We’ve got internet radio, DAB radio, satellite radio via Sky, and even dozens of FM stations.
Being able to easily hear your favoured style of music on demand is something we take for granted these days, but a few years ago it used to take a fair bit of effort, expense, and sometimes ingenuity, involving cleverly positioned aerials, tapes, some technical expertise, and a lot of patience.
I cheerfully sit on the train each morning with a little device the size of a matchbox, and quietly grumble to myself that I only have 5,000 pristine-quality tracks in MP3 format to choose from. In the 1990’s I was still listening to C90 tape recordings of radio shows aired the previous weekend, plus a few vinyl and CD purchases I’d located in Tower Records or the local Virgin Megastore. That may sound a bit tame by today’s standards, but compared to what we’d (not) had previously, things were actually going quite well.
What we have now started with the offshore pirate radio ships of the 1960’s, such as Radio Caroline.
It developed slowly with legalised local radio in the 1970’s, on stations such as Capital Radio and BBC Radio London
It got really big with the landbased pirates of the 1980’s, and stations such as JFM, and was finally legitimised with specialist genre stations such as Kiss FM which were launched in the 1990’s.