Music radio

Music radio is a radio format where music is the primary source of broadcast content on both commercial and non-commercial stations. After the rise of television brought about the decline of old time radio and its dramatic content, music formats became one of the dominant forms of radio in many countries, though radio drama and comedy continues, often on public radio. Music has been one of the driving factors in the advancement of radio technology, from the adoption of wide-band FM to the current upswing in digital media.

Technology

While music radio, like all radio, started out on AM, it is somewhat unusual, at least in developed countries, to have a music station on AM due to the relatively poor sound bandwidth available in a 9 or 10KHz channel. As a result, since the late 60s and early 70s there has been a wholesale shift to using FM stereo for maximum sound quality. The 200 KHz bands assigned in most countries to FM radio stations are more than adequate to carry a two-channeled stereo audio signal, along with several subcarriers that serve various purposes. Nevertheless, up through the early 90s a large number of stations still programmed substantial amounts of music on the AM bands, a practice that still continues for some limited formats; AM stereo, in fact, though rarely supported on consumer equipment outside of Japan, can provide near-FM quality sound, and is required for many stations operating in what in the United States is known as the X-band (1620-1710 KHz). Some FM stations also broadcast SCA programming such as multilingual translations and leased content using a subcarrier.

Related Topics:
AM - FM - Stereo - AM stereo - X-band - SCA

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Music radio has progressed behind the microphone over the years -- originally the disk jockeys were just that, people who announced and spun vinyl records. High-fidelity tape ("carts", from cartridges) was the standard through much of the 70s and 80s, phased out in favor of compact disc and eventually computer-controlled MP3 jukeboxes in some newer studios. Computer technology looms large in the future of broadcast radio -- in addition to the obvious use for in-studio automation and Internet radio, it is already widely used for satellite radio to transmit static-free programming, and iBiquity digital IBOC (sometimes referred to as HD Radio) subcarrier transmissions and Digital Audio Broadcasting are both in use (in the Western hemisphere and Europe respectively) primarily for transmitting high-quality digital music. RDS information is often broadcast on a subcarrier in the FM bands to transmit station identification and song information, as well as information used by regional carriers in some parts of the world to allow automatic frequency hopping between multiple frequencies used by the same station.

Related Topics:
Compact disc - IBOC - HD Radio - Digital Audio Broadcasting - RDS

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High-fidelity music programming is expected to be deployed on the world airwaves using the currently experimental Digital Radio Mondiale system, but has yet to see wide acceptance outside of a couple of major European broadcasters such as Deutsche Welle. No international music stations using the technology have yet been launched.

Related Topics:
Digital Radio Mondiale - Deutsche Welle

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Internet radio generally uses standard streaming protocols, with the data most often in MP3, RealAudio, or Windows Media format; increasing numbers of internet radio stations are also using aacPlus and Ogg Vorbis.

Related Topics:
Streaming - MP3 - RealAudio - Windows Media - Internet radio - AacPlus - Ogg Vorbis

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Satellite radio tends to use often-proprietary streaming protocols along with high-quality, low bit-rate data formats such as aacPlus.

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