The radio DJ never plays my request

With reference to Rock_is_King_259...I present a rock show on an Internet radio station. I do not have a play list, I do not have someone standing over me telling me what to play, I do not have avertisers telling me what to play, I don't even have a script. The only track that is "pre planned" is the first one, after that I go with the flow, old school style. I play the CD's I choose, not a computer generated playlist. As for requests, I get a few by mail, no phone line, but I always ask listeners to request an artist or band, or perhaps a year and I will sort something out. I have a very extensive library, some 3500 cd's, but can only take 300 or so to the studio.

oh yeah, and our music is scheduled, sometimes weeks in advance by our program/music director, the DJ's literally get yelled at for playing requests if they dont follow ALL The rules.

I'm a radio DJ and there is a whole mess of rules you have to follow with music. For example, songs in our station are categorized under letters by relevence and you can only replace songs in the hour that happen to come up inder one specific letter category. That being said you also cannot play an artist that has been played in the last 3 hours or is scheduled to play in the next 3 hours. You have to also have a solid audio file from the caller requesting it, which means no crackling phones, cuss words, incoherent requesters, etc. It's more than we just dont want to play your song. We may not even like the music of the station we work for so it wouldnt matter anyway. There's lots to consider and it's one of my biggest pet peeves when people call up and complain that we didn't play their request. I never promise, I say I'll try, so if you dont hear it, try tomorrow.

Ram FM, all they do is re-shuffle ninty-nine per-cent of the the songs that they had on yesterday, and they have been doing this for at least ten years, we have to have it on at work,

At my same workplace in the late seventies, we had an eight track cartridge player, piping music to the shop floor, which played in a continuous loop until some-one changed the cartridge, rather like Ram FM, some things never change,

As soon as I get out of work into my Volvo I put on smooth radio, they always put on records that you would have requested anyway

They banned a song by De Rosa called Under The Stairs because he sang the word piss in the lyrics

I agree too.

On many occasions, particularly on bank holidays, christmas etc, on Radio 1, they have a "10-hour takeover" show, where you can send in your requests.

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to the Saturday Request Show, and texted in to hear a Girls Aloud song (yes, I like GA..), and the DJs were saying - "If you'd like a request on this show, keep your texts coming in".

I waited with baited breath for my request to be read, but they completely ignored the rest of the request texts and used those gaps for playing either a new release or the DJs Record of the Week, then the next minute, they've switched to taking telephone requests, and strangely enough, they must have only taken 2 calls; I had a go myself, the phone was just ringing constantly.

After about 20 minutes, I gave up, then they moved onto another feature involving calling a lady who was on the phone, to go through her ideal party tracks.

To cut a long story short, it was such a con.. I wouldn't be surprised that the callers were of those who actually work for R1 in one way or another.

This show moved too quickly for my liking - all they said at the end is thank you for all your requests, and sorry that they couldn't play them - the show is 3 hours long (!!)

Instead of complying with the playlist, couldn't they have made an effort to play the incoming requests instead?

It makes my blood boil!!

And DJs don't pick the songs, management do, said Tom a few entries ago. I am lucky I am involved with a small compeatley independan internet radio station, All of the music is chosen by the presenters/DJ's and we will play requests. Each show presents a diiferent style of music from Rap, which personaly I can't stand, through mainstream pop to Rock. We have all the relevant licences to broadcast on the Internet, we are not a "pirate" operation. Unfortunatly we are in the minority as far as legitimate broadcasters go, as Tom is right it is managment who chose the music that is played to keep advertisers happy, and advertisers is another thing we do not have.

I agree wholeheartedly with the words in the original gripe as I had the same problem in the 80's (and, ironically, the music was a whole lot better then although I never realised it at the time). I got frogmarched out of a nightclub once because I dared to question the DJ's choice of music on a "Rock Night." I got married in Las Vegas recently and if you want to hear some ace rock music check out the Planet Hollywood. Granted, they played "trendy" stuff late on but the rest of the time it was rock all the way (all types of rock too). Bliss! I also agree that the internet radio stations - especially in America - are more open-minded as to what to play. I don't even listen to mainstream radio anymore, it is drab drivel, it all sounds the same and the fact they now have that rap artist at Glastonbury speaks volumes as far as I am concerned.

I agree with you to an extent, on request show's dj's do seem to play what they want to here. I understand the comment about the management picking the music, in the case of gwr group it picks the music for nearly every independant station in the uk, that's why you can be listning to leicester sound and then turn trent fm on in nottingham and there playing the same track all being a few seconds out. But this shouldnt apply to request shows. The station does have to stick to the type of music it is licenced to play but if you didn't like there music you wouldnt be a listner of the station anyway.

Tom is right, the DJ does not have a say what he plays on air. It's a tight schedule to run by and if by any chance there may be a few mins to spare, he may get to play a request.

A friend of mine used to help out BFBS in Kosovo, he had his own radio slot. Could he play any requests? Not a chance.

Local radio is the worst for this, I think they probably don't have as many cd's to play as some people (me included) have in their record & cd collection! Our station say they play more music variety. More than what?
I think there is a gap in the market for a radio station that plays rock music aimed at the people who grew up with it. I thought Virgin Radio was going to be just that but it was a sad disappointment as they only had a very limited playlist. Eventually I got fed up with "Brown Eyed Girl", Lola" & "Oliver's Army"! I'm sure anyone else who listened will remember!

Hey all tune your radio to a good talk show station and put a CD in your machine when you want to rock or what ever you want to hear. Besides if you haven’t noticed...when ever you listen to request hour it's always full of requests they all ready play during non request time...have fun and stop sweating the small stuff Cheers!