With 24 days left to go in its Indiegogo campaign, College Radio Day is hoping to raise a total of $5000 in order to produce volume 2 of College Radio Day: The Album. When the album is completed, it will be distributed to college radio stations all over the United States. The CD compilation will […]
Many years ago I invented a phrase for a peculiar kind of radio format: “Hybrid Highbrow.” I cooked up the term to describe listener supported KPFA in Berkeley, California, which in the 1950s broadcast classical music, opera, jazz, and folk music in the spirit with which Matthew Arnold understood “culture” in his book Culture and […]
I’ve been following the CMJ and Spinitron charts of late, noting the popularity of Washed Out’s “Paracosm” with college radio deejays. The album topped Spinitron for much of August and these first two weeks of September. It only dropped to number two on Spinitron last week, and was still just three spins behind Neko Case’s […]
Last week I had a conversation about radio and musicians with Casey Rae, Executive Director of the Future of Music Coalition. He told me “Commercial radio has made it difficult for artists to have access to the airwaves, no matter how talented. Radio is still a big resource. This is why the musician community rallied […]
TechFest Northwest is the 2 year-old self-described “little sister” to the long-running Music Fest Northwest held every fall in Portland, Oregon. One track of TFNW’s first day this year was dedicated to the relationship between art and technology, with music and musicians taking a prominent place. Although one afternoon panel was provocatively titled “Technology killed […]
Marian McPartland died at 95 this week. She was a terrific piano player until the end; more importantly she pioneered and miraculously maintained – for four decades! – a special, wonderful radio program – “Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz”. The format was simple yet unique: she brought another musician into the studio, and had combined duets/interviews/conversations with them, gracefully moving […]
If you’re looking for an excuse to visit Switzerland next month, the International Radio Festival Zürich might be it, happening September 4 – 8. According to its website, the IRF “was founded to celebrate the world’s most consumed and most influential medium, Music Radio.” The IRF debuted in 2010, making this the 4th edition of […]
The Spinitron Top 25 Chart is out. Spinitron is a playlist management services company for non-commercial community and college radio stations. Every week Spinitron publishes the top 25 disks played at Spinitron subscriber stations. Here are the top ten spinners: Number one: Washed Out’s “Paracosm,” with 65 spins, followed by Hunx & His Punx’s “Street […]
As a solid Generation Xer from the college radio cohort I remember quite clearly the alternative rock craze of the 1990s. In the wake of Nirvana’s breakthrough on the top 40, followed by fellow Seattle bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, major labels went on a signing spree looking for any band with a smidge […]
I am always happy when a classical music radio station goes live again. The Kansas City Star reports that Radio Bach returns on July 4 as a streaming Internet service for a chunk of Northeastern Kansas. If you go to the new Radio Bach website, the outlet describes itself as a 24/7, 365 days a […]
