For about the last year or so I’ve been of the mind that Internet Radio is going to be slowly taking over where Terrestrial and even Satellite radio have and will come up short. With the continuing availability of mobile WiFi, iPhones, hotspots, etc., it won’t be long before the Internet will be the preferred delivery method for music both in the home and in your car. Cars already come with hard drives installed, hookups for your iPod/iPhone. Its just one more small step until streaming media will be accessible on the move. Hence this blog and what I’m trying to build with it. I fell like for once in my life I’m in the right place at the right time instead of 6 months behind the curve.
This report shows that this past year, for the first time Internet Radio is closing in on AM/FM in listenership and that is music to my ears.
Subsoniq was a show on Sirius Backspin channel that I used to listen to fairly frequently on Tuesday nights. They featured current artists that still produced hip hop both in its classic form and in a more progressive melodic form. They’d also get interviews with some greats in the industry – their interview with De La Soul was absolutely riveting to me and although I didn’t mention them by name in my blogpost about refocusing my DJ career, the show’s existence did play a part in it.
The show was recently canceled but to their credit the guys haven’t given up and are set to relaunch their show on Thursday this week. I’m adding them permanently to the Links section here. If you are a fan of real hip hop on any level, check these cats out because they know what they’re talking about.
Click here to follow them on Twitter.
March 5
The Re-energization of a DJI’ve been DJing now for over a decade. The more I say that out loud the more astonishing it seems because I can remember when DJing and beat mixing was all that I wanted to do… and I was horrible at it. I couldn’t mix two songs together if you spotted me the first 8 beats. After a while I became so frustrated that I contemplated giving it up completely. Sure I was competent with my tables but I wasn’t nearly as good as I wanted. I had a gig at AM 930 for a while but that paid squat, it was a news and sports station and most of my work was done on the board (including one heartbreaking night in 1997 when a certain closer failed to get the last two outs of a certain game 7) without ever cracking the mic. I just wasn’t feeling it anymore.
I quit the radio station and started teaching classes on MS Office for a training company in Parma. One of my students and I were talking about music during a break when he informed me that he was a DJ at the 100th Bomb Group. This guy was in his late 40s and seemed to know what he was talking about so it had sparked my interest once again. With this new found energy I began practicing again, but this time with more focus and a sense of purpose – something I didn’t have previously. The training company actually hired this student to be my new admissions director so we developed a pretty solid friendship, which only motivated me more. I finally had a contact that I was certain over time would help me get where I wanted to be.