Pirate or unlicenced radio stations used to be a great underground way to find music. You had Radio Caroline on a ship until the 90's, until about ten years ago there was a a small local one near us, and so on.
With everything moving to digital or online though, what's the future of these stations? Do they all go legit? What's that going to do to indie music?
gofar99 Messages: 1940 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, A simple question with perhaps a more complicated answer. First I suspect the stations to go away entirely. The reason is loss of listeners due to the migration to digital on line and downloaded music. Fewer folks even look for over the air stations. I know I don't. Thus the sub cause of their demise is funding. Someone pays for the existence of the stations and if the number of listeners falls below some threshold then the people with the money be it sponsors or other type of organization will stop paying. As for what happens to certain genre of music...I expect it too will migrate to digital. Web based sources are pretty easy to set up and not very costly.
Radio Caroline went and got a licence and now broadcasts online. I think a lot of them will go the same route and go legit. It might make it a lot harder for new bands to get noticed, because it isn't something you can just tune into in the park anymore.