music
Evil Corporations #2: Clear Channel
Fortune has a great article up about Clear Channel radio.
Lowry Mays, the CEO of Clear Channel has clear ideas about what business he’s in. From the article:
“If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn’t be someone from our company,” says Mays, 67. “We’re not in the business of providing news and information. We’re not in the business of providing well-researched music. We’re simply in the business of selling our customers products.”
Personally, I’m extremely disturbed what’s been going on in radio for years. When I left Minnesota in 1994, I left behind my favorite radio station ever- Revolution Radio, Rev105. Founded by one of the Cargill Corp heirs, the station never made money, only breaking even, but they played whatever they wanted. When they said Alternative radio, they meant it. This is the station that introduced me to Semisonic (I won tickets on Rev105 to see Pleasure before they were Semisonic!), Soul Coughing and Ani DiFranco. (Ani DiFranco on the radio. It’s 6 years later and I’ve never heard her on the radio again – though I’ve bought all her CDs).
I moved back to the Twin Cities in January of ’97, and after watching the alternative station in Philadelphia die in ’96, I was subjected to it again. On March 11, ’97, the station flipped over to hard rock – which explains why when I got in my car that night to go home I heard Van Halen playing. Only later was I to find out that ABC / Capital Cities bought out Cargill Communications for $11 million and made them sign a non-compete. Now ABC owns all the rock – classic rock on 92KQ, Alt-rock on 93.7 The Edge, and hard rock / heavy metal on X-105. Through the last 6 years ABC has gone from Hard Rock (X-105), to alt-rock (Zone105), classic alt-rock (Zone105), R&B, and now alt-rock again (Drive105) while turning 93.7 the Edge from alt-rock to heavy metal (93X).
The irony comes in that Drive105 has just started adverstising: Not a Clear Channel radio station! But yet they’re Capital Cities, the #2 radio company in the U.S. Playing popular “alternative” music. To 40 spins a week.
There’s not much left on the web about Rev105, though Google comes up with 4 pages of results, not much works when you follow the links. I’ve found a couple though – here and here. Rev105 will always live in my heart – and my coffee cup! (Which is a Rev105 cup, the only choice for me to drink cofee out of).
Phair thee well
Oh, the new Liz Phair songs are yummy! Her new album comes out 6/24 and those songs rock.
Extraordinary is probably my favorite so far. The 2nd song listed, the one that will be the first release, sounds a little Avril-ish. But we all know Liz was around years before her, and Liz writes her own stuff.
Ogg this!
Saw on Slashdot this morning, some news I’ve been waiting for for quite a while. Ogg support for a portable music player is coming!
About 6 months ago I ripped all my CDs into Vorbis format. Not only is Vorbis a better sounding codec, but it is completely open source. The only two downfalls are: 1. There is no portable player for .ogg files (yet), and 2, most Windows players (WMP, Winamp) have a hard time streaming ogg files, but can play them locally just fine. (Go download Zinf you Windows using people to listen to streaming Vorbis!).
And now this morning, the Xiph foundation announces they have signed a portable deal with Digial Innovations, makers of the Neuros portable player. The Neuros player just started shipping, and Vorbis support is expected in May. It’s a tad pricy, but I’m more than happy to pay for it, and it has a couple of nifty features: 1. It can transmit MP3/Ogg files via FM, so no car adapter is needed, just tune your car to the correct station. 2. Get the 128MB player, and buy the 20GB backpack to expand it. It only costs $30 more to do this than buying the 20GB player outright, and now you can use the 128MB when jogging or cutting the grass, and attach the backpack for the car, in the house, etc.
And last but not least, in the Xiph press release above, they hint at a CDR player coming soon… decisions, decisions!