Online radio is helping musicians break free from their reliance on big-name stations. Want to get your album tracks played? There鈥檚 a show for that.
There鈥檚 a particular tree somewhere in Sheffield. It would be tricky to pin down an exact date, but if you鈥檇 taken a wander down there at any time in the late 1990s, you would have found a 14-year-old boy crouched underneath it, twiddling the knobs on a transmitter, speaking into an old mixer and broadcasting to his area via a transmitter lodged in the branches of the tree.
That boy was Mista Montana. He鈥檚 a little bit older now, and has gone from broadcasting under a tree to becoming one of the biggest Internet radio stars in history. His hip-hop music show Conspiracy Worldwide is massive. It began in 2004, and through a single-minded devotion to playing non-mainstream music (helped along by an endless procession of high-profile guests), it has become one of the trailblazers of the medium. Broadcast as a live show on Friday nights and as a downloadable podcast, Conspiracy Worldwide can claim around 100-200,000 downloads for every episode per month.
Internet radio has changed how we listen to music, and Montana has been right in the thick of it for over seven years. 鈥淚 suddenly realised the potential of what the Internet could do,鈥 he says talking about the show鈥檚 early days. 鈥淸But] I never thought it could do what it has done. It really has revolutionised everything I ever did. Back in the day, I was broadcasting to a town and we had six texts come in throughout a three-hour show. Now, it鈥檚 phenomenal 鈥 the reach of what we鈥檙e doing. Over 180 countries! To have that audience and be able to track it is, to me, the perfect picture.鈥
It seems strange to think just how recent Internet radio is, given the dominance of some of its leading broadcasters. But it has only been a few years since it came on the scene and began cutting into the dominance of what鈥檚 known as terrestrial radio 鈥 think AM and FM music stations like Capital, Kiss and BBC Radio 1. While these stations have certainly made themselves available online, they continue to operate under the same narrow music paradigm. In those studios, it鈥檚 all chart shows, new music from the big-name pop stars and vapid DJs who have no say in the music they play. While there are exceptions, this is the norm.
But in the online world, these stations now have to compete with broadcasters who capture huge audiences without being in thrall to advertisers or stony-faced programme controllers. It used to be that any budding musician looking for airplay would have to go through the iron gates of a playlist committee meeting. If they didn鈥檛 meet strict standards regarding what the station鈥檚 format was, they were utterly ignored.
But with online stations, the game has changed. DJs and station personnel are often directly accessible, and the dedication to niche music genres (such as Conspiracy鈥檚 focus on raw hip-hop) has meant that it鈥檚 up to the DJs to chase down new music. What that means is that artists suddenly have a real outlet for their material. That heavy rap single got rejected from KISS? Not to worry. There are hundreds of online shows who will play it, and they have a collective audience of hundreds of thousands.
It鈥檚 having an impact on the notion of radio singles as well. Gone are the days when an artist had to have at least one commercially-friendly track on their album. If a rock band wants fans to hear their nine-minute long live jam session that was a bonus track on their album, they don鈥檛 have to try to corner Jo Whiley when they see her at a show. They can just take it to somewhere like Total Rock.
Total Rock is a unique example; a station which began in the terrestrial era and which has become one of Internet radio鈥檚 leading lights. Perhaps more than any other station, it has shown the viability and longevity of online radio; the owners have battled multiple bankruptcies, studio relocations and more, and are still going strong. It gets around 35,000 listeners every week.
It鈥檚 tempting to think of Internet radio shows as being the realm of small-time DJs, doing it for love out of a basement somewhere. But that鈥檚 not always the case. Conspiracy Worldwide may have a small staff (Montana and his co-host Menace) but there are certainly plenty of stations and shows on the web who go a little bigger. Total Rock is one of these. As the name suggests, it plays rock and metal, and it operates under virtually the same template as a big-name station. Its offices in London鈥檚 Denmark Street are typical: faded music posters, dusty piles of long-forgotten CDs, assorted wires and broken mixers. It鈥檚 a little more relaxed than most other stations 鈥 you probably won鈥檛 find a life-size skull perched in the production studios at Radio 1 鈥 but there鈥檚 no mistaking that this is a station that means business.
Tony Wilson is a former BBC sound engineer, and he鈥檚 been around since the early days of the station in the late 1990s. A quiet man with a professorial air, he looks slightly out of place next to the grinning skull. But he knows his rock, and he knows his radio 鈥 especially the challenges of bringing a station online. 鈥淚n the earliest days,鈥 he says, 鈥渋n order that people could receive it and you didn鈥檛 use up too much bandwidth, you had to deliver it using a 24kb mono signal. But that鈥檚 [changed] as bandwidth grew and broadband started.鈥
Neither Total Rock nor Conspiracy Worldwide makes a profit. Total Rock earns enough to keep afloat, but like almost all online stations, it doesn鈥檛 pay its DJs. Montana says that he has never made a penny from his show 鈥 and, surprisingly, doesn鈥檛 mind a bit. In fact, he thinks it gives them an edge over the big stations: 鈥淲hen it comes to the legal stations and the bigger stations, they don鈥檛 fully want to accept the Internet because they鈥檙e not sure what to make in terms of business off the Internet. They鈥檙e trying to get a business plan 鈥 they haven鈥檛 worked out how they stay in control and [maintain the revenue].鈥
In the last few years, one of the key challenges that radio as a whole has faced is how to compete against sharing music on the Internet. To explain: radio shows were the place to go to find the hottest new single, the next big act, the freshest album of the week. But with all that material readily available on blogs, the role of DJs as tastemakers has eroded somewhat. Why listen to Choice FM鈥檚 track of the week when it was available on Mediafire three days ago?
It鈥檚 a big challenge for Internet radio, though Wilson says he still believes the role of the online DJ is to act as a filter for the huge amount of music available: 鈥淎ll of our DJs are not radio presenters; first and foremost they鈥檙e music fans. That鈥檚 what [gives us the edge]. We鈥檙e very street-level, very fan driven鈥he philosophy of what we do is that the DJs are the key to it. They do a lot of blogging and social networking and bring that into the station. I think that it鈥檚 a matter of developing their profiles as tastemakers and I think radio still has a lot to say in that area. It鈥檚 like a magazine: you get a combination of new music, you get introduced to music, you get interviews and it鈥檚 happening all the time and you can dip in and out of it.鈥
Montana agrees: 鈥淚f you go to [rap blogs] 2DopeBoyz or HipHopDX, and they didn鈥檛 update their leak list everyday people would stop looking at them as a leading light. Hip-hop appears every day. Every show has got the best of the last seven days music. You get an instant supply. You don鈥檛 have to wait for CDs at the post office 鈥 finding new artists is not as difficult as it once was. But you have to stay current, and I鈥檝e said this on the show before: I feel like a week now in hip-hop feels like a year. That鈥檚 because of the blogs 鈥 that鈥檚 a problem for radio.鈥
Jane Ostler is the communications director of UK Digital Radio, which handles all the administration of the UK鈥檚 non-analogue radio streams. 鈥淥ne of things that appeals about digital radio is that everything is going digital,鈥 she says. 鈥淚f you look at the way you store your music, watch TV, explore news and information, you can do more with digital. It鈥檚 more interactive 鈥 you can have extra information, programme guides 鈥 all the things you can鈥檛 do using analogue. It鈥檚 the natural progression for any medium.鈥
And, it would appear, the natural progression for music as well. Much of the interaction between online radio and the music it plays is uncharted territory, and the long-term impact remains to be seen. But there鈥檚 very little doubt that, even in their short existence so far, Internet radio stations have begun to change the game. For more information on Total Rock visit , or for Conspiracy Worldwide visit .
Rob Boffard
