Radio can't out-Spotify Spotify, so stop trying

Radio keeps trying to beat Spotify at being Spotify, and it’s losing, because that was never a fight it could win. I lay out why the actual advantage terrestrial radio has always had isn’t the music or the transmitter, it’s the human relationship, and why chasing efficiency has quietly stripped that out of most stations.

I get into the research backing this up, including a Jacoby Media tech survey showing core radio listeners actually rank the DJ or host above their favorite songs as the reason they tune in, plus a local feel that they say they don’t get from any other kind of audio. I talk about what real local means beyond just saying a city name between songs, why automation and voice tracking aren’t the enemy but became the whole philosophy for too many stations, and I point to a couple of stations, WFMU and KEXP, that still treat their air staff like people instead of interchangeable boxes on a log.

If you’ve ever wondered why radio feels hollowed out even when the music is fine, or you care about what happens when an industry optimizes itself into irrelevance, this one’s for you. It’s about radio, but it’s really about what happens when companies mistake efficiency for value and forget what actually made people loyal in the first place.