WNMC Music Discussion follow-up

Sorry about the delay in continuing this. Before posting the next bit, I'd like to follow up on some of the response to the first installment, some of which weren't written.

First thing: PLEASE write your comments and feedback in the comment section here (go to the bottom and click on the comments link). The whole point of this exercise is to get a discussion going among everyone, not for there to be a dozen parallel, non-overlapping discussions between me and a dozen individual djs. The point is for everyone to see what everyone else is saying.

You'll see I write in a pretty cocksure manner most of the time. I find it very tiresome to couch everything I write in scare quotes and IMOs, so I don't always use them. But practically everything I write here is subject to dispute. So if you want to dispute or question, go ahead. Don't be intimidated by my air of certainty. The whole reason I'm putting this out there is because I think you guys have something to add.

Presentation: I think Brian Tennis makes a great point: one of the great assets the station has is the fact that we have real local people who present the music live. We should all try to maximize that asset. That doesn't mean we all become hype commercial-style DJs. It does mean that we should all try to add value through our talk breaks. Even if that means just doing them regularly, doing the weather, & promo-ing some concerts. We should all remember that the music comes first. But presenting the music well is very important as well.

Awareness: Any time I raise this issue folks mention that the station isn't as well known as they think it should be. One thing to remember is that the vast majority of people who DON'T know about WNMC aren't potential listeners--either because they don't like what we do, or because they don't listen to the radio, or because they don't use the radio to get what we provide. The problem with the vast majority of people who don't know about us isn't ignorance: it's lack of affinity for what we do.

The exception here would be among young, where affinities are still pretty malleable and plain and simple ignorance IS a problem (that's why we send them to school). Aside from that we don't stand to win over many listeners or contributors through awareness-raising. At least in my opinion.

Going Digital: Another suggestion conveyed to me in conversation is that if we are going to compete with Pandora, we should consider making our service more like theirs. That is we should consider making what we do more like a personally-customizable music service rather than a mass-media service. A couple of objections spring to mind on this. First is I, personally, don't care to be in the business of providing people with solipsistic music experiences. Good as those experiences might be in themselves. I'm in radio because I like the idea of shared experiences. I think of mass media as a way of creating a certain sense of community. Personalization is the opposite of that, I think. Second, I don't think the radio station has any competitive edge at all in going against Pandora and like services. We might as well just leave it to them rather than make a half-baked attempt to duplicate their service.

And of course, we are, to some degree already moving in that direction a bit--through streaming and the podcast, etc. But the core live radio service is still central, and I, for one, think it should remain so.

When I mention new digital media services like Pandora as our new competition, I don't mean that we need to be like them. What I mean is that we need to recognize that they are competing for (and winning) some of the mental real-estate we used to claim with our listeners (namely access to obscure music & music discovery). And we have to respond to that. Not necessarily or not just by fighting harder for that same mental landscape, but by using what we do well to advance a different set of claims . . . more in the next bit hopefully later today.