Radio nowhere

I'm of an age where most of my early musical knowledge came from either listening to music on the radio or from gathering in friends bedrooms listening to vinyl albums (or singles).

This meant that to me the radio was the prime source of listening to music and that stayed with me for years. In the car, in the house, in the office, the radio played the music. That's why Radio 1 was so important to me as a teenager and in my twenties and why Steve Wright, Johnnie Walker, Simon Bates, John Peel, DLT (!), Annie Nightingale, David "Kid" Jensen and Alan "Fluff" Freeman were household names and drew (by todays standards) huge audiences. I remember first hearing tracks from the keenly awaited new Yes album (Tormato) on the Saturday Rock show courtesy of Alan Freeman.  I first heard Bohemian Rhapsody, while doing homework, on Annie Nightingale's Sunday afternoon show. (I actually thought that she had played two tracks by mistake such was the wow factor it left me with. 6 minute rock epics were not released as singles before then!!)

Technology has changed all of that of course and now we can have music when we want it , where we want it and how we want it. The only time that I attempt to listen to music on the radio is if it is either via a commercial station that effectively plays my iTunes library (Jack FM, Planet Rock and Wave FM (but only the Teenage Kicks programme on a Sunday night!!) Occasionally Radio 2 gets a listen, but I would prefer to listen to Radio 5 Live given the choice. I never, through choice, listen to the radio stations that play chart music and I suspect that I'm not alone in that and that's across an increasing demographic. My sons use Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud and Bandcamp in addition to iTunes libraries.

Life for radio stations that play music is, however, about to get a whole lot harder following Apple announcing the arrival of iTunes Radio earlier this week.  It will allow users to stream music based on the their iTunes library. So as I understand it, if for example, I play "Open Arms" by Elbow, iTunes radio will then stream songs similar to that and the more that I play, the more that it will build around my tastes. This will be free but you will get adverts dropped in (unless like me, you subscribe to iTunes Match).

Let's be clear, this is not new, Spotify and in America, Pandora ( and others) have been doing this for at least the last couple of years and music radio has survived largely intact, so why is Apple getting involved so potentially serious.

Well firstly iTunes is the default music player for most digital content. If you buy your music from an online shop other than iTunes, such as Amazon o other online music stores, they normally download via software that magically puts the music in your iTunes library. Thus most of my friends use iTunes to listen to music.

Secondly, large numbers of music listeners have at least one Apple device on which they also listen to their music. Even if you have a smartphone that is not made by Apple, you will most likely have either an iPod or iPad that is and via which you listen to music.

Well all of those devices will have iTunes radio embedded in them. It will be easy to use and will also help you find new music (assuming it's on iTunes).

To me that feels like a big change, Apple make things easy to use, intuitive and they market it well. It won't be an overnight change (the initial launch is only in the US but it won't be long before we have it in the UK) but in say five years time we may well look back on this launch as the beginning of the end for many of our music radio stations.