Radio Show to Mix Tape

For me, mix tapes and radio shows have a lot in common; as they both make an attempt to compile a collection of pieces of music in order to share a particular mood, highlight a specific genre, or communicate a special message to listeners (or to the object of one’s desire).

I used to do thematic radio shows, often with hidden messages (intended for my crush) and it was very much like a public mix tape for me. After my show I would dub a cassette copy, craft case art and jot down track names and titles before presenting the mix to the one who I was trying to impress.

A few years later I took my mix-making to the online world, penning playlists for a start-up called Uplister. What made that site unique was that our playlists had room for liner notes built in next to each track. Although we only had 30 second sound clips for each piece of music, what really brought the lists to life were the accompanying narrative written by each playlist-maker. Suddenly mix tapes compiled after a break-up took on new meaning, when the story was shared along with the music selections.

At the time (2000-2001) we had big plans for Uplister, with our founders boldly proclaiming that the playlist was the “next unit of global music consumption.” I’m not sure that’s happened, but playlists have become a common method for people to understand and group music from their collections.

Brown University graduate student Ben Nicholson takes a look at the modern day mix tape in his paper, Playlist: 21st Century Mix Tape, published in a recent issue of Technomusicology: A Sandbox Journal. Ben writes about how music collecting and sharing has changed since the advent of digital music, arguing that:

“Music has largely moved from the shelf to the hard drive in the 21^st century. Digitally-encoded mp3s have made the storage and transportation of music more efficient and, once one has acquired a computer, less expensive than ever before…Ten years ago, a CD collector might sort their music collection by hand, organizing their CDs into an alphabetized archive located either on a shelf or in a CD tower. The acquisition of a new CD could require a reorganization of the entire collection in order for the CD to physically fit into its proper place…For an mp3 collector, however, these organizational headaches are remedied by software; iTunes will sort all of your music for you.”

I was also interested in Ben’s discussion about technologies that attempt to replicate personalized mix tapes, including Apple’s Genius Mixes. He writes that an evaluation of software that attempted to group playlists thematically found that:

“Listeners preferred playlists with an organizing principle, playlists that were more like mix tapes…Though it is unlikely that automated mix software and corporately sponsored playlists will replace manual/amateur mix construction, the fact that software developers are attempting to perfect their playlist algorithms and that iTunes is opening a playlist market indicates that the concept of the personalized mix is important to digital music distributors.”

What do you think? Do computer-generated mix tapes hold the same allure as a mix tape passed from person to person? Is it the one-to-one connection from sender to receiver that makes for the power of the mix or is the collection of songs enough? And how do services like Pandora fit into the equation? Or hand-curated radio shows for that matter?

Although it makes sense that music recommendation services would attempt to replicate hand-made mixes, I can’t imagine that people will be wooing potential mates with Genius Mixes or Pandora playlists or that those lists will end up in shoe boxes along with old love letters. But then again, in decades to come the artifacts of a courtship may all be housed in digital files or on remote servers. Yesterday’s ticket stubs, photographs, and saucy letters written in cursive will probably be replaced by files full of racy text messages, You Tube videos chronicling first dates, and romantic blog posts.

View out of Grooves Records in San Francisco

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of music that can be held in one’s hands. The third annual Record Store Day on Saturday (if you missed it, take a look at our Radio Guide for the event) celebrated both physical record stores and the non-digital releases sold within their walls.

As I visited two of my favorite San Francisco record stores, Aquarius and Grooves, I was elated to see people combing through bins of records and CDs and talking about music with each other.

I also spotted a case full of cassettes at Aquarius and boxes housing 8-track tapes at Grooves, illustrating that there is still a market for formats that many assume to be non-existent.

Cassettes for Sale at Aquarius Records

The success of this year’s Record Store Day speaks to the desire held by many to hang on to the physical aspects of music amid the pressures to “go digital.”

College radio is a logical home for some of these tensions, as some stations are getting rid of vinyl (and even CDs), using automation software, and are allowing DJs to use iPods during their radio shows.

8-Track Tapes for Sale at Grooves in San Francisco

These debates about the role of physical music in radio are at the core of an article that I wrote this week for PopMatters called “Technology and the Soul of College Radio.”

In the piece I talk about both the history of innovation in college radio (ever the trendsetter) and how the dark side of tech may be seeping in to its programming, threatening to homogenize the airsound and take away some of the energy and whimsy that I think should typify college radio.

The response to my article has been fascinating, with some people telling me that they are afraid to voice their opinions against digital music and with others sharing how their college radio stations have already gone to the dark side of commercial-esque Selector-scheduled programming. And I didn’t even get into the arguments related to fidelity, which is a big concern for many in the anti-digital music camp. What do you think? Does physical music make for better-sounding radio?

#3 in our series on radio trends of the decade

Music listening has changed dramatically in the past decade in large part because of the rise of digital music. Following the explosion and shut down of illegal file sharing service Napster (1999-2001), a variety of digital music companies attempted to profit from the burgeoning interest in music delivery via the Internet.

Some focused on music subscription services (such as Rhapsody and eMusic), others turned toward music recommendations (like my former employer Uplister, which had hoped to turn the playlist into the “next unit of global music consumption”), and the legal descendants of Napster (from Apple to Amazon.com) became purveyors of MP3 downloads.

The timing of the digital music explosion couldn’t have been better; as many radio listeners were turned off by the increasingly consolidated commercial radio landscape that appeared on the scene as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which reduced limitations on the number of stations that could be held by one owner.

A direct result of the reduction in the number of station owners was less diversity on radio, with shorter playlists and fewer artists represented. As a 2002 report by The Future of Music Coalition pointed out, music fans were not pleased by this and stated that they actually “want longer playlists with more variety,” flying in the face of commercial radio’s own survey results.

So, it’s no surprise that services like Rhapsody and iTunes, where music fans could select their own playlists of music from a menu of choices would resonate so strongly with folks who had turned away from radio. Portable digital music players appeared on the scene just before 2000 with MPMan and the Diamond Rio, followed by Creative Lab’s Nomad Jukebox in 2000 and the Apple iPod in 2001.

The iTunes Music Store was launched in 2003 and the first mobile phones to incorporate MP3 players arrived in Asia the same year. MP3 players became increasingly common in many mobile phones and again Apple was a leader in popularizing their use with its introduction of the iPhone in 2007 (which had music features of the iPod built in to it).

A report issued by Bridge Ratings in 2006 pointed out that in their survey sample, young people were turning to MP3 players vs. terrestrial radio. According to the study, “12-24 year olds substantial increase in time spent with their MP3 players has significantly reduced their use of traditional AM/FM radio.”

Of course, at decade’s end we’re seeing massive convergence to such a degree that devices like the iPod may not necessarily be as big of a threat to traditional radio as they once seemed. Some portable music players and phones actually contain FM radios and may serve to draw in new listeners, whereas many others allow for the streaming of radio or the playback of broadcast archives.

As a radio DJ and indie radio fan I still have a preference for expertly curated radio playlists vs. iPods on Shuffle, but the lines keep blurring. Some lazy college radio DJs just plug their iPods into the board instead of hand-selecting CDs and pieces of vinyl to play over the airwaves and some iPod owners lovingly craft playlists that would be the envy of any college radio fanatic.

And then there’s commercial station RXP in New York City, which actually has an on-air feature called “Spin Matt Pinfield’s iPod,” in which listeners chose a number between 1 and 8000 in order to hear a random track from the morning show DJ’s iPod; thus bringing the whimsy (and breadth) of an iPod’s library to the commercial airwaves. So who knows, perhaps the iPod (and certainly consumers’ preference for massive choice in music) will help to spice up commercial radio yet.

Some of my Childhood 45s

I spend a lot of time thinking about how changes in technology are affecting radio.

I worry that the “kids” (college radio DJs as well as everyday folks) are getting lazier and lazier, bypassing physical music for digital, thinking that it’s easier to find and play.

I also worry that the pleasure of enjoying an entire album is being lost; even though there are still albums being created that beg for a complete listen.

In a piece in The Boston Globe, Steve Almond nicely captures some of these fears as he takes a look at his own feelings of nostalgia for physical music as he converts his record collection to digital files. He writes: