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Imelda May Free At Noon Concert | credit Rich McKie/WXPN

You and the Night and the Music

November 11, 2022

I've been listening to music a lot lately—almost exclusively, my favorite radio station, WXPN in Philly.

My consumption of (non-music) YouTube videos has dropped to almost nothing. And I think my focus is better for it; I’m more productive, both in my game development pursuits, and at my day job. I kind of miss watching hours of videos sometimes—especially stuff about my favorite subjects (food, retro tech, and nautical stuff)... but at the same time? I dunno, I like chilling out to music more lately.

It’s also taught me something about myself and how I like to listen.

I actually started realizing it a few months ago, when my best friend Haley gave me access to her SiriusXM subscription for a while. I started listening to music stations, especially the ’80s and ’90s channels. And it was really cool listening to music with DJs again.

I think what annoys me about commercial radio is exactly that—the commercials. The commercials take up so much airtime that the DJs become an annoyance. Like, “shut up and play some music already.” But when there aren’t ads, like with the music stations on Sirius, or on XPN (which is public radio), I actually look forward to hearing the DJs. It’s fun to listen to their takes on music, listen to them promoting concert events, introducing songs, talking about stuff that’s happening in their world.

And I think that’s what I was missing listening to Spotify or YouTube or my MP3 collection on my PC or whatever. With those delivery methods, it was just song after song after song. But music is, for me, a social activity (or, I suppose, a parasocial one in this case). With the radio, I’m no longer listening in a vacuum.

And that’s nice.