Pop fan or not, there seems to be a major flaw in the Top 40 system. When I'm in the car with a friend or family member and they tune into the local pop or XM Hits 1 station, I get a tight feeling of anxiety and pain coming from my stomach, however there is no physiological problem in my body, it is a sense of distaste... and here is why.
It is not the music in itself, it's the culture that surrounds these hit singles that drives me nuts. The U.S. top 40 system has become a whacked up rat race to the top of some superficial chart system in which local pop radio stations can just pick and choose for which songs "belong" on the air, making it seem as if the only job of a pop DJ is to click on his tab of Billboard Hot 100. Billboard has made this culture into a greedy capitalistic music world where artists such as Pitbull, Shawn Mendes, Drake, Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj remake these simple repetitive 4 bar loop songs, they cost $20 but end up spending $20,000 on production. For what? I can say it's not for what they want, it's for what they think will bring the largest pile of cash on the front steps of the record companies.
It's not like this is every radio station, I give praise to those stations who care what the people truly want to hear. I found an alternative radio station in Philadelphia called Radio 104.5, which plays their music based on what the people request and if a song gets a negative reaction from fans, they take it off. The station also provides a New Music Discovery show, where the DJs search for (unlike those in Top 40) and play newly released music and sees how the fans react to it through social media. They also give music fans a chance to show off their top hits, with the Your Finest Hour special, which once a week gives listeners the opportunity to DJ a setlist of their choosing .This station is also doing fairly well and I know there are other stations out there like the this, regardless of whether it is a rock based genre or not.
The thing is we need more stations like this, with more power to the listeners rather than a bureaucratic Billboard chart that seems to make music more and more dull by the minute. Now with streaming sites like Apple Music and Spotify and the use of Bluetooth and AUX cables in cars becoming more and more of a norm for music listening and searching, these Top 40 stations might need to call up and take some advice on how to restructure before they become obsolete.