If music curation isn’t the answer, what’s the question?
The RAIN newsletter has an interesting opinion post up by Mike Spinelli, formerly at SoundExchange, now in law school studying music licensing. Spinelli’s post is titled “The ‘me’ generation: why music curation isn’t the answer.” We are all individualists now, Spinelli says. Looking at various aspects of Beats Music, he contends that “human-curated playlist are not […]
Radio Matters: Pete Simon on “My Passion for Radio and Starting WXDR”
Radio Matters is a new feature on Radio Survivor in which guest authors share their thoughts on the relevance of radio. In this post, radio veteran Pete Simon writes about his passion for radio and his role in the development of college radio station WXDR at University of Delaware and reflects on the future of […]
College Radio Survivor: More LPFM Stations, Philly College Radio Tour, and More College Radio News
In a piece for Online Athens, Eddie DePeterse writes about the powerful allure of radio, praising it as one of the few remaining mediums that is FREE. He talks about listening to strange stations as a kid, saying, “Radio was a portal to me, a channel for life’s mysteries.” Today, he listens to college radio […]
A Carnival Comes to Night Vale
The carnival has come to Night Vale. Is this just as bad as it sounds? More on that in a moment. But first: any Welcome to Night Vale fans in the EU that haven’t need to get around to purchasing tickets for the European tour. The western countries are sold out (except one overflow show […]
LPFM Watch: 18 Construction Permits issued to Churches, College Radio Stations, and Groups Devoted to Peace and Bikes
There’s been a bit more LPFM activity in the past week, as the FCC continues to work its way through the applications. 18 more construction permits were issued this week and applicants in competitive groups (MX groups) have been filing amendments to their applications in the hopes of having construction permits issued. You can follow […]
How to get a SoundCloud classical channel that doesn’t suck
SoundCloud has a variety of “Explore” channels. These are basically very long playlists of whatever has been recently posted. They include Folk, Rock, Deep House, Trip Hop, and a bunch of other genres about which I know nothing. The service also has a “classical” channel. The problem is that most of the content on the […]
An Unwelcome Guest at the NAB Radio Show
This was the first year that I’ve actually attended the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual radio convention. Though I have been to two as a protester: the first in San Francisco in 2000 to let the industry know people were unhappy with their evisceration of LPFM, and again in Seattle in 2002 to culture-jam the […]
Podcasting News: CBS Loses to Podcast Troll in Texas Court
On Monday the so-called podcast patent troll, Personal Audio, won in court against CBS. A Marshall, Texas jury found that the television network had infringed on Personal Audio’s podcasting patent, rejecting CBS’s argument that the patent was not valid to begin with. The jury awarded damages of $1.3 million to Personal Audio. The Electronic Frontier […]
The Problem(s) of Community Radio
A station I used to work at is in a financial crisis. I don’t use that phrase capriciously. Membership has plummeted, the personal people meter rankings indicate that, statistically, no one is listening and the volunteer nature of the programmers is caught up in petty discourse defending the value of their shows and lamenting the […]
The “dirtiest song on the radio.” How would you decide?
Over the last few days we’ve been tweeting and pondering the “dirtiest song on the radio” question. The conundrum has been reprompted by a Wall Street Journal post on the history of Aerosmith’s song “Walk This Way,” titled “The Dirtiest Song on the Radio” (it was christened this by David Johansen of the New York […]