Radio’s future, and where classical fits in

In a provocative blog post, venture capitalist Fred Wilson envisions the future of listening to music online—which, in his view, is with time going to amount to listening via mobile devices as well. The whole post is worth reading, but this excerpt gives a taste of the disruption to traditional listening habits that Fred sees coming:

I think of these web services as the new radio stations. Everyone of my generation has had their favorite radio stations. Everyone of my kid’s generation will have their favorite web music services. There will be hundreds of them. All supported by advertising, just like traditional radio stations, and all of them licensed by rights holders (eventually), and all of them paying the rights holders a little coin every time their song is played. And because these services will be free to anyone who wants to listen, they will be very popular. Never before have you been able to decide you want to listen to something you don’t currently own and then just play it. No searching on Limewire or bittorrent, no waiting for the download, you type in the name of the song you want to play and you hit play.

What he says makes sense to me, and it echoes a lot of what I hear from others in radio. People who want to hear music are increasingly turning to devices and locations besides their radios, a trend that’s expected to continue. They’re going to iPods, satellite radio and Web streams. This is part of why public stations are airing more local and NPR news—they see news as a franchise that is less threatened by new technologies.

Radio has an edge in the car, but even that could change if WiMax becomes a reality and we have access to broadband Internet signals everywhere, all the time. And listeners (especially younger ones) are getting used to controlling their listening experiences, creating mixes and their own stations, sharing these with friends, and so forth. The eclectic listening experience Marty yearns for (and that sounds pretty cool to me, too) could become reality — just not on traditional FM radio. Wilson says terrestrial radio will “get better and better because it has to in order to survive.” Perhaps, but I’m not hearing much evidence of this yet, and how long will it take?

I try to connect this with trends in listening to classical, and I come up with more questions than answers. How will listening to classical music change in this environment? Could it be that terrestrial classical radio is somewhat insulated from the move to online listening? I’ve heard that the audience for classical stations tends to skew older, and I bet that that the audience for online music skews younger. But that could change if it becomes easier to listen to Web streams via other platforms. And besides, that gap is no excuse to avoid experimenting with new ways to deliver music—the technology will catch up with even the most technophobic music listeners, but it just might take longer.

And I’d like to know what online services, if any, are changing how people listen to classical music. Podcasts? Streams? Do any Pandora-like services specialize in classical? What are classical programmers attempting in these realms? Obviously, it’s our job at Scanning the Dial to find the answers, and I’ll be looking. But I’d like to hear from you, dear readers, for guidance. What new ways are you finding to enjoy classical music?

You can read Fred Wilson’s whole post here. I discovered it via Mark Ramsey’s Hear 2.0 blog, where Ramsey shares his insightful and level-headed views on just how much change radio will have to weather. (He’s often not optimistic that the industry is showing signs of saving itself.) Ramsey adds his own thoughts here.