Others Look Forward To "Rock Lobster"

It’s a little comforting to know that “Mr. Roboto” still gets some radio play  

That is a pretty welcome change from more Taylor Swift and non-stop Christmas music.   

Radio sucks. 

The concept is fairly simple: Radio station plays music that people want to listen to, causing people to listen to it.  Businesses and politicians want listeners to hear their advertisements, so they pay for commercial time on radio stations with demographics appropriate for their goods and services.  Lather, Rinse, Repeat.  

Reality is a little more complicated than that.  Many people have moved away from traditional radio broadcasts in favor of internet-based radio, which has a very similar model, and satellite radio, which features fewer commercials and more cursing, but is a paid subscription service.  Completely aside from all that, traditional radio is now operated by a relatively few large entities who get paid not only from advertisers, but by "record labels" whose job it is to tell radio stations what music people want to listen to.  I put the words "record labels" in quotes because roughly none of them actually make records anymore, which leaves no place to put the labels.  Also, there are a ludicrous number of record labels out there, and it seems like the sole requirement for starting a record label is a statement that you are starting a record label.  

Record labels make money when people buy new music.  Sure, people buy old music all the time, but at a significantly lower rate over time.  The market tails off incredibly quickly, so what the industry is interested in is new stuff.  Seriously...how many people do you know that bought a copy of "The Emancipation of Mimi" last week?  None?  Well, it was the best selling album of 2005.  How about "The Fame Monster"?  2010.  But lots and lots of people bought those when they came out.  

Because of this perfectly reasonable nature, record labels put undue pressure on radio stations to play new music, tell people that it's good, in order to get listeners to go out and buy stuff.  It's something of a conspiracy, but one that most people are perfectly okay with.  The "Top 40" list is constantly updating, but are any of the songs on there really among the 40 best songs of all time?  Nope.  But they're the most popular because we're told they're the most popular.  Who tells us this?  The only people in the world aside from the artist themselves who stand to make money by having a song be popular.  They might be a little biased.  

There are also certain radio stations who play older music for the sake of listener nostalgia.  "Classics" and "Oldies" stations really don't make a lot of money from record labels, so they get to ride on the financial coattails of "Hits" stations and rely more on advertiser revenue for their livelihood.  These stations have entire generations of music to pick from when deciding what's popular.  They have statistics and polls and demographics to make informed playlist decisions.  These stations, by necessity, end up leaving out an awful lot of songs that were once popular, but don't draw the numbers they once did.  So, it's a rare and special treat when an old song, forgotten by the radio ages, gets airtime again.  

Such as when one of these ultra-low budget radio stations decides to skeleton-crew an entire holiday weekend by sorting their entire playlist alphabetically and pressing "Play."  I happened to be listening fairly late in the "M"'s when Mr. Roboto came on.  I was pleased and really have only one possible thing to say to the radio station.  

Domo Arigato.