Thursday, September 25, 2003

Steve comments on my comment: There is still hope - it is fairly easy to construct schemes that connect people who actively find and catalog the fantastic pieces that nominally pop up outside of the wasteland of the majors. I can think about a few mechanisms that could be implemented -- there is some hope, but it probably won't come from radio stations. I'm afraid it may be too late for them. [tingilinde] Here's the challenge. When I lived in NJ, and then for a while until the RIAA came down on the webcasters, I listened regularly to Vin Scelsa's show. That playlist intrigues me, but how do I know what I would like to listen to again and again? The magic of creative radio was that it brought into the audio world a time-honored genre, the anthology. In the hands of a gifted editor (like Vin), the anthology genre gives the reader much more than its constituent parts. I've bought many CDs (many issued by the majors) as a result of listening to that show (Paolo Conte, Bill Frisell, Yo La Tengo, Belle & Sebastian, Beck, Radio Tarifa, Ali Farka Toure, Aimee Mann, Béla Fleck, Craker, R.E.M, Emmanuel Ax, Lounge Lizards, just to mention a few). I would pay a subscription to get Vin's show every week. But I'm sure that any attempt to create a channel for these creations would be killed by the RIAA layers, who clearly don't care for my money. 9:34:56 AM