Do “oldies” stations still exist on terrestrial radio? As a kid in the 80’s I loved the local oldies station. But that music was only 30 years old at the time, same as 90’s music is today.
I was going to reference this...they're pretty much dead. 60s "oldies" genre is my favorite music, even though I'm a generation too young for it. Growing up in the 80s, my father was a music enthusiast with music from the 60s, and I grew up with music ALL the time, and more than the regular handful of albums. I think my father has today like 20k CDs. He didn't have THAT many albums when I was a kid, but to give you an idea, I got more than just The Supremes and The Beatles. And the rest of the time listening the the phenomenal oldies radio station in the city I grew up in.
When I got to the age where I could choose my own music, I went through my own thing...Top 40 (I had the Milli Vanilli tape), rap (still love that very first generation of 80s/early 90s hip hop), then eventually rock/classic rock (it wasn't so separated when rock was still being made and popular) through the rest of my teenage years.
But as an adult, I eventually gravitated back to the music of the 1960s and "oldies". And the oldies stations really started to degrade in the 2000s. In the 80s and into the 90s, many were still being curated by people who cared about the music...into the 2000s, most of them narrowed down to the same 100 songs everyone knows.
Unchained Melody into
My Girl into
Satisfaction, repeat. Really weak sauce. I'm not sure there are any local oldies radio stations left.
I think classic rock radio stations are definitely following the same path, when I turn them on from time to time. They play 4 AC/DC songs, instead of the 12 that were in rotation when I was younger. Three Supertramp songs instead of 9. I'm not expecting deep cuts, but they've just shortened the bench so much that there's really so much left to discover if you only had the radio to go by.
But the fact that young people DON'T just have the radio to go by will keep that music alive, even if "classic rock radio" dies out. As people mentioned, young people have definitely found that music. I'm disappointed that oldies died out before the streaming era exposed more young people to it, but even then there are a small number of young people that do engage earlier than the classic rock era. It's not many compared to classic rock, but my kids have met a handful of peers over the years that also knew The Hollies, Badfinger, etc. Because they were raised on it, they're always surprised to run into someone else their age, and they let me know when they do. It's a very small percentage, but my kids run into more people their age that know 60s music than I did when I was 20 in 1992.
All that being said, the Sirius 60s music channel is 100% awesome. They are pretty much the ideal oldies station, clearly still programmed by people that give a shit. I couldn't program it better if I wanted to. Then add in Underground Garage that keeps a significant portion of its programming from the 60s, and an eclectic selection at that, and Sirius is a godsend for oldies fans.
