The Industry of Cool and The Spirit of Radio

My family has a thing for radio. I have an uncle who has worked for many years as a DJ, my father had his own small-town radio show for awhile, I ran a small college radio station, and my first real job after college was working in talk radio. I still find the concept eternally fascinating: one person sitting in a room, talking into a system of devices that transmits a signal across the miles.

I actually find radio more impressive than the Internet, because the Internet is made of wires. Radio is made of air. It's in the air right now. Passing through you at this very moment: a car dealership commercial in Spanish, the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," a talk show about camshafts, a weather report, and "Stronger" by Kanye West, among many, many others.

In the early days of music broadcasting, the DJ was the tastemaker. His in-depth knowledge of current music allowed him to select what he thought was the best of the best, and he wanted you to hear it. He controlled a frequency on your radio dial, and for his time slot he had your attention. He presented to you the songs he thought were cool, and this determined what songs topped the charts. For an all-too-brief span of time, this was an elegant arrangement. But it couldn't last; soon there were too many financial cooks in the kitchen and radio playlists essentially became record industry agendas. The industry generally decided what was cool, and spent the necessary money to convince the public to believe it. Thus popular music became, as Lester Bangs termed it, an Industry of Cool.

Today, though, it seems possible that the Industry of Cool may get crushed by its own weight. Given literally thousands of great bands with as many MySpace pages, iTunes, Pandora, Pitchfork, Paste, Spin, and a seemingly endless supply of music blogs...what's a music fan to do? In the words of an MTV writer covering SXSW 2007:

I was struck by how it’s like a microcosm of all the problems the industry is facing now: It’s too big, there’s too much to see out there, you have no idea what’s going to be big, it’s too splintered, there are too many ways of consuming music.

If the Industry of Cool is splintered, how will people know what's cool? If the record industry crumbles, and signs point to yes that it will, who will decide what gets to be heard nationally?

I'm sorry to say I don't know the answer, but I will say I'm excited to be alive to watch the revolution slowly take shape[1]. My secret dream solution goes something like this:

1. The record industry as we know it dies.
2. Without industry promotion, new artists are no longer financially able to achieve nationwide stadium-level success.
3. Radio stations as we know them lose the industry payola and stop having their playlists dictated to them.
4. Radio conglomerates die.
5. Radio stations are sold back to local owners, who, in an effort to keep up with the diverse and niche-oriented Internet, expand their playlists and begin spotlighting local acts (many of which are just as good as today's nationwide crap anyway). The decreased profitability of radio may even necessitate that some stations die and others go non-profit, giving DJ power to volunteers.
   
6. Radio rises again.

It's a long shot, I readily admit. But I think it's within the realm of possibility. The Internet is allowing so much to happen at a local level via neighborhood and music scene blogs; radio could take advantage of that. In the absence of industry support, it would seem the best course of action for radio stations is to go back to being locally focused.

Or maybe radio will just die out completely. I suspect, though, that there are enough people like my family who are drawn to radio for its own sake. Maybe there are enough people out there who can't live without their radio.

1.) One thing is for sure, given that MTV has essentially abdicated its role as a music channel, this revolution will most certainly not be televised.