Music, Radio and the Internet

Another technology to have seen drastic changes is radio. You have your traditional AM/FM radio, then you have your satellite radio, and finally, you have your internet radio, which varies greatly. For sites like Pandora.com or Slacker.com, you can create and customize your own “stations,” or you can get streaming music from FM radio company websites, iTunes radio stations, and many other websites. Then you have podcasts as well. You can even find most songs up on YouTube. The possibilities are almost endless.

 

There is more music at our fingertips than ever before. The ability to listen to and broadcast just about anything is made possible via the internet. You can even get a lot of this stuff on smartphones, which I talked about last week. Pandora has applications for the iPhone, Windows Mobile phones, and various Sprint phones as well. Now that is something I’d actually appreciate on a smartphone.

 

If these options weren’t enough, there are a ton of methods to get your iPod to play through your car speakers. Some include wireless FM transmitters that you attach to your iPod and play through a specific radio station, ones that plug into the device’s headphone jack and are attached to a “cassette tape” that you put in your cassette player, if your car has one, and then there are kits you can buy to hardwire directly to your car’s radio. I actually have the Dension icelink Plus kit for my car, which is hardwired to the back of the radio, with the wire running through the back and coming out the side of the glovebox, and going into a mount with the small rectangular iPod output, which attaches to the center console of the car.

 

With so many options, I find myself very rarely listening to traditional FM radio for music. The only time I do is in the car when I forget my iPod and really want to hear music, but even then I occasionally won’t both because there will either be commercials, or I won’t like the songs being played. With technology the way it is, it’s almost difficult to not find and listen to music you like, be it new music or music you’ve heard before.

 

This is a major benefit to lesser known artists. Things like iTunes, YouTube, Myspace, among other internet tools and websites have allowed independent artists to get their music out there, and if enough people like it, even make some money out of it. I’ve seen this happen all the time with original songs from YouTube users, where after enough people watch and comment and ask for the song, it ends up in the iTunes download store.

 

Personally, I feel like all this change is for the best. Sure, CD sales might be down, but those benefit mostly the record labels anyway, and not the artist themselves. The internet allows the artist to shine, and focuses on them, and them alone. In this age of customization and infinite musical discovery, nearly anything is possible, and I feel like it’s a win-win situation for both the consumers and the artists.