Radio in the (i)home: changing experiences of domestic audio technologies in Britain

Recently, I asked a group of four young British people in their mid- to late twenties about their personal perceptions of radio. They each spoke about radio as if its "golden age" had already passed. They reminisced about their parents' listening and associated this with the soundscapes of their childhoods: "When I was growing up, the radio in the kitchen was always on" (Hannah, age twenty-seven). Teenagers in the late 1990s, these young adults remember listening to the radio as if it were a fixture of that time that is no longer present. In Hannah's words: "I used to listen to Radio 1. ... I don't anymore .. .. I used to listen to it when I was a teenager. I used to listen like after eleven or after midnight. . . . it was like different people [DJs) each night had a show. I mean, Monday night used to be punk:' Rose is a part-time singer. She talks passionately about music but says she rarely listens to the radio anymore. Both Hannah and Rose agree that they will now be found listening to streaming audio, a practice they clearly do not think of as radio. They associate the term radio with analogue, real-time radio received through what they consider to be "old-fashioned" radio receivers.