Video Didn’t Kill the Radio Star.
But radio is still dead.
I have to believe that Sirius XM has spent more marketing dollars on me alone in the past two months than they would ever get out of me even if I was subscribed to their service.
There was a point in time when radio was an amazing platform. As a matter of fact, it is still incredibly attractive, but the truth is that it is just so hard for radio stations to compete today.
The world is filled with so much media and radio simply doesn’t have much of a place in the market anymore.
Who needs something to listen to 24 hours a day that’s constantly streaming and picking the content for them?
Audio is still valuable…. perhaps now more than ever.
As the song says, we like to think that video killed the radio star, but in all reality, that is not the case.
That would simply be saying that video has overtaken audio, and that is not even close to the case.
Yes. Video is flashier and it can be more entertaining, but it requires your full attention. In a world where we seem to be getting busier and more involved than ever, we need to move in the other direction. We need to move to audio.
Podcasting is the new radio.
If you’ve read any of my other writing… you probably know that podcasting is the name of the game before.
I’ve produced hundreds upon hundreds of podcast episodes, conversed with a lot of people from all walks of life, and met other amazing folks that weren’t directly involved with any of my podcasts.
One thing that was always fun for me is the guests I would get on the show and they would tell me “I think you’re going to have your own radio show one day.”
I’m not going to say they're wrong… but that’s exactly what the podcast is. It’s a talk show.
Podcasting allows the creators to run their show however they want to.
You can have narrative podcasts, talk shows, music shows, and the list goes on and on and on.
Podcasts can be heavily produced, or they can be completely raw audio going up on Spotify.
With that level of flexibility and ubiquity… radio’s future is looking pretty bleak.
On-demand is what really killed the radio star.
On-demand services are taking over the world.
Today, you can watch whatever you want to, whenever you want to, on a whole list of video streaming services (Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc.).
The same thing goes for audio. You have Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and a few others fighting for dominance over the audio streaming space.
This circles back into why podcasting is so prominent, and what is going to make it the “new radio”.
Having the ability to pick what music you are going to listen to, what interview you are going to listen to, or just what type of content you are going to listen to is a luxury.
There is still room for radio, but barely.
I don’t want all of this to sound like radio is all bad and that it doesn’t stand a chance.
People still have times where they do not have anything that they are particularly “in the mood” to listen to.
That’s when radio becomes the key player. When you want to just press a button and have the content come to you.
Radio is also great for discovering new music, outside of whatever is trending on Tik Tok at that point in time.
It’s important to remember that the future of content and the media rests in wherever the attention goes.
Right now, the attention is shifting more and more into podcasts, audiobooks, and music streaming platforms more than anything else.
