Radio Survivor

John Bergmayer of Public Knowledge has a great interview with Ken Freedman, station manager of WFMU-FM in Jersey City, New Jersey. WFMU is a trailblazing radio station which was in the forefront of both the free form and dot.com eras. The dialogue is a terrific read, because it encapsulates all the dilemmas facing Internet radio right now.

“The way the Internet is built right now, there’s a catch 22, which is that the more people who use it [online streaming radio], the less well it works,” Freedman says. “And that’s just not the case with FM, or broadcast television, or cable. But, the Internet doesn’t have to be like that, but I don’t see much realistic hope for changing that.”

The economics on broadband streaming are “just terrible,” Freedman adds, “which is very frustrating to me because that’s where all the market is going. And at this point now, my radio station WFMU has twice as many people listening online as we do over FM, whereas it was only two years ago that we had finally crossed that barrier, where we had more people listening on the Internet than we had listening over FM. Now, two years later it’s twice as many.” (more…)

Live365 radio is celebrating its 11th year of operation by offering a “prize-a-day” sweepstakes to listeners through September.  The top prizes will include an iPad, Canon PowerShot digital camera, Flip Camcorder, C. Crane WiFi Internet Radio, Michael Jackson’s CD Box Set, Apple/iTunes/Amazon gift cards, and other stuff.

I’m trying to decide whether this prize business is a sign of Internet radio’s maturation or decline. All depends on your expectations for the genre, I suppose.

Anyway, the service’s latest newsletter has a neat array of Live365 logos going back to the beginning.  Here they are:

Pandora radio lovers, you have until Wednesday noon Pacific time to submit your videos about why you like the service:

We’d like to hear – and see! – what you think and have to say about Pandora. We’re putting together a fun video piece of user-submitted videos about your experiences with Pandora: what it does for you during your day, a special moment, what it means to you, your friends, your family – anything fun or funny or special about Pandora that you’d like to tape and share and send in, please do! This can be just you, a group of friends, a class, team, office, troupe – any combination you can think of. We’ll turn them into a thoughtful, tasteful, and joyful montage of our listeners.

No more than 30 seconds long, please. The first 50 submissions get free T-shirts. Meanwhile I’m a huge fan of this kid, a technology TV star in the making. Enjoy:

Radio Valencia Studio in San Francisco

Back in June I shared the news that new community radio station Radio Valencia was in the works in San Francisco. After several months of hard work, Radio Valencia is now officially webcasting. Live shows began yesterday at 5pm with a program hosted by DJ Dirty Needles.

Promising a mix of music and talk programming from on-site DJs and hosts handling their shows from remote locations, Radio Valencia has a line-up of 24 programs so far. When there’s no live DJ, automation kicks in, but thus far it’s a stylish mix of sounds that would do any left-of-center college or community radio station proud. It doesn’t hurt that musician TradeMark Gunderson (of Evolution Control Committee) is controlling the 24,000 track library that the automated system draws from.

To get the full skinny on the opening days of Radio Valencia, take a look at the post I just did on Spinning Indie as part of my Radio Station Field Trip series.

Board at FCC FREE Radio

For the past year we’ve been chronicling the evolution of FCC FREE Radio in San Francisco. Starting out as renegade LPFM community radio broadcasters in 2009, they went Internet-only in May 2010 and are now embarking on a mission of becoming a broader-based Internet radio station and content provider.

When I visited a few weeks back, General Manager John Miller hinted at a deal that was in the works that might be a stepping stone for a much larger audience for FCC FREE Radio.

Well, it turns out that today marks the beginning of the station’s new gig as a content provider for SFStation.com, an online city guide focused on events and attractions in San Francisco. Through its partnership with FCC FREE Radio, SF Station now features a weekly hour-long Internet radio show called SF Station Radio that is made up of music selections and calendar listings for that week. Hosted by a SF Station staff member, SF Station Radio is recorded at FCC FREE Radio’s studio and airs live on Wednesdays from Noon to 1pm. It is also archived on the SF Station website for a week. This week’s episode highlights indie-oriented featured events happening in San Francisco in the next 7 days, as well as music from artists taking part in the Outside Lands music festival.

In addition to facilitating this weekly radio show, FCC Free Radio is also highlighted as the official radio station for the SF Station website, with a link to its “24-hour Program Stream” provided from the SF Station Radio page.

With many websites seeking out audio content, this is an interesting partnership and a creative way to blend two community resources. In a similar vein, the San Francisco Bay Guardian launched its own web radio show in April. Their show (which airs several times a week) features Johnny Angel Wendell and San Francisco Bay Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond discussing topics ranging from California politics, to the state of news to local controversies such as whether pet stores should be banned in San Francisco.

Into the Radio Survivor e-mail box this week came an announcement from Future Perfect Radio that you can now build your own indie station over at the site. And indeed you can. One of the many things I like about FPR is that it has all these neat regional channels, including:

Coachella
Georgia
Portland
Seattle
San Francisco
Austin, TX
Great Lakes Soundtrack
Chicago
L.A.

There are also all these genre channels with intriguing names, including “Flux,” “Twee-pop,” and “Post Rock.”

The other good thing about this service (from my perspective) is that you don’t have to log in and register to get and/or combine the music. On the other hand, it means that, beyond cookies, the site won’t keep track of your choices and preferences.

Anyway, the music is great. I’ve got a west coast channel going right now with L.A., Portland, San Francisco, and Coachella in the mix.

Ah, Coachella. I went to the festival about a decade ago and I was easily the oldest human being for miles. Wonder what they’d think of me now? But that’s another story.

FCCFREE RADIO Turns off the Transmitter

Lately there’s been a lot of buzz about the comings and goings of pirate radio stations, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.

New station Radio Valencia is about to begin broadcasting any day now in San Francisco and pirate radio stalwart Freak Radio Santa Cruz is continuing in its mission, while looking for a new transmitter site.

On the flip side, San Francisco’s Pirate Cat Radio is sticking to the Internet, after getting fined by the FCC in 2009, while its owner is overseeing the day-to-day operations of a licensed FM community radio station an hour away from the city in rural Pescadero.

Like their rebel radio compadres in the Bay Area, FCCFREE RADIO is also in a state of transition, as they make the switch from being an unlicensed FM station to operating as an Internet broadcasting company. Things have changed a lot since I visited FCCFREE RADIO a year ago. At the time, owner John Miller and Program Director John Hell talked about their plans for the unlicensed LPFM community station in San Francisco, citing their desire to “put the local back into radio.” Since my last visit, they’ve built up their schedule and have attracted a following of listeners both online and over the terrestrial airwaves.

However, something very significant happened on May 7, 2010. They turned off the station’s transmitter.

I was eager to visit FCCFREE RADIO again to learn more about why they decided to remove the station from the FM airwaves, so on June 25th, I stopped by to revisit the station and learn more about what owner John Miller has in store.

John told me that the staff of FCCFREE RADIO voted in favor of turning off the transmitter after a recent visit by the FCC to the transmitter site. Although John exudes the confidence and bravado of a long-time underground radio broadcaster, he was clearly spooked by the latest letter from the FCC. He said, “I had the FCC at my door in record time,” adding, “They must be angry.”  After a couple of notices from the FCC, they decided to change the station’s course. He told me that times really have changed for pirate radio, saying, “Unfortunately people go to jail now.” While reminiscing about stations like Boulder Free Radio, John talked about how “they were heroes” and “did it on a grand scale,” but that they were hit extremely hard by the FCC. (more…)

Pandora online radio is continuing its community meeting tour with events in Atlanta and Denver this coming week.

On Monday Pandora will hold an event at the Denver Art Museum. On Tuesday the company goes to Atlanta’s Tabernacle.

“Town halls are a big part of what Pandora is about,” Pandora founder Tim Westergren says on the Pandora radio blog. “They continue to be wonderful opportunities for us meet and communicate directly with listeners.”

“We love feedback and people at Pandora events often weigh in on how Pandora should look in the future. In addition, I talk a bit about some company history, as well as a look under the hood of the music genome, and our latest thinking about the future. The questions and discussions always cover a wide range of topics – from how the music genome project works, to licensing, to the latest device updates. Everything is fair game!”

It would be great if Pandora streamed these meetings so that people in other cities could listen in on the discussion. Occasionally somebody brings their camcorder to one, but as you can see, the results are less than spectacular.

If you want the service to come to your city, e-mail Pandora at tour@pandora.com.

Hot on the heels of AT&T’s new data pricing plans, Slacker Radio released the new version 2.0 of their app which will permit listeners to cache their stations while on a wifi network. Then the stations can be listened to without using up precious data from the 3G network.

On the surface this may sound like a great alternative to Pandora or last.fm. But it must be noted that the caching feature is only available with a paid Slacker Radio Plus subscription. Users of the free service can take advantage of a 14-day trial of caching.

Under the monthly paid subscription model Slacker Radio caching seems a whole lot more like the Rhapsody service, which provides access to unlimited music for $10 a month. Rhapsody also lets you download as much music as you like to your smartphone to listen to without using a wifi or cellular data connection. Now, it’s true that Rhapsody is less radio-like than Slacker, in that you choose the artists and albums. However, the service also features Rhapsody Radio, although it isn’t cacheable and isn’t based upon user preferences.

Overall Slacker caching looks like a middle ground between listening to streaming Slacker (or Pandora or last.fm) and listening to a playlist or music podcast stored on your smartphone. That might be worth the $3.99 – $4.99 a month for some folks, especially since it’s cheaper than the data overage charge.

Radio in Front of Pirate Cat Radio in San Francisco. Photo: J. Waits

What a year in radio it’s been!

Back in June, 2009, Matthew, Paul and I agreed to focus our energies on Radio Survivor in order to champion all things radio.

Coming from the perspective of radio fans, academics, and DJs; we’ve devoted much energy to espousing the virtues and lamenting the pitfalls of radio in all of its forms.

There is still hope for radio, not only in expected places like college, community and other non-commercial stations, but also in some free-thinking commercial stations, on the all-but-ignored AM dial, over satellite, online, and through mobile devices.

We think it’s been great fun over the past year, but know that we can always do better. To help keep us on our toes (and to help keep us around), we invite you to:

1) Send us suggestions on stories that we should cover

2) Follow us on Twitter, “Like” Us on Facebook, and tell your friends about us

3) Consider doing your Amazon shopping through our links

4) Post your classified ads and radio events on Radio Survivor (It’s free!)

5) Donations are always welcome too

We appreciate all of the support, even if it’s just reading our site!