With that out of the way, have a gander at Shoutcast or any other streaming music site, and electronica is usually the most listened to format. I’m curious as to why there’s a lack of techno/electronica music on “real radio” in the United States. (I’m not counting the rare college station that might play a lot of techno, or FM broadcasters in Germany.) Are these greedy media empires that now own most of this country’s broadcasting outlets totally clueless about the genre’s popularity, or is there some other reason we don’t hear the likes of “Trance Twofer Tuesdays” or “Detroit Style Drive Time” on the nation’s airwaves?
My best guess is that techno has a limited audience (maybe, people tethered to their computer, Europe, and Raves perhaps?) And since terrestial stations have to be pretty broad to get good ratings, they can’t get enough listeners.
Also, Digitally Imported (the most popular stream on ShoutCast, techno and otherwise) is from Europe.
Some possibilities:
[li] Long songs. The average techno song is probably 6 or 7 minutes long. And it’s not unusual to find one that’s 12 or 13 minutes long (Born Slippy for example). Tough to program and not much time for commercials.[/li][li] Very fragmented. Someone who likes jungle might not like trance or ambient or big beat or whatever. But they are all technically “techno”. To actually please people you’d have to target a specific genre, but then your audience would probably suck in terms of numbers.[/li][li] DJ CD’s. You can go to your local record shop and easily buy CD’s that have a well chosen assortment of songs mixed by the best DJs in the world. Beats the hell out of what your local radio station can do.[/li] Geeks like techno. (I know I do.) So any observances online may be difficult to apply to the real world.
I’ve wondered the same thing, when I discovered streaming MP3 “radio” stations: “Why can’t I get ‘Tag’s Trance Trip’ or ‘Terrapin Station’ on my car radio?”
I’d have to agree with all of SmackFu’s reasons, and would add that, especially lately, FM radio has seldom been on the cutting edge. And now with the concentration of market share into big corporations like Clear Channel, they are averse to anything that might threaten their profits in even the slightest way, so the formats are likely to to cluster in categories such as “Urban Contemporary,” “Classic Rock,” “Modern Rock,” and the ever increasing “Latin.”
But you can still occasionally hear some broadcast techno and electronica, especially in a daily or weekly program schedule. Explore your local public and college radio stations. Here in the LA market, public station KCRW airs programs like “Morning Becomes Eclectic” and “Metropolis” that aren’t afraid to play techno, and KROQ airs “KROQ After Hours” from midnite to 3am Sunday morning that is devoted exclusively to techno and electronica.
Personally, though, I’m still waiting for the All Grateful Dead (and other Jam bands) format.