Listening
What it means to follow a hit-music format rather than a schedule.
A streaming radio format is not a programme with a beginning and an end. It is a continuous sequence built so that any point of entry works, which is why it rarely explains itself. You arrive partway through a record, stay for a run, and leave again.
That design has consequences for the listener. Records repeat, and they are meant to: the spacing between repeats is one of the few things a programmer controls directly. Styles alternate, and the alternation is deliberate rather than random. The tempo of an hour rises and falls in a shape that was drawn before any title was chosen.
What the written pages are for
A playlist cannot tell you why a guitar record was followed by a horn record, or why a slow Angolan track sat comfortably next to a reggaeton track at the same tempo. The style pages on this site describe what each style is made of, and the guides describe the working ideas that put them in order.
None of it is required listening. It is background for anyone who has noticed that the sequence has a logic and wants to know what the logic is.
