Don’t fear the songs

I don’t go on about it, but I own one and a half internet radio stations.  I started off helping out and so owning a half, then I added me a whole one of my own.

Not unsurprisingly, my internet radio stations are staffed by very young people who are hungry to play the latest dance derivative to an equally hungry audience.

Very annoyingly, some unknown party seems to be taking the internet output of each station and re-broadcasting them on FM across very large areas of London.  This is completely outside of my control.  I even have very serious copyright warnings on the website of each station asking that they not be re-broadcast in any way.  Yet, day after day, week after week, there are these damn pirate transmitters re-broadcasting, without my permission, my internet radio stations.

I’m sure whoever is doing it just does it because they love the stations so, but they have no connection with us of course.

So, why do they love the stations?

I’d wager it’s partly because of the music played and partly because of the DJs playing it.

Because of this combination, which isn’t rocket science, the radio stations are constantly bombarded by texts and missed calls of appreciation.  There are a phenomenal amount of listeners evidenced in this way.

Let me tell you something.  The love for these stations is very much because the DJs don’t fear the songs.

You see, most other radio stations, especially the commercial radio stations in the UK, fear the songs.  They keep the songs in little clumps all on their own, also keeping the DJ as far away from them as possible.

“Do not go near the songs. Have nothing to do with them or you will be fired!” the frightened yet intimidating commercial radio station bosses bark at their DJs.  This results in the DJ not actually DJing at all.  He just makes little packages of announcements as far away from the songs as possible.

When the songs do play it’s as if the DJ has wandered off somewhere just leaving his iPod plugged in, switched to random.  Sadly, all commercial radio stations sound this baron and disconnected from the songs they play.  They fear the songs.

In contrast, my DJs don’t fear the songs.  The songs play away in a constant stream of relevance.  More often than not they are chosen to carefully follow each other, mixed together so that one song is blended into the next without a jarring join like typically happens on commercial radio stations.

As the songs play, so the DJ will ‘DJ’ them, adding enhancing commentary, sounds, and hype.  Indeed, this is the only way to read through the huge number of ‘shout-outs’ the stations receive.  Interaction, like going for a ‘re-wind’ is something the DJ can happily do if it fits, as is spinning the tune out.

The commercial radio sector, in contrast, forbids the DJ to go anywhere near the songs, let alone actually interact with them.  He must fear the songs and always separate himself from them rather than becoming at one with them.

This fear of the songs is why commercial radio has no young people listening to it.  Instead, they will very happily listen to stations like mine where the DJ is the music and the music is the DJ and all is at one together, and certainly nobody fears the songs.