I was listening to a radio documentary about student radio, where it’s at and why it’s still important, and it got me thinking.

When I was younger, music was much more tribal. I was into Two Tone Ska bands like Madness, The Selector, Bad Manners, and The Specials. Other kids I knew were Goths, Metal Heads, or really into Synth Pop. And it wasn’t just their music taste that made them stand out. It was the style that went with it. Different genres had their own media. Magazines dedicated to the life of that tribe. They had their own radio shows, even their own stations.

Fast forward to 2001. All of a sudden you had 1000 songs in your pocket. The launch of the iPod changed the way people listened to music. Your whole music library, wherever you went. All you needed to take over a party was an aux cord (kids, ask your parents).

One thing I noticed within my peer group with the introduction of the iPod was that people would load up their CD and record collections, make playlists of their teenage years, bitch and moan that they don’t make music like that anymore, and then stop listening to radio altogether.

Stick with me here, I’m going somewhere with this. Next your music jumps from your pocket to a streaming service. The thing that gets cut out is curation. We no longer have taste-makers informing our choices, and everything starts to sound the same. The people who used to curate music and build communities around it? They get sidelined. Algorithms take over and start feeding you more and more of what you’ve already shown interest in, sending you towards the middle of the road.

Try this: think about the last time someone recommended something to you that actually stuck. Not an algorithm a person.

There’s a resurgence in the popularity of student radio, and the communities that form around those stations. One of the few things AI and the algorithm can’t do is build community. This is the moat. This is the thing you should be considering when starting a new business, launching a side project, or trying to stand out in your field.

What can you build a community around? What can you curate or taste-make that people will actually gather online or in person to be part of?

Here’s the shift for reinvention at midlife: treat connection like the thing you sell. Not in a cheesy way. In a strategic way.

Create the space where your people can interact with each other. A newsletter club with a recurring discussion. A monthly meetup that keeps showing up. A small group that meets around a question you actually care about. A forum where you answer questions.

The future doesn’t have to be a monotonous stream of algorithm approved content. If you build something people genuinely participate in, you create a defensible space AI can’t penetrate, because the core engine is human.

Go build something

Here’s a 2 Tone classic to see you right.