Just about everyone listens to the radio, well at least if they're not listening to CD's, cassettes or other self recorded music, while tooling down the road in their automobiles. One of the things I find interesting about local radio listeners, as opposed to those who are on a road trip, is their total lack of loyalty to any one particular station. This lack of loyalty is most evident to outside observance while cooling your rubber at stoplights. Many times, while waiting for a light to turn green, I'll watch the driver or passenger aimlessly jab their presets as if they are playing video poker hoping to "hit" that one station that will provide the payoff of a good tune. Though I am not a voyeur, I do take some enjoyment from watching these idling drivers punch their car radios, and, if their windows are down, listening to the cacophony of sounds that emit from their sound systems. It's almost like being in Vegas, either that or playing a game of musical chairs where nobody wins because of the confusion resulting from the lightning quick music changes. This lack of station loyalty is part and parcel of the larger problems facing the music industry today.

Today, many radio stations are simply cogs in the conglomeration of business that is the music industry. The stations are spoon-fed the tunes that need to be played so the conglomerates that own the artists, the distribution channels and the airwaves can regurgitate their product to generate profits. A good portion of the listening public have simply become Pavlovian dogs conditioned to button pushing until their reward is dispensed. Unfortunately for them, their reward is usually the same tune played over and over and over again on a myriad of different stations. It's not so much market share the conglomerates are gaining in this business model, rather it's more of a zombie like public that worship at their call letters until the next bell rings. When it rings, they are punching their radios buttons like there is no tomorrow in order to satisfy their need for the same old thing.

How can one escape the regurgitated product of the music conglomerates? One way of course is burning your own discs. Napster was a pioneer in this field, but ended up being buried by the legal teams the conglomerates fielded to protect their turf. Additionally, burning your own discs, for at least some people, was too time consuming. Another hassle, at least for those who didn't have time to burn discs, was surfing to each song they may have wanted to burn for their listening pleasure, or they were too lazy to jump through the small hoops that needed jumping so they could choose music they wanted. They may moan and groan about the repetition of tunes played by the conglomerates, but they do very little, except hit the next preset, as a form of protest.