Letting The Radio Play

In relation to previous comments made about how naturalized the constant presence of music is in everyday life, I would like to suggest that in terms of gendered habitual practices of listening to music, I found by asking around that my male friends are far more expressive about their music collections than my female peers. I discovered that most of my male friends were reluctant to listen to the radio, yet overtly asserted the right to display their music collection weather it be cd’s or MP3 format. Something composed by them, for themselves. Selectivity (or lack of it) was the main issue I identified whilst talking to my fellow peers about their listening habits in relation to Radio V.S MP3.

The notion of the radio denies the listener the option of specific choice and control over the tracks that are played. Upon further interrogation I learned that it is this lack of choice and control over personalization’s such as volume leveling, track order and selection of genre compositions that most put male listeners off selecting the radio as a main medium for listening to music. Another common complaint was the amount of conversation engaged with the radio dj’s that merely “occupied empty space” where music was suppose to be. Surprisingly, this seemed to bother male listeners more than radio commercials! Now I am perfectly aware that all radio stations are not formatted in the same way (or created equal in my opinion) and there will be variation between which stations what gender tunes in to. For this purpose I selected the most commonly identifiable radio stations in this peer group, aged 20-25, out of my male and female friends, namely ZM and The Rock. The majority of these male peers who did tune in regularly (weekly) did only for one Sunday night heavy metal radio segment. Selectivity of genre. Female peers tended to turn on the radio in the morning, or whist getting ready to go out somewhere as it meant that they could engage in distracted listening practices yet enjoy the atmospheric pleasure the presence of music brought. They also tended to listen to the radio predominantly while driving, instead of MP3’s. Music can be thought of as a hobby or recreation, or both simultaneously, but listening practices so far as selectivity and collectivity surrounding the choice of MP3 over radio reveal the presence of differentiating listening practices between the genders.