Radio Music Goes Online

Abstract

This essay explores how the very idea of music radio has changed profoundly in the last decade. It offers examples of the ways in which traditional music radio services have attempted to negotiate a move to online listening, along with a more detailed investigation of the new music services, which mimic or modify the radio listening experience. We must be careful, however, to avoid the assumption that it is the technologies themselves that determine the way music radio and radio-like music services have developed. In many ways, the listener experience of services like Last.fm is superficially similar to that produced by an over-the-air radio station, but its differences"”a personalized stream of music without DJ interpellations"”represent a revolution in music radio practice. Last.fm"™s radio-like music streaming service, for instance, was built upon the idea of bespoke playlists created from shared listener "musical maps." These and other changes are indexical of fundamental shifts in the way that the political economy organizes the production, distribution, and consumption of culture