Reinventing radio

rpm · Aug 9, 2008

Local radio leaves a lot to be desired. If you’re a fan of good music — that is, if you like anything other than top-40 pop pabulum — chances are that, like me, you’ve largely given up on music radio. But the Internet is promising to turn the industry on its head.

chopsky · Aug 9, 2008

I wish we had something like XM/Sirius Satellite Radio here.

The problem with the radio airwaves in this country, is that like every other form of communication/broadcasting, government has a tight leash on it.

.Froot. · Aug 9, 2008

Wow, this hit me pretty hard.... lol. No mention about 5fm? I haven't listened to Highveld in a while, but the last time I did it did get me counting sheep... 99 sheep... 100 sheep....Zzzzz

Hark3n · Aug 9, 2008

I'm so glad I'm not the only one that think local radio suck bullocks. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, on an radio station that I would want to listen to. 5fm does play rock occasionally, but I want rock only.

When I'm at home I can at least remedy this by listening to streaming audio over the net, but my cap can only handle so much.

I've actually been thinking about getting DSTV just so that I can listen to the DMX channels. Hell, I've even considered Worldspace.

Dammit, I want decent music!!!

Scorpion · Aug 9, 2008

This article is so true and represents how many of my friends, including myself, have felt for a very long time. I am a person that can appreciate and listen to a rather broad spectrum of music genres but that doesn't mean I like listening to 5FM who will play a techno/dance style song and then a heavy alternative rock song straight after it. Stations like 5FM have a market for sure, but you need to add to it. I need a rock music channel. 5FM once had Barney Simon who went a long way in promoting and playing rock music (both local and international bands) but they pushed him to timeslots that were not in peak listening periods and then eventually pushed him out. I can't say it was a mistake as i'm sure they had their business reasons but it was certainly a huge loss for SA radio and music. It took away a time slot that had something different to add to the radio waves. Now what you get is a radio station that still plays most of the genres but it can come at any time and they will mostly stick to the more commercial/well known stuff to be able to cover the vast amount of music out there and that just makes 5FM boring these days. If you take an album from a band and take their number 1 hit on that album, that's the song 5FM will play to death even though there are plenty of other good songs on that album that can be played to stop that song from being destroyed.

I am picking on 5FM because it is a National station and one that most people can relate too, they are most certainly not the only culprits. Secondly 5FM does has a place in radio and need their music to appeal to a large and diverse range of people as they do have a large (and forced through lack of choice) listening audience. What I'm saying here is basically a backup of the article, we need more choice, more variety.

Like the article said, we can listen to our MP3's and CD's but that gives us limited exposure to listening to and experiencing other music in that specific genre that you will most probably really like.

I use Last.fm (http://www.last.fm) a lot (every day now in fact), a streaming audio/internet radio type website with a big difference. It's main purpose is to expose you to new and good music that are within your music tastes. It constantly records the music/songs you listen to and starts to create a database for your profile. The more you use it, the more it can build your profile and introduce you to new music you will probably like. It also has a tagging functions that allows you to tag a song or artist, this adds a whole new dimension and you have to try it to see how much it benefits you. A simple way to start is to create an account, which is totally free. From there download the app that comes with it, its a really good app. Type in a band or song you really like, it will play a song from that band first and from then on it will play music that is similar to that band/artist. It's really simple and great and the quality of the audio superb.

This app can also sync to most of the popular music players such as itunes, winamp etc... and can also sync with your ipod to give you a much larger database and image of the type of music you listen too.

Anyway that's my 2 cents for now

caroper · Aug 9, 2008

I tend to use Shoutcast.com a lot. The lower bit rate streams are as good if not beter than the FM quality transmissions in SA and are a little easyer on your ADSL Cap than the high quality feeds. You can find any Genre of music there and many international new/talk or even FM stations being relayed. I also listen to a lot of live perfomances by artists world wide in SecondLife.com but these tend to be from 11pm our time onwards as the target market is still mainly USA.

GreatBigMouth · Aug 9, 2008

Scorpion said:
5FM once had Barney Simon who went a long way in promoting and playing rock music (both local and international bands) but they pushed him to timeslots that were not in peak listening periods and then eventually pushed him out.

You can now listen to Barney on Tuks FM.

I think it's on Monday or Tuesday nights, not quite sure.

Scorpion · Aug 9, 2008

GreatBigMouth said:
You can now listen to Barney on Tuks FM. I think it's on Monday or Tuesday nights, not quite sure.

I stay in Cape Town though, but yeah shot for the info

stoke · Aug 9, 2008

UJFM (University of Johannesburg FM) used to play awesome rock all the time, and a heck of a lot of local artists were being covered.
Unfortunately, this station is also going to the hiphop dawgs.
Choices left = 0.
MP3 player .. loaded and overused.

fskmh · Aug 9, 2008

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed dj
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life
Hang the blessed dj
Because the music they constantly play

The Smiths - Panic

angelblaze · Aug 9, 2008

Ah, luckily TuksFm streams via their website:
http://www.tuksfm.co.za/ListenLive.aspx

Otherwise i might go more insane.

.Froot. · Aug 9, 2008

Yeah. Until Firefox in Ubuntu tells me "no suitable plugin found"...

Alastairo · Aug 9, 2008

Local Radio for linux

froot said:
Yeah. Until Firefox in Ubuntu tells me "no suitable plugin found"...

Install vlc and vlc-mozillaplugin and then go to : http://www.antfarm.co.za/antradio/index.asp
You can then play most of the local radio stations

.Froot. · Aug 9, 2008

I've got both of them. will try that though. I don't usually stream radio but if not then why not....

Um... well they don't have Tuks, but anyways.
If I click on example 5fm, it says "stopped" 0:00/0:00 but doesn't do anything if I click on it. I have the complete vlc package as well as mozilla-plugin-vlc.

Hark3n · Aug 9, 2008

Froot, just install Amarok. It has all the stations from shoutcast already listed and it has built in last.fm support.

.Froot. · Aug 9, 2008

I do have Amarok (which decent Linux user that likes music doesn't?)

CirclingTheSun · Aug 9, 2008

froot said:
I do have Amarok (which decent Linux user that likes music doesn't?)

I know I do. Playing around with the nighly build of Amarok2 at the moment. It's really coming along nicely.

who.is.michael · Aug 9, 2008

who.is.michael · Aug 9, 2008

froot said:
If I click on example 5fm, it says "stopped" 0:00/0:00 but doesn't do anything if I click on it. I have the complete vlc package as well as mozilla-plugin-vlc.

Play the above directly from WMP (File Open URL and add to Playlist); the local stations won't stop playing, however some of the international stations (lower end of list) might require you to enable browsing - VLC no issues...

.Froot. · Aug 9, 2008

Cough cough... WMP in Linux? WTF? I did a restart after reinstalling some apps and it works now....

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