New Details on Apple's Negotiations With iHeartMedia Surface

iHate iHeartMedia. :p

Anyone that follows news about the broadcast industry knows just how bad this company has been for radio stations across the United States.

Actually, iHeart Media has been GREAT for stations….’ owners. iHeart paid big bux to buy out all those stations since FCC deregulation in 1996 allowing for single companies to own more stations in each market.

It has been bad for employees, because iHeart consolidated stations into their iHeart-centralized groups and slashed payroll. However, automation has been doing that, and the FCC has been appropriately deregulating radio to compensate for changing technology.

It has been REAL BAD FOR CULTURE! This McMUSIC culture due to homogenized radio and centralized control of music culture has resulted in the dullest of the dullest musical scene since 755 A.D. when Vlad had to miss the lute-playing traveling bard to take a dump outside the communal hut in the mud lands of Eastern Europe. iHeart (among a couple others) has tightly controlled sales and charts through centralization of radio programming.

In the old days (heydays of the 50s-70s), radio and sales were dictated by the people listening and buying. The record companies and radio stations offered up grassroots creativity and would promote what stuck to the masses listening and purchasing. Manufactured groups and talents were in the mix as well, but anyone could make a go of the system. Nowadays, the average Joe in Podunksville, AL can’t get airplay locally because it is controlled by a centralized corporation way-way over the hills. Mom and Pop sold out/were bought out by the “big boys”.

The radio industry had grown stale in the 80s-90s, anyway. It is like the stepchild of the entertainment industry where lots of ego combines with a lack of talent to create a boring mess. Ultimately, radio stations are mostly audio billboards…. But who is listening?

According to studies, 90% of Americans tune into AM/FM radio every week in their cars! 90%!! It’s huge. However, radio doesn’t have the cultural import it had when it promoted a fresh and lively bevy of creativity, so it is mostly relegated to “filling space” in commuters’ lives. That’s still a fairly good billboard! And that is why it is still relevant.

But why listen? They play the same 10 songs, all bland “chart toppers” written by the same 10-20 folks, all sounding like the same stuff since the late 90s-onward. They cram too many commercials in. The “talent” speaks in funny voices and says puerile quips or snarky aphorisms, etc. And half of the stations/formats sound identical today: ACH sounds like AC sounds like Top-40 sounds like Urban. Even country now sounds like Lite AC.

The future of terrestrial radio isn’t death. It isn’t McRadio, because that is a heartless and failing venture, and it isn’t online. Online is as distant and heartless as iHeart(less) radio and satellite radio. What people are gravitating to more than anything else is information and exploration. They turn to radio in hopes of hearing new music and experiences or information they didn’t get elsewhere. Your playlists on an iPod get stale—quick. The looping XM radio stations feel uncared for and lacking personality or fresh info. They fill no particular niche outside of a musical format. Online radio isn’t much better, and it can be too indulgent for the owner/operators and too difficult to find for the average Joe.

Localization of radio, talking to locals, infoming locals, curating locals along with semi-locals along with nationals and regional talents, will keep it fresh and alive. Apple isn’t going to do that. No major corporation will do that. It will be “normal” people, local folk, picking up the pieces of the radio industry that is crumbing that will make it work again as it worked in the past when it was an actual business instead of an investment scheme for titans and social programmers.

iHate iHeartMedia. :p

Anyone that follows news about the broadcast industry knows just how bad this company has been for radio stations across the United States.

apple killed their ipod star. apple had a great music situation, I have a 2007 ipod connected to a Bose sounddock that plays music uninterrupted, clearer, deeper and without loss that sounds much better the itouch 2010 running foobar or anything itunes tries to play though airplay. now apple who destroyed their own music format wants to help a radio company? this is what happens when accountants instead of musicians control music.

iPhone killed the iPod because people stopped buying iPods once Steve Jobs put it on a phone with a web browser and apps.

iHeart logo confuses me

There's a lower case letter i.
There's a heart.
There're radio waves being transmitted from the "i" shaped antenna.

Helpful?

Each location/person had different needs, and for us automation works well. We also have Nest and video cameras at all the needed position as well as automatic door locks. Having been using it for well over 30 years, its very comfortable for us.

Two things I'm curious what others feel about:

1) Radio certainly has its place. As a very avid podcast-listener and AmazonPrimeVideo/Youtube user for the majority of my video entertainment (DirecTVNow is my "cable" provider, for less than 50% of my video entertainment), there are times I really feel like listening to something that I know many others are listening to at the same time. CarTalk on NPR, certain TV series, and definitely football games. There's just something attractive about "pseudo group experience," even if it's "old fashioned." Hopefully the feeling of wanting to be a part of something simultaneously with others will always have appeal and 10 years from now won't be the world of only Amazon purchases and Youtube media ingestion.

All this ability to allow "I can watch whatever I want whenever I want" certainly has its upsides, but at the same time it's removed the feelings of anticipation and "I'm watching this with thousands of others" that really made something feel so much more special compared to being able to watch/listen to almost anything at anytime. Things go in waves and I certainly think that at some point things will swing back away from the insta-have.

If I'm not the only one feeling that way and if Apple or iHeart or xyz radio/broadcast provider can tap into fulfilling that need in a "want to have more of that way," which could be the gold nugget.

2) To me, the instant-ness and convenience of FM radio & broadcast TV (or even satellite radio) vs. the added steps required to partake streaming/podcasts/youtube is the equivalent of:

Corded headphones vs. removing headphone ports on iphones, or
Light switches vs. home automation lights, or
Offering magsafe/USB-C/USB-A/SDcard ports vs. "simplifying" to usb-c, or
Time-tested "obvious" and helpful UIx cues vs. flat design and "new fresh iOS 7 interface," or
Controlling all i-device volumes with the buttons vs. separating ringer/notification volumes vs. media volume, or
Controlling volume via buttons vs. via software

Apple & others COMPLETELY overlook the fact that "instant-on abilities" and convenience factors have a LARGE value, no matter how must "additional service" one receives via unavoidably more complex options.

Jony Ive can float higher and higher on cloud 9 each time he manages to remove a port or jack or button from an Apple device, but each time it results in introducing to the customer at least some type of lag or extra workaround, which really starts to add up after a while. Sometimes you just want to start the car and, wham, your radio which was left "on" is playing and you're off & running. If I had no light switches and had to rely on my iphone to spool up an App to turn on my lights upon arriving home, I'd go absolutely bonkers.

Podcasts, streaming, blue-toothing, etc., all still have certain lags that you notice those times when reverting back to caveman-esque light switches and FM radio, and until streaming/downloading/syncing/bluetooth-connecting catch up, there's an advantage in there somewhere that FM/broadcast still has.

1. Radio: For music at home we normally use a local iHeart channel via Alexa through a Bose radio system. We can also tune the same station on the Bose FM part, but using the Alexa connection allows all the other things it can do with feedback right through the same speakers.

For music in the car, SiriusXM is usually the choice with occasional FM use. SiriusXM is also the car source for national news and talk radio.

2. Automation

I have had automated house lighting since the 80s. Lights come on and off automatically based on sunset/sunrise as well as time of day. Alexa can also control any of them with voice commands as can any house iOS device or PC/Mac. The lights in stairs and kitchen come on automatically based on motion detection. We virtually never use a light switch at all. If we need to change something, we just ask Alexa to do it.

We use Tivo to record OTA TV shows as desired. We can watch when we want using a single remote control (from Harmony) for both live TV, recorded shows, Netflix, Apple TV, etc. The same options are available on each TV.

Lag is generally not an issue on any of the above. While I use Bluetooth for other things, the main radio is direct wired between the Bose and Alexa as are both TVs.

I too am not a fan of Jony Ive. While he makes nice commercials, I’ve not heard him say much that ever really impressed me much at all. He seems hung up on thin verses practical.