"Gen Z might be less likely to discover a new artist they love than some older generations. But they’re also leading a resurgence in college radio. Terrestrial radio once seemed like a dying format, but many schools now report they don’t have enough time slots to accommodate all the aspiring DJs."
#TerrenceOBrien, 2025
https://www.theverge.com/column/815744/music-recommendation-algorithms
Everything I read about Gen Z gives me hope for the future.
(1/?)
Maybe being brought up with the net as an everyday thing, just there in the background of life, liberates Zoomers from the gee-whizz optimism previous generations have about it. Even now.
Just like growing up with television as an everyday thing liberated Gen X from the gee-whizz optimism Boomers had about it. Having seen it appear in their lifetimes, and transform the way people engaged with news about wars and protests, and with entertainment (enabling national culture).
(2/?)
Many Gen Xers (like me) and Millennials are culturally stuck trying to bring back the Golden Age of the Web that we remember from the late nineties/ early noughties. Before the rise of the mega-platforms and The Algorithms.
Meanwhile Boomers are equally stuck in bringing back their own media golden ages, of 1960s/70 TV, or 1980s/90s BBS culture, or the early net culture that emerged from it.
But for Zoomers, all previous cultural forms, whether mediated or not, are grist for the mill.
(3/?)
This enthusiasm for student radio is a good example. Zoomers arrived on mainstream music discovery platforms (YouTub, Spitify et al) and found a wasteland of slop. Then they discovered human-curated music podcasts and livestreams, maybe via institutions like Tiny Desk and KEXP Live (in the verse via @youtube_kexp). Through these they learn about broadcast radio, and that it's still a thing.
None of this is new, gee-whiz inducing stuff for them. Just a range of old media to repurpose.
(4/4)
“I think the love for radio comes from the analog part of it. There’s this tendency for nostalgia amongst young people of things we didn’t get to participate in.”
#AnnaLoy, #WVBR (Cornell), 2025
https://emwhitenoise.substack.com/p/gen-zs-college-radio-revival
This seems to fit my hypothesis here, although it also puts a different spin on it.
"Even the iPod is enjoying a renaissance. Classic iPods fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay, and an entire subculture, albeit small, has arisen around modding them to extend battery life, increase storage, and add modern conveniences like Bluetooth and USB-C."
#TerrenceOBrien, 2025
https://www.theverge.com/column/815744/music-recommendation-algorithms
There's a bunch of modern, Linux-based music players available in 2025;
https://bestelectronic.org/best-music-player-for-linux/
Made easier and cheaper by the fact that patents affecting the MP3 format are now expired.
@CatherineOrganic1
> CDs in the car are my musical joy... although I change them seldom
That reminds me of the time I got Mezzanine by Massive Attack stuck in the car's CD player, while on a road trip into the boondocks, scouting for potential rainbow gathering sites. It's a tribute to how great that album is, and hoe much I love it, that I can still listen to it and enjoy it.
@CatherineOrganic1
> What age are zoomers now?
Generational demographics are more art than science. But they're generally considered to be the generation born from the turn of the millennium onwards. Millennials are those born between about 1980-1999, during the pre-millenium tension (to quote Tricky).
> I dislike this imposition of constantly changing tech
My theory is that we're only just noticing this (myself included) because the gee-whiz factor obscures it. Not so for Zoomers it seems.
Strypey
CatherineOrganic