Did you ever used to think that song requests

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Did you ever used to think that the song requests heard on radio stations were live? I believe this when I was little.

I thought that before too

you mean

they're not???

WTF
MY WORLD IS SHATTERED!!


HOW WILL I EVER RECOVER!


i'm literally shaking and crying

Are song requests still even a thing?

i hear of them all the time.

at least, when i have the radio on. which is never.

Yes, I used to think when I heard song requests on the radio that they were live rather than playbacks of recorded phone calls.

Song requests are not very common nowadays.

I actually phoned in a request to an oldies station once while delivery newspapers in the dead of night.

Then like an hour later I heard my own voice come at me out of the car radio requesting the song- as the song itself started. So the good news is that they took my request. The bad news is that I learned that requests arent live.

I'm gonna guess that it was a commercial radio station. The time delay can potentially be practically nothing for some non-commercial radio stations like college radio stations or independent online 1s. I was a DJ for an online radio station maybe 13 years ago. It was an independent thing that various individuals were doing at home to pass time or they were in college & wanting to work at an actual radio station after graduating. I was just doing it to pass time cuz I was very depressed & lonely at the time & needed a distraction. Anyways there was a little chat box on their site where people could request songs or just have weird random discussions & sometimes a requested song could start playing 1ce the currently playing song ended within a couple minutes of the song request message being submitted. The station was not set up for phone calls so you wouldn't hear the requestor's voice on there

Absolutely it was a major commerical oldies station. I delivered papers from my car in the dead of night so needed the radio to keep me company. I listened to the ENTIRE Monica Lewinsky-Linda Tripp tapes on NPR (something that would have driven me, and most folks to insanity via boredom normally) just to hear two human voices in the car.

And I would call the oldies station more than once. Actually got to talk to the lady DJ! Once or twice she actually played a request I made. And there was that one time I heard my voice come back out of the radio making the request. They did that regularly- played the voices of callers - just as they were segueing into the song requested.

Like that nice Black sounding little old lady who asked for "One Toe Over the Line" (which was followed by the lady Deejay laughing up her sleeve while asking "should we explain to her the difference between a toe, and a toke?".

I am invovled with a public access radio station myself, and do a show (sorta of on a sabbatical from it rightnow).It goes over the Net and over a county cable TV system. We DO have a phone set up in the studio. The system is so complex that I havent figured yet out how to put callers on the air. But I do get callers occasionally. One fellow person from the radio station called in response to a record I was playing - an old sultry jazz classic about a lady Baltimore oriole being hit on by a male jaybird. He informed me that "it just so happens that I was watching the Baltimore Orioles play the Toronto Blue Jays just now when I heard you play that record". Couldnt put him on the air, but I did tell my listeners about the call.

Tha main radio station I listen to in my car is out only all request station. It’s mostly done via an app with up/down voting. Every request eventually plays, just way sooner if tons of people cite it up. I’ve never downloaded the app or voted because I’m not going to play with my phone while driving.. it’s highly illegal here and a first offence is a $500 fine I think, plus I typically have it set to Google maps on my dash and drive a manual car that requires both hands, sooo.. I let other people pick the music - which I’m fine with - that’s part of why I like fm radio. Random selection, no choices or decisions to make. Plus I like the radio personalities.

I'm certain I've heard radio DJs tell a caller to turn the radio down due to echoing, but I'm not certain if that was a contest or a request since it's been 20 years since I've listened to the radio.

Yeah, they do that - but there’s typically a delay and editing vs live broadcasting.

Eventually I figured out that it wasn't always live.

My main gripe with FM radio is that it is extremely commercialized, at least here in the US anyways. Most of the stations across the country are owned by the same couple companies & most all the stations that play the same type of music all chose from the same handful of songs like most pop stations have the same selection of songs, so do most country stations, most classic rock stations, most solft rock stations, & most oldies. When it comes to radio personalities, half of the stations are broadcasting one of a couple syndicated radio programs every weekday morning where the DJs mostly talk political propaganda instead of playing music The Reel Big Fish song, Sell Out comes to mind here

Well I know you can't work in fast food all your life
But don't sign that paper tonight
She said "But it's too late"

Then, I don't remember what I read
I don't remember what they said
I guess it doesn't matter
Guess it doesn't matter anymore

'Cause you're gonna go to the record store
You're gonna give 'em all your money
Radio plays what they want you to hear
They tell me it's cool, I just don't believe it

Sell out, with me, oh yea
Sell out, with me tonight
The record company's gonna give me lots of money and
Everything's gonna be alright

No more flipping burgers putting on my silly hat, you know
I don't want that no more
And I didn't ask when we'd get paid
I quit my day job anyway
I guess it doesn't matter
Guess it doesn't matter anymore

'Cause you're gonna go to the record store
You're gonna give 'em all your money
Radio plays what they want you to hear
Tell me it's cool, I just don't believe it

Sell out, with me, oh yea
Sell out with me tonight
The record company's gonna give me lots of money
And everything's gonna be

And I don't think it'll be so bad
And I know it won't be so bad
'Cause the man said "That's the way it is"
And the man said "It don't get better than this"
No, no, no

So I signed on to the record company
They say they're gonna give me lot's of money
If I play what they want you to hear
Tell me it's cool, and I'll sure believe it

Sell out, with me, oh yea
Sell out with me tonight
The record company's gonna give me lots of money
And everything's gonna be alright

Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah
The record company's gonna make everything alright

"Baby, don't you sign that paper tonight" she said
"But I can't work in fast food all my life"

They do that on talk shows more than on music shows. But it could be either because the same principle applies to a recording ( to time delay a song request for an hour) as to live in real time. You dont want amplification feedback putting you into the red.