Is music choice on Irish Radio very conservative & l predictable?

LordSutch

So here's the thing, I'm listening to BBC Radio2 and up comes the New single from Simply Red "Shine on" (1st airing on Wogans show), very nice, very new, yet very 80's in its sound (New but different), then a few days later I hear the new single by Shaun Escoffrey "Nobody Knows", wow I think, that's good! Thank you BBC, Then I'm introduced to Ron Sexsmith & "Gateway Car" this time on Capital Radio.

Great songs all the time on UK radio stations, New sounds, new artists, fresh ideas, talented artists, all appearing on radio in Britain, then I get in the car and turn on my car radio (Irish Radio only) :-(

And now we have Bagatelle and Summer in Dublin, then comes Paul Brady predictably warbling away a tune we've all heard a 1000 times before, "Listen up folks" after the break we have a real treat 4 you with Christopher Cross & "Ride like the wind" . . .

Throw in a very predictable 1970s Steely Dan track and you get the picturie.

Same artists, same tracks, with very little New stuff on Irish Radio stations IMO.

What say you, fellow radio listeners?

Why is track selection so predictable, narrow & boring on Irish Radio?

efb

The public gets what the public wants- I'm going underground

DEFTLEFTHAND

On Radio One the likes of John Creedon and Philip King (South Wind Blows) give a lot of new and obscure artists playtime.

real rocker

Commercial daytime radio is afraid that if they do anything different we will switch off. RTE Radio 1 ( what little daytime music there is ) is a slight variant in that it is not strictly play listed as are some Lyric FM shows.
Apart from internet radio I guess that 103.2 Dublin City FM, Near FM & other community stations offer the best alternative daytime music choices.
Dublin City FM has great daytime & night time niche offering as does TX FM.
I guess that community stations outside Dublin must have some interesting offerings also.

Declan A Walsh

There's always Pat James' Off the Record on Radio Nova on Sunday nights. Most of what he plays you would never hear on daytime radio, including Nova!

ford fiesta

Back before computer playout and strict playlists it was a novelty 'wow' moment when you heard some oldies on Irish radio.

The DJ or producer would have to physically get the record or CD from the library, now it's just at the click of a mouse and they don't even need to know the song... which means too much familiarity for the listener. Now the great songs we loved to hear up to 10 years ago are played a few times per day.

When will Nova stop playing Pat Benetar 'We Belong'?

When will Sunshine stop playing Lionel Richie 'Stuck on You'?

yosser hughes

BBC radio 6 is light years ahead of any Irish radio station. I don't know why anyone would listen to an Irish channel now. Not for music or anything else for that matter.
I listen to BBC radio 6 most of the time for music and BBC radio 4 for news/arts etc.
Irish media in general is incredibly insular and has an inflated opinion of itself.

L1011

ford fiesta wrote: »

When will Nova stop playing Pat Benetar 'We Belong'?

Did they corrupt the file for Love Is A Battlefield then? :eek:

shedweller

Barely have time to listen to radio these days. Mostly got tired of the formulaic nature of it all.
I aint no ant!

total former

LordSutch wrote: »

Why is track selection so predictable, narrow & boring on Irish Radio?

Economy of scale. It's just not viable to have niche stations broadcasting an eclectic mix to the tiny number of people who want it.

Like it or not, commercial radio stations exist to give people what they want to hear so advertisers will give them money. And like it or not, the majority of people want to hear the same songs over and over.

It's not fair to compare it to Britain with its much larger and denser population (plus the enormous non-commercial resources of BBC).

Stevie Zodiac

The public gets what the public wants- I'm going underground

Think you'll find the actual Jam lyric is 'the public wants what the public gets'. Quite a different meaning...

ford fiesta

Stevie Zodiac wrote: »

The public gets what the public wants- I'm going underground

Think you'll find the actual Jam lyric is 'the public wants what the public gets'. Quite a different meaning...

If you knew the lyrics.. in fact both lines are in the song!

Stevie Zodiac

But isn't Weller's twist on the phrase very telling?

LordSutch

total former wrote: »

Economy of scale. It's just not viable to have niche stations broadcasting an eclectic mix to the tiny number of people who want it.

Like it or not, commercial radio stations exist to give people what they want to hear so advertisers will give them money. And like it or not, the majority of people want to hear the same songs over and over.

It's not fair to compare it to Britain with its much larger and denser population (plus the enormous non-commercial resources of BBC).

I totally understand what you're saying, but sometimes I'm in the car "channel hopping" like you do, and the choice is just soooo restricted in selection. Like all the Irish stations are playing the same tracks (from the same box) that they've always played for thirty years, with the chance of something new a rarety!

Then at home I can access the Beeb, Capital, Heart, Jazz FM, etc from my satellite dish or tablet, and I'm guaranteed to hear something brand new and fresh from whoever it may be (old established artist, or new), but at least its a different track to the local/parochial hum drum selection I get in the car

Captain Chaos

The amount of times I have hopped between say 98fm, 103.8 and Fm104 and they were all playing the same song at the same time almost in sync with each other. One would guess they are all streaming the same 10-12 song track list on shuffle. It's a joke.

LordSutch

Thank you Captain Chaos (post#15), that's exactly what I'm talking about.

stefanovich

Radio and music TV in Ireland back in the 90s was far superior. It's like as a nation we developed bad taste. The Beatbox etc, they even had the metal show on 2FM. What happened?

In Arizona you go to a bar and you'll have Alice in Chains on the jukebox. Rock n' roll is very popular. In this country it's been ejected from the media.

Captain Chaos

It's all gone downhill since the late '90s with the rise of R&B and hip hope music everywhere, even the nightclubs went to the dogs. Used to love leaving Dublin for a weekend and going to clubs in Sligo, Galway or Belfast because they were so different music wise. All the latest craze hand yet to filter outside Dublin thankfully.

Rock and Dance music got shot out of a cannon and pop music started to get it's lines blured with rap and the rest.