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.
Radio cannot beat Spotify by becoming a cleaner playlist with commercials. Its advantage was always the human part. Personality, companionship, shared history, and actually belonging to the community on the other side of that transmitter. I hate the phrase. Let's talk more music. I understand it. I understand exactly what it means. Keep things moving. Don't ramble. Don't give somebody a reason to punch out because the afternoon guy decided he needed nine minutes to tell you what
happened at Costco. Now that Costco story might have been a really awesome story. Maybe it was something funny. I don't know. But every time I hear less talk more music There's another part of me that thinks Then what the hell is this radio station for If I want less talk and more music I have Spotify I've got Apple music YouTube music title Any number of music services out there that I can go to. I can have exactly the
music I want. No stopsets, no sweeper telling me I'm listening to the most variety from the 80s, 90s, 2000s today, tomorrow, next Thursday, and whatever else we manage to cram into that positioner. I can skip the song. I can build a playlist. I can have an algorithm or even AI make a playlist for me now. Radio is never going to beat that by becoming a slightly worse version of it. How you doing? I'm Tyler. Welcome to the Tyler Woodward Project and I've been thinking
a lot about something radio used to be really good at. And I know I haven't talked about radio lately. I was feeling a little sad there about the industry for a little bit. I had to check out because I was feeling burned out. But having a few weeks to talk about some other subjects, some other tech things, I'm ready to hop back on this and get back with it. Remember I said I've been thinking a lot about this radio used to be really good at Being your friend. Oh And the usual disclaimer here, these are my opinions
mine Not anybody I work for not anybody else out there that I'm affiliated with or anybody that I know me My my thoughts from my brain It's not always a clean coherent thought but these are from my head and talking about radio being your friend i don't mean that every dj you ever heard was your literal best friend i mean the station felt like somebody you knew right Yeah, there were individual personalities sure But
the station itself had personality That's the part I think we've lost You could have a morning show that sounded completely different from middays Afternoons might have another attitude entirely nights Could be a little weird but somehow It all still belonged to the same place. The people talked about each other. Something stupid that happened in the morning might come up again later in the afternoon. Listeners became characters.
The person who called every Tuesday with some bizarre complaint eventually became part of the furniture. A station promotion went sideways and suddenly everybody on the station was talking about it. There were references you understood because you were listening yesterday. There was history. You weren't consuming a sequence of independent shows that were all isolated from one another. You were spending time Somewhere and I know yeah, I know Nostalgia can screw with this entire conversation Yeah, old radio was
not universally amazing The there there were bad jocks there were boring stations there were Yeah, terrible bits that went on six minutes too long because somebody's program director Didn't have the heart to tell the morning guy that his impression wasn't really all that funny. We didn't leave some flawless golden age, but there was something structurally different about the product that we were producing back then. It was harder for people It was harder for the
yeah, it was harder for the people making the station to be completely disconnected from each other and then We got really really good at efficiency Now that is an automation being a bad thing, you know, I'm a broadcast engineer I like Automation. I like things that work at three in the morning without somebody sitting there staring at a computer wondering whether that next event is going to fire or not. Voice tracking is useful. Remote production is useful. Centralized systems are
useful. There are stations that would not be able to provide the amount of programming they provide without those tools. The problem starts When the tool becomes the entire philosophy When everything is optimized around making each piece of the station independently producible eventually you get exactly that Independent pieces the morning show they exist in their own box Middays exist in its own box. Afternoons exist in its own box. The music log exists in its own box. The imaging,
yeah, that exists in its own box. And the commercials definitely exist in their own box. And then the automation assembles all of those boxes into something technically resembling a radio station. But does it feel like one? That's where I keep getting stuck. Because if the final product is songs, liner, commercial, song, liner, commercial, weather, song, what exactly are we offering that
someone can't get somewhere else. And radio's own listeners are basically telling us this. Jacob Media's tech survey, 2026, surveyed almost 31 ,000 core radio listeners. So this is important. These are people already predisposed to like radio. You know, it's not a representation of every American out there, but among that group, 60 % said a particular DJ or host or show was
the reason they were listening to AM FM radio. Favorite songs and artists? 53%. Did you catch that? I think it bears repeating. 31 ,000 core radio listeners said they listened to the radio because of the DJ, host, or show. Favorite songs and artists? 53%. People? 60%. People beat the music. That crossover has been happening in Jacob's research for years. Which makes sense music kind
of already has been solved That doesn't mean music stopped being important of course It's important if you're you know running a music station and playing songs your listeners hates Having a really charming afternoon host is probably not going to save you at that point but access to music Well, that's not scarce anymore Access to a human being who knows your town? That's a little different. Access to a station that feels like it knows you? That's different. Access to something happening right now where you live with people you recognize? Now we're getting
somewhere. That same tech survey. found 53 % strongly agreed and another 33 % agreed that radio's biggest benefit is its local feel. More than half said they feel a connection with local radio stations. They do not feel with any other kind of audio consumption. Again, core radio listeners, not the entire population, but these are people telling radio what they still value about radio and i don't think quote -unquote local means saying the city name between every
two songs that's not local what i mean is simply mentioning the name of your city or town doesn't make a station genuinely local It's just a generic message with the location swapped in. Local is knowing what people where you live are talking about. It's knowing the weird intersection everybody hates. It's knowing the restaurant that has somehow survived for 40 some odd years even though Nobody has ever seen more than three cars in that parking lot is doing its thing It's knowing the high
school Everybody is talking about this week It's knowing that the storm actually got bad on the west side of town Even though the generic forecast made it sound like nothing happened It's knowing the local band the local artist The fundraiser the parade the stupid argument everybody is having about you know, whatever the City Council Just approved It's also knowing your listeners Not as a demographic not as numbers on a freaking spreadsheet as people as genuine human beings
Radio has always had this strange ability to talk to one person while technically talking to thousands at one time. There was a small little study published back in 2025 that interviewed radio personnel at community and public stations in Melbourne, Australia. The researchers kept finding the same themes. speaking to one listener authentically, maintaining relationships and creating a sense of community. The presenters talked about listeners developing long -term almost family -like relationships with the people
they heard on the radio. That is the thing. Not reach. Relationships. I want the radio station to feel like my best friend again. I know it sounds corny. I don't care. I want to turn it on and hear somebody who sounds like they actually live in the same reality I live in. I want the person on at 430 to know what happened on the morning show. I want the morning show to know that the night guy exists. I want somebody to
walk into somebody else's studio because something funny just happened and let us all in on it. I want a caller from three hours ago to become part of the conversation again. I want a station event to produce stories that last longer than the promotional liner advertising it. I want the station to accumulate memories. Let the damn personalities show again. Let people be themselves. Stop trying to make every voice on the air sound
so robotic and generic. That is how a place gets a personality and serving a community has Well always been supposedly part of broadcasting, right? the FCC's public inspection system still describes station files in terms of a station's operations in service to its community of license including quarterly list of significant programming addressing issues important to that community there is a reason the word community keeps showing
up around broadcasting we were given local transmitters to operate local services filling out the paperwork is not the same thing as actually being present Yes, there is still stations demonstrating pieces of this. First one that comes to mind, WFMU in New Jersey says its individual DJs control their own programming rather than following a station -wide playlist. And the station explicitly describes experimentation being spontaneous and humor as part of its character. That model is obviously
not something you copy and paste onto every commercial station out there in the country, but it is a starting point. Another one, Seattle. K -E -X -P goes even further physically. Its Seattle facility includes its broadcast studios, a live room, and a viewing gallery. Plus a public gathering space that KEXP describes as a community hub for music lovers. People can actually walk into the station's world. Again, different business model, different format, different mission. That's not the point. The point is that making radio
feel inhabited, I think it's still possible. I don't want to get rid of automation. I want automation to do the boring shit so people can have more time to do the human shit. That should have been the deal. Instead, sometimes it feels like we automated the human shit too. And once you do that, you're competing with Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, and whatever other streaming services are out there. Good luck You want to know why Spotify has more songs Spotify knows exactly what I listened to yesterday Spotify
doesn't have Transmitter rent Spotify doesn't need to stop for 12 units of inventory If our pitch is basically hey we also have music except you Don't get to choose it. And occasionally we interrupt it for 17 commercials. That's not a pitch. The transmitter is not the advantage. The playlist is not the advantage. Even being live by itself is not the advantage. The advantage is the relationship. Build a station where the personalities actually know one another. Let them acknowledge one another. Let them be themselves.
Let the shows bleed together a little. Give the listeners ways into the conversation and answer the damn phone. We have trained listeners not to call radio stations anymore because nobody's there to answer the phone. Read the text messages. We have the technology. If you don't want to answer the phone, you can get text messages. I have text and Talk line set up for this show. Again, 608 -668 -4702. You can call, you can text that number. 608 -668 -4702. Go outside. Put the station somewhere people can see it. Know the local music scene. Know who is doing
something interesting in town before their publicist calls you up to buy. a schedule. Be there when something goes wrong. Be there when something goes right. And stop treating every unscripted human moment like contamination that needs to be removed from the clock. You can have structure. You should have structure. Nobody needs four hours of somebody talking because they, you know, Enjoy hearing themselves talk but personality and discipline they're not opposites Local and professional are not opposites being spontaneous
and prepared are not opposites The goal is not to create, you know recreate radio from 1997 You know, it's it's 2026 the listener has Spotify they have YouTube They have an ungodly amount of podcast. They have satellite radio. They have more audio available in their pocket than any radio programmer from 30 years ago could have ever imagined, ever dreamed about. So give them the things those services cannot automatically reproduce. Give them this place. These people.
This stupid running joke. That caller. That restaurant. That storm. That concert. That argument. Today. Here. I don't need the radio station to know everything about me. I just want to feel like it knows where I live. I don't want it to sound perfect. I want it to sound alive. And when I turn it on, I want to feel like somebody's home. That's the show. If you want to keep up with it, subscribe wherever you're listening. Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, leave a five star
rating. And you can find everything else, my socials, all of that at tylerwoodward .me. If you want to buy me a cup of coffee, tylerwoodward .me. And if you want to call, leave a voicemail on that number or text me 608 -668 -4702.
