Hey
All! How are you all doing this month?? I hope that everyone is
gigging steadily, hitting those open jam sessions (those are a lot
of fun!!!), writing lots of songs, and reading every article on
this website! I appreciate you indulging me last month with my little
rambling story and rant. I hope that it helped some of you who are
where I was a year ago. I got a lot of nice email feedback, and
actually got some good advice back from a few of you!! Thanks to
everyone who emailed me!
Soooooo,
now back to our regular scheduled programming!
I want
to talk this month about Internet Radio, and how it is affecting
today's market. There has been an amazing boom in the last few months,
of internet radio stations. Less then a year ago, there were only
a handful. There were a bunch of standard major radio stations who
began broadcasting their regular radio signal over the net. But
there were very few true "Internet" radio stations. That has all
changed.
As
I sat to research for this story, I was truly amazed at the growth
and current amount of internet radio stations. Today, every major
Gavin, AAA, College, and minor market radio station transmit their
signal over the net, simulcasting with their on-air shows. You can
literally travel around the globe and as long as you can get to
a computer, you can still listen to your favorite radio station
from home. While this has been fantastic for standard radio listeners,
it hasn't meant much for independent or small label bands and performers.
We still can't get into any kind of major rotation on these stations
because when you boil it all down, they are still major stations
who have limited spots for new artists and new songs, perhaps 2-3
per week, and have to cater to who the major labels want them to
play. There is very little room for independent and small label
acts to break major radio. College radio is much more accessible
and friendly to independent artists. Many college stations actually
go out of their way to play a lot of new music and have new artist
in the studio for interviews and performances. There are literally
hundreds of college stations, and with a lot of legwork, or a good
radio campaign firm and a decent budget, you can get a nice solid
base of stations who will play your music. But, Internet radio is
another animal altogether. Totally accessible, totally open to new
stuff, and totally free of any conventional constraints, it is a
new playing field where Indie artists seem to usually have the upper
hand for a change.
In
the last year, close to 2,000 bona fide internet only radio stations
have come along. Since they don't have to conform to the standard
limitations placed on standard radio stations by the FCC, they are
free and very willing to play just about anything. The selection
is completely up to the program director. The best part of that
is that that can wind up being anyone from seasoned pros who start
their stations to help indie acts that they can't help on the air,
to the guy next door to you who loves music and wants to hear what
he wants to hear! Most are quite daring and very obliging to independent
and small label artists. Most "program directors" at these stations
are just people who felt like having their own station. It's as
easy as downloading the correct broadcasting software, installing
it and away you go. The software is freely available from many places
on the net, easy to install and fairly easy to learn to use. A fast
internet connection such as DSL or cable modem is the preferred
connection for this type of venture, and make broadcasting much
easier.
The
nice thing is that because anyone can have a radio station, it has
created a true diversity of music to chose from for your listening
pleasure! What this means is that, if you look hard enough, you
can find stations that cater to any kind, if not all kinds of music.
Many of the bigger firms that have station setups will have dozens
of stations, each for a specific genre. All you have to do is search
them out.
This
has created a big window of opportunity for independent artists
to get their music heard by many people. More and more people are
tuning into these stations while surfing and enjoy the fact that
it's not "mainstream" music that they are hearing. Let's face it,
people are spending more and more time on the net. More and more
people are getting tired of the 25 overplayed songs on the radio.
They want something new and exciting. These people are also getting
high speed connections such as cable modems and DSL lines. These
give the users the ability to surf for whatever they are looking
for and at the same time, take their pick of thousands of opportunities
to listen to music they just can't get anywhere else.
One
nice thing is that you can listen to music and stations from around
the world. Munichs Hardest Hits (www.munichshardesthits.com)
is a station from Germany that broadcasts live for half of the week
and then plays archived shows the rest of the week. And they play
all rock, the kind you simply can't hear on mainstream anymore,
with tons of indie artists in the mix with the major players. Any
indie artist that releases their own CD, and gets it onto the good
internet stations around the world can truly say that they have
an internationally released CD and that they are getting airplay
around the world! The cool part is that the DJ's speak in German
in-between songs, so you can take in some culture while you listen
too!
Real
Player has a whole jukebox of stations programmed right into their
player. Broadcast America has dozens of channels, and more coming
everyday. On Mp3.com, users can simply create their stations using
whatever music they want from the site. It gives them access to
thousands of songs to choose from. There are internet radio stations
that are huge, like Radio Free Kansas, which is a true internet
station. Most websites that were once just plain old news/reviews
sites now have their own stations. There are so many options now
for you to get your music out and to the internet stations that
there's no excuse not to. And many of them will take an MP3 file
that you can upload or email to them, saving you the cost and expense
of having to mail out CD's.
The
only downside to the whole thing is that 99.9% of these stations
are not regulated, so therefore, not surveyed by the PRO's like
ASCAP or BMI. So while you may literally get hundreds of spins per
day or week, you won't be getting any royalties from it. What you
do get is potentially a lot more exposure, and to most indie acts,
that's the really important thing.
For
singers and songwriters, you can hear new music for inspiration.
For music lovers, you get to hear stuff you'd otherwise never hear
in your life. For net surfers, you get the best soundtrack you could
ever hope for to play while you work.
Log
on, go into a search engine and type "Internet Radio" and see what
you come up with. It's an amazing new world out there! Play it!!!
Keep
the Faith!
-- John
