iTunes Killed the Radio (And I Feel Fine)

I haven’t listened to the radio since 1999, a 13-year gap in airtime that I don’t regret in the least. Now, you would think that I’m not a music person, based on that fact, but you would be completely incorrect in that assessment. I’m probably one of the biggest music people on the planet. At one point in time I owned over 2000 CDs, and it was always interesting to see people’s faces when they saw them stacked up on my bookshelves, their eyes large with wonder. Of course, this was the early ’90s, an age where the CD was king and its subjects could walk into HMV, Tower Records, The Wall, and Sam Goody, an age where MTV still played music videos and Right Said Fred was too sexy for everything. And the way everyone first heard these songs they knew they would want to have was through the glory of the radio. Until Mariah Carey ruined it all.

At the time, I was working as a cook at a pizza buffet in Knoxville. I would go in every morning at 6 a.m. to roll out the dough and get ready for the day. Working by myself so early was incredibly boring, so I would turn on the radio and it was Mariah, every hour on the hour, and sometimes more than once an hour — with the SAME SONG. Now, I never had anything against Mariah, but sometimes I wanted to hear something other than one person. When it became clear that the radio wasn’t going to acquiesce to my demands (I made some threatening phone calls), I decided to go on strike. I began bringing in my CDs and listening to them instead. That way, if I wanted to listen to Ace of Base, I could easily do so, or Soundgarden, or Heart. I discovered a whole world I didn’t know existed, a place where I made the decisions, and I liked it. I still do.

Of course, soon enough the power of the CD began to wane, and the iPod revolution began. I signed on completely, being the audiophile that I am. I couldn’t even imagine having over 20,000 songs on a device no larger than an audiotape, and suddenly there it was, and I was in heaven. It was like having my very own radio, easily programmable by me, in the palm of my hand. And I haven’t seen anything better since, so I still listen to my iPod all the time. Now I have access to 26,988 songs all the time (I take my iPod everywhere). I can even listen to it in my car with the AUX input jack. I am literally in heaven.

Every time I tell someone new that I haven’t listened to the radio since 1999, the first question is how do I possibly know about new music, and the answer is actually simple. I have tried-and-trues that I buy without even listening to them. They’ve been that good to me. Artists like Dave Matthews Band, The Game, Avril Lavigne, Foo Fighters, Pink, and Casting Crowns are must-haves. Then I listen to suggestions by friends and acquaintances. The glory of the internet (and amazon.com) is that you can generally listen to whatever song you want so you can try it out. Now we’ve got Pandora and various other internet radio iterations to help in that respect as well. But I’m still old school, and I only used them to check out new music, but I have to own it, to download it or rip it from a CD myself. Hence, the 26,988 songs on my iPod, and that’s just roughly 7% of the songs I actually have downloaded into iTunes.

So, yes, I haven’t listened to the radio since 1999, but that actually has helped me be even more musical. And if you’re curious, yes, I do have every song Mariah Carey has ever recorded in my iTunes, but I’m the one who gets to pick and choose when I listen to them, not the damn radio.

Sam