Why Save Internet Radio?

#217, June 20, 2007

My vote for the most chilling scene on fiction film? It’s not a slasher, nothing involving Hannibal Lecter, not even the final moments of “Soylent Green.” No, my nomination for the Lifetime Achievement in Creepiness goes to the remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” As I remember it, the pod-people are taking over San Francisco; one sign of their progress is that radio music is replaced with the single-mindless drone of a newscaster. The hero (aka Donald Sutherland) scurries desperately down a street, a perfect picture of paranoia. But wait! We hear bagpipes playing Amazing Grace. For a moment, there is a flicker of hope for humanity. Then the pipes are silenced in a burst of static, and after a moment’s silence, we hear only the newscaster.

This scene wouldn’t be so spooky if it was purely fictional. It’s not. Our human versions of pod people have several times taken over the radio realm, only to be subverted by the forces of diversity. In the 1920s, the number and variety of radio stations boomed, but fell under tight government and corporate control in the 1930s. To escape these limits, operators built huge, unregulated transmitters across the border, giving voice to the likes of Reverend Ike and Wolfman Jack. When rock and roll was under the safe control of the AM networks, saturated with ads, yammering DJs, and narrow playlists, along came FM underground radio and its undermining album-oriented rock. Remember KMPX?

When corrupt Republicanism reached a crescendo in the early GWB years, media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s Clear Channel was body-snatching independent community-centered radio stations by the dozen, leaving pre-programmed drones in its wake. The North Bay was lucky to have a good number of stations that escaped this plague, most notably KRCB, KRSH, and KPFA. But with costs and commercial pressures on the rise, how long would real radio last? With the alternative voices silenced, would the demise of democracy be far behind?

I discovered internet radio (IR) when my daughter got her own show at KZMU, the Moab, Utah listener-supported station. Technology, in the form of broadband access and audio streaming, made it possible for me to hear Laurel’s two-hour show live. Or I could set a timer to record the show on my hard drive, then put it on my iPod (no relation) for later listening. From KZMU, it was a short step to realizing that there were dozens – no, hundreds—of stations streaming on the internet. Wow, what if there was a website “dial” for all these stations, a virtual community, combined with a pocket-sized mico-power FM transmitter. You’d dial-in your favorite programming at freebandradio.com, and your computer would beam the signal on your selected open frequency to any standard FM radio within 100 feet. Your garden-variety boom box could literally bring a world of music into your own garden.

The power of IR did for music and news what eBay did for retail commerce: it lowered the barrier for entry. Musicians out on “the long tail” didn’t have meet Clear Channel or Walmart popularity thresholds to get a world-wide audience (long tail is a term for what you see when you plot the volume of music sales by artist. U2 is on the peak at the upper left; Toast Machine is out at the lower right, on the “long tail”.) Combine this global reach with the search and collaborative filtering power of “Web 2.0”, and the radio business is revolutionized. For evidence, see my “dial” idea at live365.com (they beat me to it.)

All of this beautiful music will go mute, however, if the regulations proposed by the Copyright Royalty Board are allowed to take effect as planned on July 18. Unless Congress passes the Internet Radio Equality Act, royalty fee increases of 300% to 1200% will kill internet radio as we know it. The fee increase will benefit only the big labels and established artists, as the long-tail artists depend on IR to build their audiences. Congressmember Woolsey is co-sponsor of IREA, but Senator Feinstein, a critical vote, needs to be swayed. Call her Washington office today, at (202) 224-3841. IR is in the ER; we need to save it.