I hope this is the right community to ask. Are radio stations doing something to songs? Or is it the playlist they use? Or is it me?
Can I achieve the “radio effect” for any music somehow?
Are you usually sitting down to listen to the radio? Or is it usually just on while you’re already doing something? I only ever listen to the radio when I’m driving and I think most radio listeners are just using it as a kind of auditory wallpaper while they’re working or driving or shopping. It’s a lot less demanding of your attention that way and in turn we tend to be a lot less demanding of it in terms of entertainment value or being strongly affected by it. It’s just on and that’s all it needs to be.
If you’re exhausted after listening to just music rather than the radio, I’d bet it’s because you’re really listening to it which is a more active process and more demanding or your attention. Your standards for what you get out of it are probably higher in that context as well so you may be more likely to tire quickly of it too both because it’s so intense but also because if it’s not particularly amazing you’ll likely want to stop sooner than if it was the radio with regular breaks between songs and something else going on occupying your attention the whole time.
There’s a few things at play:
-
Radio stations tend to play “radio edits” which are usually versions of a song that may have a bridge or section of the song removed or shortened to fit play length requirements
-
Radio stations have commercial breaks which break up blocks of music and provide your brain with a different “variety” of sound (voices/speech) as opposed to a CD or playlist that plays music with no breaks
-
Similarly, radio stations typically have a host or DJ who will announce song names/info between tracks playing, giving your brain a brief break between songs.
Also: some radio stations do play songs slightly faster than their album versions play, which cab shorten a song by a handful of seconds. This allows them to cram in those announcer breaks between songs or potentially play additional ads.
I think this is less common now than it used to be though.
-
Maybe you’re not really paying attention to the radio but when you listen to music you do and it is fatiguing after a while.
Because you’re paying attention. More mental effort.
Maybe you like variety. When you listen to an entire album all the way through, you’re getting a bunch of songs that are (most likely) the same genre, the same singer, possibly the same tempo, etc.
Radio stations aren’t going to play a bunch of songs by the same artist back to back (unless it’s some sort of programming block), so you get a variety of sounds and voices. Even a radio station that sticks to a specific genre will play a bunch of artists each with their own unique style.
Listening to an album front to back can be fun experience, but also there’s merit in a big shuffled playlist of various songs from multiple artists you like.
…and then there’s prog music, where pretty much anything goes
I’m weird as hell in that I enjoy music, but I rarely ever sit down and listen to it. Then the other day I learn that my three-year-old discovered Bush’s Glycerine on the way home from daycare and has now been asking for it on our Google Home. I realize, “Dude, I fucking loved Glycerine.”, and immediately set to assembling a playlist over the course of three days, made up mostly of older music I grew up with. But you bet your ass I still don’t listen to it. Anyway… That’s my TED Talk on music.
