3 ms·
Imagine: Instead of three radio stations all playing the same song, you could have 100 stations all playing the same song!
by randomdata 2y ago
Imagine: Instead of three radio stations all playing the same song, you could have 100 stations all playing the same song!
- crote 2y agoOr perhaps they could play different songs! In my country DAB has station dedicated to playing classical music, jazz, youth-oriented pop music, current affairs, religion, rock music - not to mention dozens of local radio stations! FM allows for only a very limited number of stations, which means it ends up in a bidding war between the large commercial stations - who in turn have to play fairly generic music to attract a large number of listeners. With DAB there's plenty of space left over for niche stations, as they can transmit essentially for free.
- randomdata 2y agoOnce you get beyond the cities, there is still plenty of open FM spectrum. Getting a frequency isn't the real hurdle. Human effort and licensing are the much greater challenges. Especially licensing. Even on commercial radio you can regularly catch them playing "10 second" clips of different songs, to stay within fair use, that they wish to play but cannot legally do so. The college stations are more brazen about it and will flat out tell you that they can't play different jobs for legal reasons. Indeed, commercial radio does have to appeal to an audience, but that audience would unquestionably enjoy other music – at least within the same genre. But playing it for them opens up a huge legal minefield. It is a lot easier to pick a small catalog that you can properly audit and disallow anything beyond that.