Radio Survivor

The Slacker mobile radio team sent us a press release this morning saying the service is now available in Canada. “Turning Canada on to personal radio has been some time in the making, and we are proud to unveil our Canadian Slacker Radio experience,” declared Slacker marketing Veep Jonathan Sasse in the  statement. “Whether it’s from the web or a smartphone, Slacker takes the work out of listening to your favorite music wherever you want.”

And the release continues:

“Canadian music fans will have access to the free Slacker Basic Radio for up to 30 days. After 30 days, they can upgrade to Slacker Radio Plus, featuring all the same great benefits of Slacker Basic Radio along with station caching for supported mobile devices, ad-free listening, complete song lyrics*, unlimited song skipping, song requests and more. Station caching enables mobile listeners to store their personal stations on selected smartphones for listening anywhere, anytime, uninterrupted.

Listeners can store a station by simply selecting “Cache Station” from within the supported app. The station can then be downloaded via Wi-Fi, over USB or through the cellular network. Cached stations are stored on the smartphone and can be accessed on planes, subways and everywhere in between requiring minimal battery usage and eliminating the need to access the mobile carrier network to play music.”

One question we had about the statement. It calls Slacker “the first personal radio experience to service Canada.” Hey Canadians, is that the case? We know that you can’t get Pandora up there (except maybe by proxy). What about last.fm? Here’s a comment from a disgruntled Canadian. What are the  availabilities?   Send us your comments.

On my recently ended radioshow I tried to reguarly to give updates on unlicensed radio. To me it’s one of the still lively modes of civil disobedience in electronic communications, especially in the internet age.
Although there is low-power FM in the US, and a growing community radio movement world-wide, the urge to broadcast without government sanction is still strong and too hard for some resist. For some it’s because a license still isn’t available, and for others it’s because they don’t think they should need a license. And some pirates just don’t even care about the FCC or other regulators in the first place. As we get 2010 off to a start I’d like to take an opportunity to take look at some of the pirate radio news, at least in North America.

FCC Actions Up, Actual Busts not so Much

At least once a year my pal John Anderson at DIYmedia.net does an overview of FCC action against pirates. He finds that in terms of raw numbers 2009 was a record year, with 429 enforcement actions. That number may sound high to many people since we don’t hear too much news these days about pirate broadcasters who aren’t in a movie. But the record is deceptive, since most of the “actions” aren’t busts, where FCC agents employ law enforcement muscle to charge in and confiscate gear. Rather, most of these actions involve unaccompanied visits to suspected transmitter sites and threatening letters.

In fact, John reports that

the number of actual, painful punishments have dropped: five Forfeiture Orders (compared to 13 in 2008); 6 Notices of Apparent Liability (versus 13 in 2008); raid-arrests and seizures remain constant from year-to-year (5/3 in ‘09, 5/2 in ‘08 – and at least one of the “seizures” last year was voluntary).

Those statistics lead John to conclude that an unlicensed broadcaster has something like an 8 in 10 chance of avoiding any major punishment, aside from a threatening letter delivered via certified mail.
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Those of us who call ourselves radio fans are increasingly a small and devoted lot and the same can be said of radio scholars. It’s for that reason that I was super excited to find out about the international radio conference known simply as The Radio Conference.

This year’s event, The Radio Conference 2009: A Transnational Forum, was held in Toronto, Canada in July and featured academics from all over the globe talking about a wide range of topics including radio history, commercial radio in Canada, pirate radio in 1960s’ New Zealand, African-American CB Radio Culture, liberal implications of This American Life, and the impact of the British invasion on college radio in the 1980s.

I wasn’t able to make it to the event, but radio scholar and college radio DJ Nick Rubin wrote an excellent summary, which is posted on my Spinning Indie blog.

One of the studios at KALX

There’s been some chatter this week about whether or not the youth of today are listening to radio.

The standard cliche is that youth have abandoned radio and Monday’s Boston Globe article “Young Listeners Tune Out Radio in Search of New Music” repeats that refrain, quoting teens and folks in their 20s who report that they listen to music mainly online and on iPods using services like Last.fm and Pandora to discover new music.

The article states:

“While its viability hasn’t yet reached endangered species status, music radio does face many of the same challenges other mass media – including newspapers, magazines, and network television – are up against. New technologies and delivery options, more choices tailored to individual consumers, fragmented audiences that can find music they enjoy while bypassing glib-talking DJs and annoying commercials – all are factors driving programmers and station owners to retool themselves for the digital media age.”

In response to this article, Radio Ink shares Southern California Broadcasters Association President Mary Beth Garber’s reaction. Here’s a tidbit of that:

“Granted, younger people have iPods/MP3s (about 7 out of 10, although the number goes down as the age goes up over 17, according to Edison Research), most use the Internet, and many have cell phones with texting capabilities. But radio still outreaches all of that.

‘Real music,’ to tens of millions of young people, is on the radio. As long as its content remains relevant, radio is likely to remain the leading choice of audio entertainment for young people. It’s free and it’s remarkably easy to use. It airs tens of thousands of new songs and new artists every year. With the right app, it’s even available on your iPod or MP3 player and it doesn’t require hours to download and program songs in order to listen to it.”

Other radio defenders chimed in by commenting about non-commercial radio’s ongoing relevance (which I discuss on Spinning Indie), particularly in Boston which is blessed with numerous college radio stations.

Meanwhile, there’s another trend going on that I’d like to point out. In the same week that the Globe was writing about young people turning away from radio, I ran across several articles talking about teen radio camps and new radio stations cropping up that are staffed by teen DJs.

A Chicago magazine published by high school students called True Star is planning to branch out by creating accompanying web programming and a radio show this fall, college radio station WGMU is running a radio summer camp for teens this week, a summer camp in Canada has teens creating podcasts with plans to launch a community Internet radio station, and teens at a school in the U.K. will have their own online station in September.  One of the 14-year-olds involved with the new U.K. station is quoted as saying, “We’ll provide up-to-date music which will appeal to many young listeners.”

Although radio’s delivery method is evolving, it’s nice to see that there is still youthful energy surrounding the idea of radio, even as a way to broadcast new music.