Pirate Radio Stations Explode on YouTube
A trick of YouTube's algorithms has led to the blossoming of hundreds of unlicensed, independent radio stations on the site, reminiscent of an age of underground broadcasts in the previous century.
Luke Pritchard and Jonny Laxton were 13 when they met at a boarding school in Crowthorne, England, in 2011. They bonded over a shared love of underground music and in 2014 started a YouTube channel, College Music, to promote the artists they liked.
At first, the channel grew slowly. Then, in the spring of 2016, Mr. Pritchard discovered 24/7 live-streaming, a feature that allows YouTube's users to broadcast a single video continuously. College Music had 794 subscribers in April 2015, a year before Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Laxton started streaming. A month after they began, they had more than 18,440. In April 2016, they had 98,110 subscribers and as of last month, with three active live streams, they have more than triple that amount, with 334,000. They make about $5,000 a month from the streams.
The boys stumbled upon a new strategy, one that, in the past two years, has helped a certain kind of YouTube channel achieve widespread popularity. Hundreds of independently run channels have begun to stream music nonstop, with videos that combine playlists with hundreds of songs and short, looped animations, often taken from anime films without copyright permission. Live streams come in many different genres. Two of College Music's streams are part of a family of channels that broadcast what the broadcasters call lofi (low-fidelity) hip-hop, mellow music that would sound familiar to fans of J. Dilla and Nujabes.
If you've ever clicked on a YouTube livestream entitled something like "lofi hip hop beats to relax/study/bang to", then you know what the article is talking about.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:21AM (2 children)
Last I heard, radio had more market coverage than any other media delivery method in the US. I don't see that going away until they stop putting radios in every single car either.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 09 2018, @03:50AM (1 child)
I bet you heard it on the radio (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:51PM
You joke, but you are right.
ClearChanneliHeart runs that "radio reaches more people than anything else" meta-commercial every other break. If you listen online, about 50% of the advertisements are for themselves. It is dying and they know it.I am just glad hockey season is over so I don't have to listen to the radio until the fall.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh