-

I hate radio.  Same reasons.

God help us all.

I don't listen to the radio anymore simply because I don't like what has become mainstream. Some of the alternative rock is not too bad, but I will go to my grave missing the 80's rock scene.  I was in high school during the 80s and in my humble opinion, the greatest era of rock ever!

I get most my music variety from Spotify now.  I've found several new rock bands I really like by clicking on the "similar bands" functionality.  And new meaning, new as in the last couple years.  Not stuff I missed 30 years ago.

I hate radio. With a passion.

I've been force fed w/ radio for years, first because my ex-wife's father worked for CBC Radio and the thing was on all the time in the house. 
And then, when I worked a warehouse. Man, that one was almost the death of me. Commercial radio. 

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they'd play their top artists' current hits. On Tuesday and Thursday, they'd sink deep into "nostalgia" and play the same artists' previous hits from 4 or 5 months earlier...

Meaning that you'd hear the same bunch of songs 3 times a week for 3 or 4 months, then at least twice a week for the rest of the year, and so on.


That's also when I noticed something very strange w/ what they call normal people.

One morning, after months of hearing the same stuff every morning, one of the guys - the only person in there w/ whom I really got along - decided to bring in a bunch of CDs for a change. 

He didn't want to push his luck, so he stuck w/ what he thought our co-workers liked -the CDs were basically from the same artists we heard all the time on the radio - Red Hot Chili Peppers, Depeche Mode and such - but he thought it would be cool to listen to other songs...

After 30 refreshing minutes of new music, that glitter of hope vanished when the other co-workers removed the cd, put the radio back on and told him to keep that junk at home. 

That killed me, man. Seriously. It made me hate my job even more than I hated it to begin w/. I was miserable.

I never understood the assumption that there is such a thing as "normal" music, that everyone can put up w/. You know, the stuff they play in restaurants and stores and everywhere.

So-called normal music has the exact same effect on me as Norwegian death metal has on them. I get a tooth ache when I hear Celine.

OTOH, my wife is always on the hunt for new stuff. She told me Pandora helped her discover a few nice things.

The other way around is to manually search for similar artists on iTunes - which can lead to much pain and deception. There's a phenomenal quantity of rubbish out there.

Me, I sort of gave up, unless someone who knows me well suggests something. The rest of the time, if I want new music, I write it myself. ;)

What IS this radio concept I hear so much about anyway???

+1 for Spotify. Whatever track you're listening to you can "start a radio station" which plays an endless stream of tracks in the same genre. Or you can install addon apps like Pitchfork which introduce new music to you. 

I have to say though, I think I find most of my new music by surfing the "related" sidebar in YouTube, although this seems to have become less useful since Google "revamped" it recently (typical Google). 

I really enjoy PBS radio.

I listen while building guitars. They mix it up. Comedy stories, interviews with guests, many genres.
They're knowlegable about the music and musicians....just great listening. Sure glad they're on the air.


Station choice may be an issue.

We usually have one of the digital radio stations that come with Direct TV playing downstairs.  Good background noise, but every station has such a limited playlist it's a joke so upstairs I make my own shuffle play "station."