What does radio have to do with Napster? This whole Napster controversy has been going on with the record companies suing Napster and millions of pirating web surfers complaining about their rights. Yet no one is talking about radio stations. I’ve been realizing lately that the mainstream radio stations are glorified extensions of record companies. They play exactly what the record companies want, when they want it. A band only has one hit single at a time. Why? The record company releases one single at a time. That way the album receives more airplay because more songs are on for a longer period. You get the public hooked on one song until they’re sick of it. Then you pick a new song and get ’em hooked on that one. You keep doing it until you’ve exhausted the worthwhile songs on the album, and by that time the band has released a new CD. They also hate those number one singles.

But what does that have to do with Napster? Well, millions of people have been downloading the songs they want for free. Apparently they’re too cheap to buy CDs and they’re not satisfied with the variety on the radio. Shouldn’t radio stations be trying to cash in on this some how? Radio stations deliver songs to the public for free. They don’t worry about any kind of copyright infringement. But no, the radio stations keep a tight grip on their 50 song play list and rarely depart from it. It’s really fun to listen to multiple stations and watch as each station realizes a new song’s going to be a hit. First one stations starts playing it a few times. When they start to overplay it another station picks it up and plays it occasionally. Then a third station picks it up and pretty soon everyone is overplaying the song and it’s featured on the end cap at Target. Too bad most of us were sick of the song a month ago.

It just seems like someone in the radio industry should wise up and discover a way to tap into all this technological wizardry and unappeased audiences.

Of course I haven’t thought of how to do it yet. I’ll save that for another past-midnight evening.