here’s why they are doing it:
It’s an interesting notion, to create one centralized station consisting of the top-rated and most popular stuff on Last.fm, because the whole idea behind web radio is that you don’t have to listen to what everyone else is listening to. On the other hand, Last.fm’s charts will surely do a better job of finding interesting music than the robots in charge of other radio stations will ever find.
That’s exactly right. I’m looking forward to see how this works out.
I still hope that WBOS ditches their current worn out playlists and turn over the airwaves to the Hype Machine. That would be sweet.
