So, over 60 years or so, Radio went from DJs picking music they thought the audience would like to research companies testing songs to see which ones had "positives" or "negatives". The consultants came in after that and helped the Program Directors limit their “universe” of music because the last thing anyone ever wanted was to play a song that didn’t test at a certain level. To do that would be like inviting the Four Horsemen of the Ratings Apocalypse to gallop right through your studio.
Some stations had libraries of 130, 140, maybe 200 songs. Imagine that: out of all the music created over the years, it was all strained down to the safe stuff, the songs that “tested” best. These were the only songs anyone liked. Yep! Researchers and consultants were quite sure. After all, they were tested! So stations played a select amount of songs – often – to the increasing dismay of listeners who inevitably heard those same songs on similarly formatted stations with similar names from city to city. There was no escaping it.
Listeners began to wonder if there was a better way for them to obtain variety in their music. This problem was partly solved through the advent of the first portable cassette player in 1964 by the Norelco Company which begot the 8-track player in 1966 from Motorola which begot the Walkman in 1979 from Sony which begot CDs and portable CD players in 1982 from Phillips.
On the 7th day Technology rested and said, “It is good - for now.”
Then in 1992, Satellite Radio got the okay from the F.C.C. After years of battles with the National Association of Broadcasters and the task of infrastructure planning and building, XM launched in 2001 and SIRIUS in 2002. Suddenly, there were dozens of commercial-free music channels with every conceivable genre including very large playlists floating in space. The word spread slowly at first but picked up momentum.
Also, in the late 1990s, digital music portability was made possible by the relatively small mp3 file and peer-to-peer file sharing.
Finally, along came the iPod in November, 2001 and similar mp3 players sprang up from many companies. Now there was something to store and transport all these music files everybody had been downloading! Millions of music lovers were unchained from the shackles of their personal computers - and their radios.
