Live data from Hacker News

Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

matthewfelgate.wordpress.com

101–110 of 206 posts

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#101
post #83

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

Here's the thing. In an where ads get the volume cranked up, this seems like the natural blowback to that.

Good, bad, indifferent, adtech has become so hostile that users (myself included) have found ever more measures to excise it, because it feels compelled to show no restraint in its own appetites.

I'm old enough to remember when radio and TV adverts didn't comprise more than 15% of the total media stream, let alone online, where the visual real estate and the mid-stream extortion racket of context-daftness has gone mad (e.g. I want to watch a quiet modal jazz concert, but every 10 minutes a jarringly loud ad for Grammarly or Tide is injected at near earbleed volume) makes it that I pretty much download the media, put it up on my media server to play it, because the ads just make me want to (and actually do in 95%+ of cases) blacklist any brand annoying enough to go this route.

No one wants to moderate because the stakes to get more marketshare/eyeballs 'demand' it, just creates the incentive to avoid it. Google succeeded for years on less intrusive, more directed ads...then they decided to stop 'stop being evil' and took the DoubleClick/Taboola turdscape route along with everyone else. Now there is zero sympathy from listeners/viewers, because I would argue, the advertisers offer them no reason to.

Is that a rationalization? Maybe. But it's also a sincere observation.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#102
post #83

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

We process visual and audio data differently. No website or or magazine is going to trick me into thinking someone’s at the door by playing a dry doorbell sample over reverb for the rest of the ad.

Radio (and TV) are uniquely obnoxious in their use of instinctive audio cues to demand attention by making us go on alert.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#103
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

We process visual and audio data differently. No website or or magazine is going to trick me into thinking someone’s at the door by playing a dry doorbell sample over reverb for the rest of the ad. Radio (and TV) are uniquely obnoxious in their use of instinctive audio cues to demand attention by making us go on alert.

But that's not a product of the medium, to be fair.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#104
post #83

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

oh well.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#105

This is needed desperatly for regular TV. On some channels ad volume is much higher then mov volume so when ads start during chillex movie you get totally stressed.

My Toshiba TV has that feature built-in - they call it "TruVolume". It detects sudden increases in the program's volume, and adjusts accordingly. You can turn the feature on or off. I think it may also turn the volume up when the program's volume goes down.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#106
post #104
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

oh well.

It's funny but my original post started with: "I know a lot of people are going to see this and react with an 'oh well'."

I'm an actual person, you know. I'm alive. I exit. My existence is not less important than yours... In my eyes.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#107
post #83

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

> If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going.

How is this any different than changing the tv channel (...or radio station) when an ad comes on, which has been the de facto consumer behavior for over half a century?

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#108
post #83

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

I will remove ads whenever it is technically feasible to do so. If it's not technically feasible to do so, then I'll avoid the ads by simply not engaging with the content at all. There are no circumstances where I find media existing with ads to be superior to the media not existing, so if ad blocking were to kill radio, then I'm perfectly fine with that.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#109
post #83

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

Something I'm honestly curious about....I can understand the need for advertising, but why do DJs talk so much? I would much prefer radio to have only music and ads. Living in Japan in the 1990s, I completely gave up on radio because the talking:music ratio was about 2:1.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#110
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point is it considered theft though? If I refuse to look at an ad when it plays is it theft? If I get distracted and not watch it for half the time it runs, is it half theft? If I watch the whole thing and don't actually click through, is that theft? There's no contract that I've signed that demands my full attention is on the ad. So, half my attention is ok? A quarter? How about none? Is it enough that I kno…

At whatever point the content creator fails to get paid for the ad being "viewed" I would assume.

Cool. So for now, we can have third party tools that silence these ads and these content creators still get paid. At the point where the advertisers don't like this, then things can change. If they change enough, I'll choose a different platform.
Post reply on HN