Ah! The Radio...invented in 1895. It was the highlight of that time, but now in the time I am alive, it just plain annoys me.

Radio is something that is a little hard to explain without starting with the basic Google definition. That definition states that radio is “the transmission and reception of electromagnetic waves of radio frequency, especially those carrying sound messages”. Unfortunately that is not exactly the radio we are talking about today. Radio today is the radio that people listen to in the car every single day. Whether you have the regular local stations or the highly expensive Sirius XM subscription, you listen to radio in the car, unless you opt out of listening to radio by using an aux cord or cd player (which is honestly the best choice in my opinion) .

You get all of these subscriptions to certain things, but you only get the choice of the genre based station. Yes, those stations have different themes for their music, but you do not get to pick what plays. I hate when my dad is in the car and has to go through all of the local radio stations because the one he was on did not have a song he liked. Then, he cycles through all of the channels until he ends up coming back to the same one that he was at before. It just always annoys me so much! I do not know if you have ever had the same experience, but if you have, you are totally groaning right now.

I just like when I make a playlist on Spotify or on YouTube with the exact songs I want. I am the type of person that listens to one or two songs on loop over and over again until we get to wherever they have to go (most of the time lately has been toclass). I think having the same song to me is motivating to keep going to where I have to go. I like the songs that have the high and the low build ups. With being a video game nerd, I love listening to the main theme from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It is so beautiful with the crescendos, but I digress.

I know my opinion might not agree with everyone, but the radio is just super annoying to me. I seriously cannot take the songs being random and you not knowing what is coming. The one “radio” I will listen to is the 24/7 Nintendo Game Stream by Dystifier on YouTube. It fixes some of my problems with the radio and 95% of the music is something I like to listen to. There are even times where people can request songs for free. When that happens, the manager of the stream creates a big list on a Discord chat channel with all of the songs in the order they will play over the next couple hours. It is really nice the way the guy runs the stream and it is how I wish radio kind of was.

The current regular radio stations have the problem of always just playing the same few songs over and over, that annoys me, but that is another rant for another day. Meanwhile, I would love more choices in the way traditional radio is. Until that day, I most of the time will have an earbud in when in the car with anyone, unless we hook up a playlist of some jams.