The UK was in a special place with regard to radio music discovery, though. John Peel originally started on pirate radio where he could play whatever he wanted.

The UK was in a special place with regard to radio music discovery, though. John Peel originally started on pirate radio where he could play whatever he wanted. That created such a demand within the UK that he was able to move to a job at the BBC doing the same thing and draw a listenership from the whole country. But since HN is so American-centric, most of the posters here know radio of that time only as a much less adventurous format, unless you could listen to a “college radio” station (the USA’s only real analogue to Peel). Otherwise, corporate ownership of stations, with local stations receiving their playlist from corporate, meant no adventurous programming.