Internet Radio

Radio is a cooperative experience.

The reason it seems to me why internet radio is not the instant sensation you'd think it would be is that a large majority of radio listeners are interested not only in listening to particular programming but also in playing with their radios.

A word that interests me is "funability".

Here's the enigma: a cube with three buttons that can get you any station you want in the world loses, oddly enough, to a radio of half the capability but 10 times the "funability".

This is interesting.

Fun means options, more buttons to press, more settings to tweak, all in the effort of achieving that perfect sound of something distant. Effort is involved, ingenuity. The radio listener actively cooperates in an acquisition. Enjoyment involves both the acquired and how acquisition takes place.

And so radio listening is not mindless in the same way as television, which requires no such cooperation for the purpose of desired effect. It is more like fishing, or playing Angry Birds, or the Wii.