Music Business

Why Indie Musicians and Indie Radio Stations Should Work Together

Radio-carbonnyc-flickrIn the fall Paul Riismandel wrote an "immodest proposal" in the hopes of encouraging indie radio stations and indie musicians to work together. He points to a natural fit between non-commercial radio and indie artists and proposes at least one possibility for connecting the two. The larger point is that indie radio and indie musicians could be supporting each other in ways that would benefit both sectors as long as everyone is willing to cooperate.

With radio still a dominant means of streaming and discovery and the number of non-commercial stations increasing, trying to get airplay on college, community and LPFM stations should be an obvious move for emerging musicians.

Paul Riismandel points out:

"In my experience noncommercial radio–especially college and community radio–has been very much about indie rock, under-represented genres and local artists. It seems like most of these stations make an effort to play some portion of this broad spectrum of music not heard on most commercial radio. Many also play host to local and touring artists to play live on air, promote their shows and discuss their art."

And, with the continued narrowing of commercial playlists, indie stations remain open to outsiders.

Yet Riismandel feels there's a "growing impression amongst musicians of many stripes that all radio is declining in value." He suggests that it might be a misconception that all radio is closed to newcomers but I would conjecture that it has more to do with the misperception that terrestrial radio is dying in the face of new channels.

Then again, most of these stations are online as well these days and some college stations are going totally online.

Whatever the cause for the gap, Riismandel suggests a rather ambitious proposal that would require all parties to work together:

"Imagine small package tours crossing regions, states or the country, going from station to station–LPFM, college or community–making enough money to support the musicians and give something to the stations. They could leverage Kickstarters in each community to seed the money in advance, reducing the risk. And I’d think that the publicity for such a larger, but not enormous, enterprise could be greater than any one benefit show for one station."

Certainly finding ways to connect not just local stations and musicians but larger networks of stations as well as musicians would be beneficial to all.

As Paul Riismandel notes, "this is just one idea out of many possible thousands for how stations and musicians can work together in new ways."

[Thumbnail image courtesy David Goehring.]

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Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is relaunching All World Dance. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

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3 Comments

  1. This is so true. Me as a host of a “newcomer radio show” on independent public radio in Germany just have to add something: I broadcasted about 800 newcomer-bands and artists in the last 10 years. Posting their names, urls, videos on my homepage and via Facebook besides naming them in the live show on air. If you believe it or not, only 10 percent of all played bands, spread the show on their social networks, give a backlink on their homepage or even say thank you! Really, I love music, it takes me a lot of time, to sort out the good music for the show, to do the research, to prepare the show, posting the infos etc. But it is more than dissapointing, not to get a thank you, a backlink, some linklove etc. Don’t get me wrong, there are some bands out there, doing a great job, like responding to posts and so on. And I’m not talking about the big fishes in the business, I’m talking about new bands, with no record deal. Actually those artists who quite made it, like Soul Khan, Falkirk, Metalectro they DO RESPOND, they GIVE SOME LINK-LOVE. To be honest, this sucks and it’s getting worse and worse, even the independent labels, who send me tons of music do not post a link on their facebook, when their bands are played live on air. After 10 years working for newcomer bands and artists, making an independent documentary about the new music business for free and much more, I have to say “I’m done! If you even can’t say thank you or post the url of the radioshow on your homepage or facebook, well, get the hell out of this!”

  2. clyde, you are exactly right. too many musicians are getting the wrong impression about radio, especially due to not separating commercial from noncomm radio. commercial radio is locked up by record labels no matter how you slice it. still, commercial radio’s reach has shrunk only a tiny amount, but noncomm has done nothing but grow and grow year after year. and unlike commercial radio, the door is open to new artists at college and community radio.

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