I grew up in Korea, so I’m more familiar with Korean radio programmes than British radio programmes. In Korea, radio programmes usually feature stories from listeners and corresponding song recommendations. Although even if this way of presenting radio is a bit cliché, I think it’s a great way to introduce new or unfamiliar music to listeners by linking it to various situations in real life.

The radio I will use as an example today is CLASSIC FM RADIO. It broadcasts on 93.1 MHz in Seoul, Korea, and introduces classical music to its listeners by listening to stories and then relating them to musicians who were in similar situations or to the content of the music that was composed. This makes classical music accessible to the majority of Korean audiences, many of whom are not familiar with classical music, by allowing them to listen to classical music that they would not normally be able to find and relate it to their own situations.

The big problem with this programme is that it is difficult to work without audience participation. However, this is often not a problem, as people’s instinct to share their stories with others and to be understood is what drives them to share their private stories on the radio in a public space, provided they are anonymous in the first place. Nevertheless, radio hosts encourage people to share their stories by sending prizes to the audiences whose story told in a radio, as people’s inexperience or annoyance with radio may prevent them from sharing their stories. Additionally, the prizes are not purchased out of pocket by the radio hosts, but are sponsored or advertised by the companies behind the products, which generate income to sustain the radio sessions.

In other words, listeners are driven by a desire to be heard, and the prizes that come with it, to send in their stories, and the radio sessions allow them to tell those stories publicly, empathise with them through mediums such as music, and offer prizes to keep them coming back to the channel. Companies can also easily expose their products to the public through the medium of radio. So, in this article, you’ve seen how radios exist and how their work benefits our musical world.