Musical Life Beyond Corporate Radio

It used to be that commercial radio stations provided listeners with a wide variety of music. Local bands could get on local stations to build a following. Anyone driving on a cross-country trip could count on being able to listen to one station after another, creating a national mosaic of local and regional music. No more.

Corporate control of the music industry has inexorably taken its toll. The Buggles famously sang that "video killed the radio star," but BMI, Sony, Clear Channel and others did the job far better than MTV ever could. These days, it seems like every radio station in America is owned by a super-conglomerate, and they all play the very same thing.

Whether you're in a big city or a small town, it doesn't matter how much you spin the dial, you hear the same playlists interrupted by the same inane banter and the same endless commercials, all piped in from somewhere else. The corporate-radio version of "variety" means rotating between one prefabricated, focus-group-tested, guaranteed-to-sell "pop" group and another. Anything outside this safe, marketable formula is barred from the airwaves, leading to music which sounds like it was all written by the same five people all working out of the same corporate boardroom.

So what can you do besides throw your radio out the window? Fortunately, like the last spark that keeps a flame alive, there are still a few excellent independent stations out there. Going days or even weeks at a time without repeating a single song, they play music by people you've never heard of and which makes the stuff aired by your local Clear Channel affiliate sound like rancid crap. And even if you don't live locally, they broadcast on the Internet.

While there are other good ones, here are the top five stations I listen to when the boredom of corporate radio starts killing off too many brain cells:

• Broadcasting out of a 12-by-12 shack in Talkeetna, Alaska, the Internet-only Whole Wheat Radio features a eclectic playlist with classical, jazz, folk and everything in between. You almost never hear commercial artists, but they do have the occasional cover song.
• The NPR-affiliated station The Current broadcasts from the Twin Cities of Minnesota with a heavy emphasis on local bands.
• With harder music than WWR or The Current, KEXP comes from Seattle, the home of grunge rock, bringing a mix of established music and up-and-comers.
• WUMB, an all-folk station in Boston, features mostly established folk artists from Pete Seeger to Tracy Chapman, but has new artists as well.
• Another NPR station, this one in Philadelphia, WXPN mostly plays the sort of classic rock overlooked by corporate "classic rock" stations, but also gives significant airplay to local musicians.

So switch off that Top 40 station and tune in, and rediscover what really good music radio is like. Happy listening!