When I was a kid I listened to a lot of radio. My favorite DJs played my favorite songs and shared stories about seeing the bands perform and meeting the band members...radio was the greatest. The DJ was my friend who was "in the know" when it came to music, made me feel closer to the music, helped me to understand what it meant and sometimes revealed that it meant different things to different people, which was a special kind of eye-opening cool.
That type of radio has been devalued in the post radio consolidation era that saw Clear Channel (now the cutesy iHeart Radio), Entercom, and Cumulus buy up something like half of the radio stations in the country over the course of about 5 years. This consolidation and streamlining (that is having some bean counter in Denver programming dozens of stations across the country making redundant dozens of music-loving radio programmers) reduced the radio dial to a handful of cookie cutter formats with cookie cutter playlists. Sad.
It seems that even the music industry has lost sight of the promotional value of radio, maybe because there are so few (if any) slots allotted for new music each week on commercial stations. An example of how things have changed: we used to get records weeks in advance of their release. Recently, after spending 2 months excitedly counting down on air to Parquet Courts release day, that day came and there was no record for me to share with you. I felt like I'd let you all down. The album finally arrived here 4 business days after it was released, so I will get to share songs from it with you today, but seriously, labels/promo folks, I don't know what you're thinking waiting until after the thing is available to send out promo copies; if there is a reason, please fill me in.
Props to the few independent terrestrial and internet stations still making a go of it, supporting local and new and niche music, giving voice to thoughtful and/or entertaining personalities, expanding listeners' minds...hang on as long as you can. Some day the powers that be will realize what has been lost and hopefully enough of us who remember will still be around to bring it back.
And now for something completely different: web ads placed over the text I'm trying to read is a surefire way to get me to stop reading your content and never return. I know the bills have to be paid, but ruining the user experience may not be the best long-term business strategy. Then again, it has worked for Facebook...
Remain in the dough of all happenings BAGeL by subscribing to our new mailing list: https://bit.ly/BAGeLNews.
Today we will debut a bevy of new music including songs by Chime School (San Francisco, CA, @ChimeSchool), Clinic (Liverpool, England, @clinicvoot), Dummy (Los Angeles, CA, @dummy_band), Geese (Brooklyn, NY, @geese_band), Good Morning (Melbourne, Australia, @GoodFKNMorning), Latvian Radio (New York, NY), Parquet Courts (Brooklyn, NY), and TRAITRS (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, @traitrs).
Tune in and chat with other members of our music discovery-loving community on Slack during the live-hosted hours.
Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite digital calendar:
https://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html?spref=tw
Our handy dandy gig-finding tool just got a facelift and is handier and dandier than ever. Use it to find live music near you, within a radius you choose, surfacing performances (IRL and virtual) by artists played on BAGeL Radio:
https://bagelconcertfinder.com
e-mail: ted(at)somafm.com
Twitter: @bagelradio
facebook.com/bagelradio/ (comments only, no FB messenger, sorry)
chat with fellow listeners: https://internet-radio-slack.herokuapp.com
That moment when you discover not all chocolate is sweetened! pic.twitter.com/8r18gNBcH9
— Misleader in Chief (@MisleaderC) October 27, 2021
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