I hope this is the right community to ask. Are radio stations doing something to songs? Or is it the playlist they use? Or is it me?
Can I achieve the “radio effect” for any music somehow?
There’s a few things at play:
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Radio stations tend to play “radio edits” which are usually versions of a song that may have a bridge or section of the song removed or shortened to fit play length requirements
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Radio stations have commercial breaks which break up blocks of music and provide your brain with a different “variety” of sound (voices/speech) as opposed to a CD or playlist that plays music with no breaks
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Similarly, radio stations typically have a host or DJ who will announce song names/info between tracks playing, giving your brain a brief break between songs.
Also: some radio stations do play songs slightly faster than their album versions play, which cab shorten a song by a handful of seconds. This allows them to cram in those announcer breaks between songs or potentially play additional ads.
I think this is less common now than it used to be though.
Because you’re paying attention. More mental effort.
Maybe you’re not really paying attention to the radio but when you listen to music you do and it is fatiguing after a while.
Maybe you like variety. When you listen to an entire album all the way through, you’re getting a bunch of songs that are (most likely) the same genre, the same singer, possibly the same tempo, etc.
Radio stations aren’t going to play a bunch of songs by the same artist back to back (unless it’s some sort of programming block), so you get a variety of sounds and voices. Even a radio station that sticks to a specific genre will play a bunch of artists each with their own unique style.
Listening to an album front to back can be fun experience, but also there’s merit in a big shuffled playlist of various songs from multiple artists you like.
It’s the opposite for me, though mainly because the radio people don’t seem to want to play anything besides the “latest hits” for a few months before changing to the next set.
There was a week where I headed to work with a colleague every second day and we heard a song on our way and heard the same song on the way back again. This happened on all three days of that week, though I don’t remember if the time was similar as well. And I don’t know about the other two days where it was my turn to drive as I had my own list of random music playing.
Well, and a second reason is the constant talking of the hosts between songs that seems to be almost in sync across different stations, as well as the max level cringe prank phone calls some stations do, pretending to be some celebrity’s manager and spouting nonsense in a weird voice, like, “Hello, I’m Ed Sheeran’s manager and I’m calling in regards to the anti-toenail-wrinkles-cream he wants to sell.”
