It is a shame. I think it’s especially a shame for children and young people.
A counter to radio remaining relevant is “I can listen to whatever I want, via this digital technology”.
Fine - but young people don’t yet have a complete mental map of what culture they enjoy.
In the UK, funding for libraries and the arts (public radio, the BBC) has been increasingly cut in the name of austerity. I think that’s true in the US too.
Despite this, young people have an unprecedented amount of access to culture. Or, at least, any form of culture that can be digitally replicated.
Soulseek and Anna’s Archive are wonderful projects. But they only have as much utility as the person using them can put into the search bar.
We’re increasingly entrusting cultural education - what to put into the search bar - to algorithms that are designed not (as the BBC’s mission statement is) to “inform, educate, and entertain”, but to retain attention.
Even worse: many of these (eg, Spotify) hide real access behind subscription fees. If you grew up broke, like I did, you will understand how inaccessible this real access is.
The most motivated young people will continue to find the workarounds piracy offers, and to find other routes for cultural education.
Any young person who isn’t in that upper percentile of motivatedness might increasingly be left out. You can attribute that to a choice they have made - I think that’s wrong.
I think the joy of broadening one’s horizons is available to all, and is also difficult to learn and a strain to continue to practice. I think it must be taught.
I think this is especially true and important when everyone has a constantly-available option of algorithmically-selected pleasantness.
Human radio DJs are not optimized for pleasantness, or to serve you relevant ads based on your conversations with them. At their best, DJs are educators.
Anyone who grew up listening to radio knows that, and knows the pleasure that comes from learning not to change the channel when something new and uncomfortable-feeling comes on, just in case it ends up being something you fall in love with.
> In the UK, funding for libraries [] has been increasingly cut in the name of austerity.
Focusing on one thing here, for convenience. The problem remains that costs are up far in excess of budgets - austerity be damned! We are forced to prioritise, cutting the generally useful but "non-essential". (There is often a legal duty to the essential things)
https://ifs.org.uk/publications/how-have-english-councils-fu...
Is a great breakdown. To illustrate my argument see Table 1. Real-terms spending per person by service area, various years (2024–25 prices)
> Within total service spending, per-person spending on children’s social care services [] increased by 11% in real terms. Spending on adult social care [] was also relatively protected, falling by only 2%. This meant much larger cuts to other services: more than 40% in the case of housing, culture and leisure, and highways and transport, and nearly 60% cuts to planning and development.
We cut what _could_ be cut, and that's a prioritisation call.
edit: now in https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/fixing...
Great rabbit hole for my Wednesday morning! :D
Yeah - I used "austerity" as a slightly sloppy shorthand in my comment. My two closest local libraries were closed due to cuts made during "the credit crunch" by the coalition government (from memory!), when "austerity" was the buzzword, so I felt it'd communicate most broadly (to HN's international userbase) the phenomenon I was gesturing at.
From what I can understand, these sources are saying: "because costs are up, those past cuts have not yet really been reversed, especially not in terms of real-terms funding per-capita, or funding for 'non-essential' services".
Super bleak reading - it's a very dark rabbit hole!
> Super bleak reading - it's a very dark rabbit hole!
That it is! It will require an actual change to the societal contract to resolve as best I can tell - and it remains unclear to me what direction the change will take.
The size of the core funding cuts to councils by HMG outweigh everything else the councils are facing according to the figures.
Now, purely by memory, I recall commentary over the years that 1) David Cameron was cutting taxes on various categories of land assets to benefit large land asset holders to the detriment of the budget, 2) the battle of any tax cuts are spending programs in disguise vs no they aren't and 3) May, Johnson, Sunak, Starmer etc have not reversed any of the tax cuts put in place by Cameron.
There's no doubt a more delicate story to what has happened, but a fact check of this into Deepseek before I posted this confirmed that the throughline is credible.
> Fine - but young people don’t yet have a complete mental map of what culture they enjoy.
Spotify and the likes will suggest new and different things for people to listen to. Apple has a special app just for classical music, which is the highest level of musical culture.
> Even worse: many of these (eg, Spotify) hide real access behind subscription fees. If you grew up broke, like I did, you will understand how inaccessible this real access is.
They have advertisements for those who don't pay the subscription. Radio has always had advertisements also. And nobody is too broke to afford Spotify. Every broke young person I've known have had a Spotify subscription, they're dirt cheap.
For the past 25 years, I've turned on the radio about once a year, and every time it's been just sewage. Whether that's government produced sewage or corporate produced sewage. The quality of podcasts and music streaming is on a quality level which radio never reached.
> I think the joy of broadening one’s horizons is available to all, and is also difficult to learn and a strain to continue to practice. I think it must be taught.
Very much agree.
Lol, I'm personally too broke for a Spotify subscription - as in I couldn't sign up this month with the cash in my bank account - and that has often been true during the periods of my life I have not spent working in tech. I don't think I'd even be in their youngest adult user demo anymore!
We definitely exist. It's pretty tight out there right now. The £10.99/month I see quoted buys quite a few kilos of dry pasta.
In any case, the core argument I was making specifically is that I believe human curation can provide more friction for the audience than algorithmic curation tends to, and that this is a net-good for cultural education.
I would contend with classical music being the highest strata of musical culture (and the deeper idea of culture having 'levels'), but that's subjective. So, that aside, if classical music is your thing, and you believe:
> "The quality of podcasts and music streaming is on a quality level which radio never reached."
I'd recommend Glenn Gould's The Idea of North, which is one of my absolute favourite pieces of music. It's considered pretty innovative and important:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry5MUnZoeGI
Glenn Gould wrote it specifically for radio, as it was commissioned by the CBC. So "government produced sewage". :-)
I'd also strongly recommend you give BBC Radio 3 (still often excellent, especially late at night) a try. NTS has some great classical shows, too. Perhaps you're already familiar with all of these, but - if not - they might give you a reason to turn on your radio more frequently than annually.
> Apple has a special app just for classical music, which is the highest level of musical culture.
Really? Why?
The metadata matters in a different way. A single piece with a single composer can be interpreted very differently, over time, by different conductors and orchestras.
This means classical music is very badly organised in most streaming apps. Sorting by "artist" doesn't really work if the artist is listed as an orchestra, which has probably recorded the work of more than one composer.
Roon is another example of a streaming platform that treats this metadata with the same importance.
Not the app itself of course. What I meant to say is that classical music is the highest level of musical culture.
That’s what I was asking. Why do you think that is true? Seems like the most subjective thing possible.
The BBC hasn't been cut in the name of austerity. It isn't funded by general taxation it's funded by the licence fee, which has only risen, however not in line with inflation. This is basically because nobody wants to pay it, and indeed a huge number of people have stopped paying it.
You're mostly correct - I was absolutely generalising, using internationally known examples (like the BBC), to be more comprehensible to the international audience here about cuts to public arts spending.
The BBC was a silly example of me to use (as was 'public radio'!) because you're right - it's mostly not funded by general taxation.
That said, the license fee is directly tied to inflation (via the CPI). Whether you see that as a correct measurement is another question. [1]
The BBC has also historically been funded partially by taxation. For example, taxation provided free television licenses to over-75s, until 2020, when that funding was cut, and the cost of doing this was passed to the BBC itself.[2]
But yes - quibbles aside, a sloppy example for me to have used there. Your sibling comment has some great sources which better illustrate changes to arts funding, compared to the off-handed ones I initially provided.
[1] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ23
[2] https://www.ageuk.org.uk/northumberland/about-us/volunteer-f...