This week, Rogers Media cancelled the sports radio stations in Calgary and Vancouver, leading to the loss of hundreds of jobs. Undoubtedly, this reflects the shift of audiences to the Web, as well as the proliferation of programming that competes for attention. Was there any other way?
The problem is that traditional radio companies (Rogers, iHeart, Audacy, Bauer, Global, Corus, etc.) have local brands, talent, sales teams and newsrooms, but declining distribution and advertising. Spotify has global distribution, personalization and 700M+ users, but still pays enormous music licensing costs and struggles to differentiate beyond music. Rogers’ recent closures illustrate the pressure on the traditional model.
A more interesting model would be (this could be many examples, but will use Spotify and Rogers, but it can apply elsewhere):
Spotify Radio Network (SRN)
Spotify doesn’t replace radio.
It becomes the operating system for radio.
Spotify provides
- Distribution to hundreds of millions of users
- Recommendation algorithms
- User accounts
- Targeted advertising
- Subscription infrastructure
- Podcast technology
- AI translation
- Discovery
Media companies provide
- Local brands
- Local hosts
- Local news
- Sports rights
- Traffic
- Weather
- Community programming
- Existing advertiser relationships
Instead of 1130 News Vancouver disappearing…
it becomes
NewsRadio Vancouver
Powered by Spotify
The station is available:
- live
- on-demand
- clipped into segments
- translated
- personalized
Why Spotify wins
Today Spotify spends billions licensing music.
The more listening shifts toward:
- talk
- news
- sports
- interviews
- local personalities
- call-in shows
the lower the percentage of listening that requires expensive music royalties.
They don’t eliminate music.
They simply diversify listening.
Why Rogers and legacy media wins
Instead of building expensive apps nobody downloads…
they instantly gain:
- global reach
- younger listeners
- better ad targeting
- recommendation engine
- premium subscriptions
A Vancouver listener moving to London still follows Vancouver radio.
An Iranian living in Montreal could listen to Tehran morning radio.
A Leafs fan in Australia could subscribe to Toronto sports radio.
But, this also plays well into the theory of competitive advantage and principle of specialization. I really don’t need to hear about the NFL let alone my favourite team from a Montreal radio host, but hockey fans and Canadiens die-hards around the world would love to be a fly on the wall and listen to the local guys. Now does this replace the good ol’ days of radio? No. But the alternative is death, be it abrupt and brutal, or slow and painful.
The “Local + Global” model
Imagine opening Spotify.
Instead of only Music and Podcasts:
- Music
- Podcasts
- Live Radio
- Local
- Sports
- News
Tap “Local.”
Spotify automatically knows you’re in Montreal.
You immediately see
- CJAD
- CBC Montreal
- TSN 690
- community stations
Travel to Paris?
The app switches to French recommendations. But that may be a smaller pie size than global listeners who want local experts.
I know what you’re thinking: how would a Montreal-based listener who’s a fan of Real Madrid but doesn’t speak Spanish listen to a Madrid-based local radio host? This is where AI helps.
In my efforts to help bring MLB and the Expos back to Montreal, circa early 2030s, I thought of where the puck was headed, and I envision rights to further splinter between audio and radio.
AI makes radio global
One fascinating possibility:
A Calgary morning show
↓
Automatically translated into:
- French
- Spanish
- German
- Portuguese
using cloned voices.
Suddenly a local personality has a global audience.
Revenue
Instead of only selling local ads:
Spotify could sell:
- local ads
- regional ads
- national ads
- international ads
One inventory marketplace.
Think Google Ads—but for radio.
Even bigger…
Spotify eventually becomes the world’s audio infrastructure.
Not just music.
Everything audio.
- radio
- podcasts
- sports
- audiobooks
- creator shows
- university stations
- public broadcasters
- emergency alerts
- election coverage
- local government meetings
The media companies become content studios
Rather than competing with Spotify, broadcasters become suppliers.
Exactly as television evolved.
Studios no longer own distribution.
Netflix does.
Similarly:
- Rogers
- Audacy
- iHeart
- Bauer
- Corus
- Global
- CBC
- NPR
- BBC Local
become premium content brands inside a single global audio ecosystem.
The strategic insight
This mirrors what YouTube did for video. Before YouTube, every broadcaster needed to own both content and distribution. YouTube separated those roles. Spotify could do the same for audio: let broadcasters focus on creating local programming while Spotify becomes the universal distribution, discovery, monetization, and personalization layer.
Ironically, that could make local radio more valuable, not less. Local content remains locally produced, but instead of being limited by the reach of an AM/FM signal, it becomes accessible to anyone in the world who wants to hear it.