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When a Music Legend Dies, How Does Today’s Mostly Automated Radio React?

Tags: radio

3 comments

  1. lars
    Link
    Reading that article is bizarre. The issue sounds more like a procedural / chain of command / order of operations issue rather than a technical one, which the article makes it seem at the start.

    Reading that article is bizarre. The issue sounds more like a procedural / chain of command / order of operations issue rather than a technical one, which the article makes it seem at the start.

    1 vote
  2. [2]
    arghdos
    (edited )
    Link
    I would be shocked if major radio stations didn't have AUX inputs, considering 3/3 college radio stations I've been in did... There's like a minor, minor chance that they set this up to keep...

    Indeed, music stations are so heavily researched, that even for the most-played artists, only a handful of songs get played. Classic rock and classic hits formats are not immune to this trend. And while we live in a time when practically every song ever recorded is accessible immediately through our phones, there’s not really a way to “plug in,” as it were, and access your Spotify account.

    I would be shocked if major radio stations didn't have AUX inputs, considering 3/3 college radio stations I've been in did... There's like a minor, minor chance that they set this up to keep people inside their own system, but I'm pretty sure this referring to a licensing issue (i.e., Spotify, YT, or basically any streaming service besides the Internet Archive prohibits unlicensed re-broadcast).

    For its part, Cumulus has devised its own proprietary system called Stratus Music which gives program directors remote access to a huge music library for all formats and allows a simply drag and drop into the local station’s playback system. iHeart also has a similar system. “We are not limited on what we can play,” says Poleman. “If a station or personality wants to share a song from an artist that they feel is meaningful, they can easily do that.” And Beasley is working on a Wide-Orbit type system, which is mainly used to access and schedule commercials, “to be able to have that centralized library,” says Knight.

    So, just so I'm clear: any given soul or rock radio station probably doesn't have any Arethra past Respect or Rock Steady, but if someone dies the program director (if, you know... they're not asleep, or on vacation, or...) can login to the proprietary streaming service operated by Clearvision or the like, and queue up songs that the station doesn't have locally? This is fairly insane, hard-disc space is cheap. You could fit literally every song you'd ever want to play on the radio on like a couple thousand $'s of RAID'ed hard-drives

    1. boredop
      Link Parent
      At my station we have 20 studios and booths and each one has an I/O panel that takes RCA or XLR cables. And the bigger control rooms have built-in iPod docks too (antiquated now, but useful when...

      I would be shocked if major radio stations didn't have AUX inputs, considering 3/3 college radio stations I've been in did...

      At my station we have 20 studios and booths and each one has an I/O panel that takes RCA or XLR cables. And the bigger control rooms have built-in iPod docks too (antiquated now, but useful when we built this place ten years ago). I'm sure any station that is mostly live is able to plug in a phone or pot up a computer with the spotify software on it. But there are plenty of station now that are 100% automated or syndicated. Can't play a youtube video on the air if there is no DJ and the station is just a computer plugged straight into a transmitter or STL.

      1 vote