With the inventions of Pandora, Spotify and iTunes, gone are the days of flipping through stations to find a song on the radio, avoiding commercials and radio talk show hosts and becoming frustrated when it seemed there were no good songs playing. New music technology has given people the ability to personalize what they listen to by creating their own stations and playlists. With all these new methods of listening to music, the future of radio is going to have to make some adjustments to stay relevant and hold its place in the world of music.

Natalie Swed Stone, U.S. Director of National Radio at OMD, said that the first shift in radio happened about ten years ago, when satellite radio was first introduced and radio stations had to think about having more diverse music.

“The reason satellite was successful was because you could have a different format for every taste rather than one station that played to everybody,” she said. “You would change the station when a song you liked wasn’t on.”

This brought about a shift toward personalization in the music world. When people bought their MP3 players, they could store their own music and personalize their playlists.

“Once people started personalizing, then Pandora was able to say ‘I can personalize, but I can do it without you having to store it on a device. You can get it on the internet,’” Swed Stone said. “And of course Pandora came out with a very unique way of identifying music based on the genome rather than the song choice.”

At first, broadcasters ignored Pandora — but then they realized that Pandora was not easily brushed to the side. If radio was going to remain viable, broadcasters would have to be able to reach people everywhere. This led to stations creating websites and streaming their station online.

“They have interactions with DJs, they list concert information, they have contests,” Swed Stone said. “They’re enriching their sites because everyone understands that digital is so important.”

In order to be competitive with Pandora, radio stations need to have a strong online entity.

“The consumer might tolerate things in the car differently in the car than they would on the computer,” Swed Stone said. “They think, ‘Why would I listen to this radio station with five commercials when I can go to Pandora and get one?’”

According to Swed Stone, radio listeners today can identify that radio stations are playing more music than ever before, reducing the number of commercials and staying with the music.

“If you listen to the radio, it’s tighter. They’re tightening up the DJs — they aren’t just chatting on about their dog,” she said.

More research technology has allowed them to see when people are tuning in and tuning out.

“If somebody plays the wrong songs, they’re tuning out. If somebody plays too many commercials, they’re tuning out. They talk too much, they’re gone,” Swed Stone said.

Shane Callahan, senior in LAS, interned at XRT radio station last summer and was able to experience firsthand how radio stations try and reach out to form connections with their listeners and also create a more personalized experience.

“The thing that’s cool about XRT is that they do play a lot of new music, but they also play a lot of old music,” he said. “When they told us how they do their programming, they said they’ll play like two new songs and then they’ll always go to an old song. That’s how they keep their audience.”

To keep with the times and the changing world of music, they have a radio channel similar to Pandora called Radio X that plays all modern music for people at the college age. XRT understands that to be successful and keep people listening to their station, they need to reach a wide audience.

“They definitely try and do stuff with older bands too,” Callahan said. “They did a concert last year with Elvis Costello, but then they also get heavily involved with the Pitchfork Music Festival. They do a lot to keep their audience broadened, but they do a lot of keep everyone engaged, too.”

In addition, XRT strives to reward their most loyal fans through a special XRT VIP online club. XRT holds special performances called “Studio X” where a band will go to either a bar or go into the XRT office and play for a very limited audience.

“Say they’re putting on the show for Florence and the Machine or something like that, they’ll ask if they’re willing to do a Studio X show,” Callahan said. “They will play a couple of songs and they’ll do an interview with them. The show is free, so they’ll send out the information that day (to all of the VIP members) and say it’s at 3:00 at this bar and the first 100 people who RSVP can come.”

The future of radio is sure to change, with more emphasis on creating an experience with listeners to compete and remain viable in the music world.

Even classes here at the University are experiencing changes, according to Matthew Ehrlich, professor of journalism.

“The radio journalism class is now called audio journalism,” he said. “That’s a reflection of the fact that people get audio news in many different ways other than traditionally over the air or in your car or transistor or whatever.”

The big deciding moment will come in the next few years when Pandora can make it into the car.

“Radio’s advantage has always been about in car,” Swed Stone said. “It’s always been an in car medium because you can’t watch TV in the car, and you can’t read magazines in the car. Now even Pandora realizes that it’s not just about the desktop. It’s about mobile devices in the car and everywhere else. Everyone is trying to get into the car.”

Swed Stone predicts a shift in the distribution on what people listen to in the car, but with improvements in the future, she thinks radio won’t go away. It will just get better.

“This is an evolving space,” Swed Stone said. “Everybody wants a piece.”