Not everything needs to be interactive

Things change, things improve, but the people, the consumers, don’t change that much. Your not throwing money after a dying format when you’ve got a good idea for a good more traditional non-interactive radio-station. Spotify/Deezer/rdio/… really is radio reinvented, but that doesn’t make them neceseraly better. Interactive media, firstly, lack a feature that the more traditional media (even streaming-only) have: passive entertainment (PassEnter™). And secondly, it lacks iDentity™ (it is all about the features these days).

First, interactive media demands the consumer to get involved. But there is value in PassEnter™. PassEnter™ offers plain and simple entertainment (and/or education, or whatever you think the role is that media have). Having to interact full time consumes our attention (note: Dutch). By even offering the ability to skip tracks consumers are constantly made self-responsible for (the) better and worse (tracks they hear). This may or may not always be a good thing.

Second, interactive media typically lack an identity. Although they have filters in place that tune to your taste, that is something different from a true identity/personality. I’ll explain this by an example. Think of your favorite brand of cola. An interactive supermarket would allow you to mix any ingredient to get your favorite blend of cola. You can now think of Pepsi and Coke, but that doesn’t exist in a world of filters. The cola you’re getting might slightly change automagically since other people who’ve ordered unpasturized cheese regularly and eat less meat than average have tuned their cola’s a little more bitter. For whatever reason. This may or may not always be a good thing.

If you’re still interested in starting your own channel, you might need to rethink whether you are choosing really the right platform. Buying loads of tracks and playing them randomly in a particular genre is kind of unoriginal. So don’t get down when your audience is opting for the Blues genre option in Spotify/Deezer/rdio/… Still, if you are or have (a) DJ’s with a distinct taste in music willing to share this with the world, this may be worth paying for (by attention or traditional donations). Consumers may consider it self-educating listening to such a station, or just refreshing. You can’t tune in a filter, filters tune to you. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not that interesting nor original. Good radio stations have identity and do more than just playing randomness.

While radio-like functionality is built in in most of the interactive system, the identity issue is hard to resolve. Which isn’t actually a problem, that’s why we can still have the more traditional formats. Let them hapilly co-exist. Old-style media are not so likely to die as the tech-press would like them to.