Radio shall never die...

With the closing of the most prominent rock station in the Philippines, NU107 (107.5 on the FM dial) , which carried the torch of promoting new and cutting edge rock music for the last 23 years, a lot of messages and topics flared the message boards and social network sites, but there was this message that hit me, flared me up if you will. It said that we are at an era where radio is reduced to a community of DJs sharing and listening to each other, in this age of digital music players and music on demand sites and streamers.

I say nay...

Not a lot of people has access to these kinds of music distribution. The upper and middle upper elite who are in the know or who has access to these sort of things cannot discount the masses and their preference. Radio has been a media which has been around for almost 2 centuries and has been overcoming boarders. And new songs that you load to these digital music players has to get introduced first in those stations. The internet has done a good job of introducing new acts but the delivery to the masses still depends on radio airplay.

Everytime you ride a public transport, enter a local eatery, a small scale shop...its is the humble radio who provides ambient music, entertainment and information to the masses. Only those shops with pirated MP3s and audio CDs are blaring out those digital music format from their worn out, over pumped speakers. Blasting R&B or Techno music on a 30 watt speaker with no subwoofer at full volume? ...please... There should be a city ordinance to wipe off that kind of noise pollution that puts even the loudest horn on an EDSA bus to shame.

And with cheaper and cheaper portable MP3 flooding in from China, the lowly transistor reciever is still the most accessible tool with the less fuzz and less requirement to work.

Now I'm not bashing on new formats of electronic music distribution. I welcome it. My band does the same. But we never undermine the far reaching arm of radio. We still think its an integral part of the music reaching a wider audience. Of spreading the message to a wider spectrum that you shall ever know.

(screen capture by JP Reyes)