Onomatopoeia Radio is Back
I don't know how many of my readers in the past paid much attention to my other creative project, my streaming audio station on Live365, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
I started the broadcast back in 2001, around the time when the media conglomerates had completed their campaign to utterly homogenize and more or less craptify (a technical term) all broadcast radio, and many of the first generation of streaming audio providers had bit the dust due to competitive pressure from the larger entities (ah, NetRadio.com, how we miss you so), because I was seeing a disturbing trend in the music industry: my musical tastes were becoming increasingly niche-oriented, whereas the music suppliers were becoming more and more lowest-common-denominator focused.
In my personal battle to do something about it, I chose my favourite non-mainstream genre at the time, Trip-Hop, and began waging my own war against the commercial "if it's not pop or alternative-pop or country-pop or classic-rock-pop then it doesn't exist" music industry by partnering up with Live365 to educate the masses that yes, there was more to the music world than tired grunge rehashes like Nickelback and Creed (this was 2001, remember).
I think I must have fulfilled a basic need, because by 2003 or so, my broadcast was one of the highest-quality-rated stations on the network amongst any stations with over 10,000 listener-hours per month, and when Live365 implemented its "Favorite Station" feature, I quickly racked up numbers in the thousands and became the top ranked electronic station, despite very little promotional effort on my part or on Live365's (I am not, nor never was, one of their Editor's Picks or recommended stations). The world obviously needed something that was listenable and yet not pop.
In 2006, due to the costs of operating the broadcast, and lack of time outside of work and other activities, I put the broadcast on temporary hiatus. It was still available to paid subscribers of Live365, but was no longer accessible to listeners for free (for which I have plenty of hate mail, in case I ever forget).
Now it's 2008 — I live in the quiet suburbs of Vancouver, my new position at work grants me a lot more personal time, my social life has calmed down a bit, and I've started to crave my old creative outlets a bit. My beloved streaming audio broadcast was one of the first things to cross my mind. I'd log into my management interface occasionally, and feel a little guilty that despite no changes in the playlist for almost 2 years, not to mention the requirement to pay $6 US a month per listener to listen, that almost 15% of my listenership were still hanging in there anyway.
So, now, I've finally given in on two fronts:
1. Compassion for my faithful listeners of the original streaming audio station, and
2. A new cause: lately I've been getting more and more into the niche genre of electronic music generally known as Glitch. There are variants: Glitch Pop, Microhouse, Click-Hop, Glitch-Hop, and others, but either way, it's a fairly small constituency of electronic artists who have rebelled against the lush, slick, overly-produced electronica of the last 10 years or so and have reverted to a minimalistic, idiosyncratic, hiss/pop/blip/click-driven sound which is indescribably satisfying and beautiful. The Postal Service is really the only act in the style to hit the mainstream, and even they aren't a band who are getting major radio airplay in any cities I know of, but I've discovered that there are dozens of other bands of comparable quality whom no one has ever heard of:
Isan
Lali Puna
Ms. John Soda
B. Fleischmann
Herrmann & Kleine
E*Vax
Static
Styrofoam
If you don't know them, you should.
And, to make a long story short, those two reasons are why I relented and created onomatopoeia two radio, and in the process reactivated my previous onomatopoeia. Because it wouldn't really be fair not to.
The new onomatopoeia two station doesn't have any listeners yet, really, and thus is fairly costly to operate, so please go check it out. And when you do, let me know what you think. I think you'll find it interesting.
I hope so.
I started the broadcast back in 2001, around the time when the media conglomerates had completed their campaign to utterly homogenize and more or less craptify (a technical term) all broadcast radio, and many of the first generation of streaming audio providers had bit the dust due to competitive pressure from the larger entities (ah, NetRadio.com, how we miss you so), because I was seeing a disturbing trend in the music industry: my musical tastes were becoming increasingly niche-oriented, whereas the music suppliers were becoming more and more lowest-common-denominator focused.
In my personal battle to do something about it, I chose my favourite non-mainstream genre at the time, Trip-Hop, and began waging my own war against the commercial "if it's not pop or alternative-pop or country-pop or classic-rock-pop then it doesn't exist" music industry by partnering up with Live365 to educate the masses that yes, there was more to the music world than tired grunge rehashes like Nickelback and Creed (this was 2001, remember).
I think I must have fulfilled a basic need, because by 2003 or so, my broadcast was one of the highest-quality-rated stations on the network amongst any stations with over 10,000 listener-hours per month, and when Live365 implemented its "Favorite Station" feature, I quickly racked up numbers in the thousands and became the top ranked electronic station, despite very little promotional effort on my part or on Live365's (I am not, nor never was, one of their Editor's Picks or recommended stations). The world obviously needed something that was listenable and yet not pop.
In 2006, due to the costs of operating the broadcast, and lack of time outside of work and other activities, I put the broadcast on temporary hiatus. It was still available to paid subscribers of Live365, but was no longer accessible to listeners for free (for which I have plenty of hate mail, in case I ever forget).
Now it's 2008 — I live in the quiet suburbs of Vancouver, my new position at work grants me a lot more personal time, my social life has calmed down a bit, and I've started to crave my old creative outlets a bit. My beloved streaming audio broadcast was one of the first things to cross my mind. I'd log into my management interface occasionally, and feel a little guilty that despite no changes in the playlist for almost 2 years, not to mention the requirement to pay $6 US a month per listener to listen, that almost 15% of my listenership were still hanging in there anyway.
So, now, I've finally given in on two fronts:
1. Compassion for my faithful listeners of the original streaming audio station, and
2. A new cause: lately I've been getting more and more into the niche genre of electronic music generally known as Glitch. There are variants: Glitch Pop, Microhouse, Click-Hop, Glitch-Hop, and others, but either way, it's a fairly small constituency of electronic artists who have rebelled against the lush, slick, overly-produced electronica of the last 10 years or so and have reverted to a minimalistic, idiosyncratic, hiss/pop/blip/click-driven sound which is indescribably satisfying and beautiful. The Postal Service is really the only act in the style to hit the mainstream, and even they aren't a band who are getting major radio airplay in any cities I know of, but I've discovered that there are dozens of other bands of comparable quality whom no one has ever heard of:
Isan
Lali Puna
Ms. John Soda
B. Fleischmann
Herrmann & Kleine
E*Vax
Static
Styrofoam
If you don't know them, you should.
And, to make a long story short, those two reasons are why I relented and created onomatopoeia two radio, and in the process reactivated my previous onomatopoeia. Because it wouldn't really be fair not to.
The new onomatopoeia two station doesn't have any listeners yet, really, and thus is fairly costly to operate, so please go check it out. And when you do, let me know what you think. I think you'll find it interesting.
I hope so.