Yep. It is mostly nostalgia as there isn't anything better than an AI curating a million songs based on our like/dislikes, but on a macro level, we are at the mercy of people who tune these algorithms.

Are we being 'nudged' to like certain genres or musicians because they are being promoted? Of course, this could happen with a DJ or traditional FM station too, but with centralized AI, you impart that 'nudging' on literally millions of people.

> There's also many independent internet radio stations or music podcasts these days which can be launched for little money, don't require a broadcasting license and can be listened to from any place in the world.

Indeed - radioparadise.com is a quite nice Internet Radio

Eh. I still listen this way. I subscribe to a streaming radio provider in my genre, and there's also a local high school station that plays my genre of music most of the time.

It's much better than what I've experienced with spotify and similar and it's way less effort. I had built a pretty big launchcast preference profile, but it took years of active listening, and in my genre remixes are preferred over original recordings but radio on demand doesn't have them ... you need currated collections, and I'd rather not be the curator.

I do worry about the longevity of the subscription service though... at least some of the channels are very repetitive, it feels like someone set up a currated rotation a while ago that just continues to repeat. They did the sec crowdfunding several years ago and there was a lot of related party transactions that looked too squishy for me, and after the offering expired they did the required years of reporting and its a blackbox again.