Smells like a lack of teen spirit? Triple J on the slide as the youth switch off

90s Triple J was memorable because they maintained a small core rotation of songs they flogged the shit out of during regular programming, and banished everything else to the late night genre shows.

Everyone gave them shit for playing what felt like the same three songs over and over, but it gave the station a clear and distinct identity, and each Hottest 100 would be a nice predictable list of all that year's "Triple J" songs.

This was possible because "90s alternative music", and especially "Australian 90s alternative music" was still a recognizable genre in its own right. It encompassed a range of styles (compare, say, Spiderbait and Single Gun Theory) that made it undefinable except that it didn't sound like what was played on commercial radio.

Once "alternative music" stopped being a thing, the formula stopped working.

/r/australia Thread Parent Link - smh.com.au