All we hear is radio ca-ca
Do you know JACK? Sure you do. The ads for Toronto's newest radio station are all over the subway: "Playing what we want" goes the slogan, with the station's logo bursting out of a jack-in-the-box, implying that the station's programmers are out of control! The posters list off what kind of crazy musical combinations you can expect: Tom Petty! Springsteen! The Cars! Meat Loaf! Now, proudly advertising Meat Loaf as a selling point in 2003 may constitute a bold, revolutionary act, but really, JACK FM is just the latest addition to a radio dial littered with microscopically focused niche stations boasting unintentionally ironic slogans that only draw attention to how rigid, formulaic and safe their playlists truly are.
JACK joins the likes of MIX 99 (whose mainstream-rock mix rarely veers more than a centimetre or two from the middle of the road), Q107 (whose definition of "Classic Rock" is flexible enough to include a regular rotation of Saga records), to the worst offender, 102.1 The Edge, whose conception of edgy music begins with the first Our Lady Peace album, ends with the latest Evanescence single, and wedges every last fake brow-pierced, phony-angst nü-metal mook into the sliver between. The irony is that JACK's former incarnation, KISS 92.5, while adhering to a top 40 format, managed to achieve something resembling true variety, bouncing from Eminem to Destiny's Child to Coldplay.
Now, for those of us who routinely seek musical guidance from college radio or CBC's Brave New Waves, and who spend more at Rotate This and Soundscapes than on food and shelter, the relentlessly uninspiring state of commercial radio is a topic as tired as the insincerity of televangelists. But as much as we are loath to admit it, radio is still an important cultural arbiter. For the casual music fan -- someone who buys maybe 10 CDs a year, simply based on liking something they heard on the radio or MuchMusic -- radio airplay represents validation, in the same way hipsters rely on New York or London to tell them what's cool. And more often than not, radio assumes the masses are brain-dead automatons incapable of appreciating anything beyond whatever narrowly defined genre parameters the station's corporate bosses deem most profitable.
The troubled state of the music industry is often portrayed as a battle between greedy major labels and unscrupulous music fans stealing music online. While the former portrays the latter's actions as cold-hearted theft, the question is rarely asked: did radio make them do it? The keys to any industry's growth are brand (in this case, band) loyalty and regeneration through the introduction of new products. The music industry is unique in that it relies on radio (instead of traditional advertising methods) to broadcast new-product information to consumers. Radio is failing them. As a result, those consumers have had to seek alternative outlets -- e.g., Kazaa -- to get that information.
Each week eye receives, on average, 75 CDs submitted for review, ranging from superstar acts like Radiohead down to indie techno artists burning beats off their laptops. This in itself is just a fraction of what's produced every week. Contrary to the music industry's doomsday prognostications, the actual amount of music being created has increased as the means of production (laptops, four-track recorders) and distribution (internet mail order, for example) have become more accessible.
Strangely, radio's response to this proliferation has been to become more conservative, and in doing so, it does a disservice to the music industry. Retro-minded stations like JACK and Q107 do nothing to promote the continued survival of the industry by playing songs we've heard a million times before from records we bought 20 years ago. CanCon regulations, initially devised to expose emerging homegrown talent, can now be satisfied by dropping the Hip or side one of 2112. And given that the careers of most Edge-endorsed alterna-rockers last about as long as their target listener's first sexual encounter, it's not exactly inspiring band loyalty among a new generation of music fans. Anyone remember Eve 6? Mudvayne? No wonder kids today would rather buy videogames.
We're not saying these stations should scrap their Zeppelin records and play nothing but godspeed you! black emperor, but there's no reason a Neil Young fan wouldn't appreciate The Flaming Lips, or a Coldplay fan wouldn't dig the emotional space-pop of Broken Social Scene. There's also no reason one of these stations couldn't just up and transform themselves into a station that could play both The Rolling Stones and The Constantines. As JACK (formerly KISS) and CHUM (formerly sports, formerly rock) have made abundantly clear, it takes very little time or thought to repackage.
Yes, radio is ultimately a business, concerned with the bottom line more than giving unknown artists exposure. But given the limited channels for quality new music on Toronto radio, soon these stations won't have any nostalgia left to sell.-
eye magazine
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