Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s top music outlet, takes a look at CMJ’s failing publication and the significance of college radio in 2017
College Music Journal (CMJ) has been having a rough few
years. The music publication has been embroiled in financial issues and
lawsuits for nearly 10 years. For the first time in 35 years, the publication’s
CMJ Music Marathon festival was not produced. Now, after not updating their
website since December, Pitchfork
is reporting that CMJ has not published or sent out their music charts in two
weeks.
According to Pitchfork, CMJ has cited the departure of sole
full-time employee Lisa Hresko and the scramble to restructure as the reason
for the missing charts. But after two emails that were sent out to college
radio promoters (which Pitchfork obtained), there are still no charts.
Over the course of its 40+ year history, CMJ became a highly
useful resource to the burgeoning college radio scene. After all, in the 1980s
and 1990s, there weren’t many other ways underground artists could get heard by
a wider audience. Originally a physical magazine, CMJ went completely online in
2009, but still collected statistics from stations to compile their weekly
charts of the top songs being played on college radio. In 1980, CMJ launched
the Music Marathon, which brought new artists to New York while providing
insightful lectures and panels on changing trends in the music industry.
This discussion of CMJ’s downfall has also been bringing up
discussions of the role of college radio in our current age of technological
advancement. While CMJ was getting feedback from more than 500 stations just a
few years ago, it was down to less
than half that in 2016. Even more troubling, some colleges are selling their
stations to bigger entities, like NPR, because a) they aren’t getting enough
listeners and b) they cost too much money to run. Just this week, Northern
Kentucky University’s WNKU became the latest casualty, reporting that they
were in talks to sell the station to a religious broadcasting company.
It’s easy to see why college radio could be suffering on the
music discovery front. Why turn on a crackly radio with people telling you what
to listen to when you could just go on your phone and connect to the internet
where you can find and listen to pretty much anything you want, whenever you
want it? Streaming services, as well as sites like Soundcloud and Bandcamp,
which allow unsigned artists to stream and sell their music themselves, are
more popular and readily available than ever (just look at Chance the Rapper).
It doesn’t seem like college radio as a discovery engine would be as relevant.
But many beg to differ. In a long-form
piece written and published on Pitchfork earlier this month, Kevin Lozano
mentions how radio is still a major player in what people hear and can still
break new bands. More than half of people who drive listen to terrestrial radio
in their cars. That’s why small labels still focus on college radio as one of
their main avenues of promotion; it is a way to get new music out and “rise to
the top organically.” New lower power FM frequencies are also giving stations
that once had to give up their air space a chance to go back on the airwaves.
Lozano goes even further. Quoting former president Barak
Obama’s 2013 South by Southwest speech, he mentions how college radio gives
students an outlet to voice their opinions and foster a sense of creativity and
community. Because of this, college radio will continue to stay relevant.
While college radio may no longer be the top place to
discover new music, it still holds an important spot in breaking artists and
getting them to a larger audience, as well as fostering creativity and intellectual
communities. It has been hard to quantify the impact of radio lately with one
of its biggest proponents, CMJ, struggling to stay afloat. But know that even
without the charts and music festival that have become a yardstick for testing
the impact of up-and-coming artists and discovering others still too
underground to discuss yet, the world of college radio will be just fine.
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