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EMI has been pitching the possibility of selling its entire music collection to the public in MP3 form ...

EMI, which is the world's largest independent music company, reported revenue of £867.9m and £62.7m profit for the six months ending 30 September last year.

Anyone who buys a badge to the CMJ Music Marathon gets free entry to DigitalLife. If you're into music & electronics, this could be the ticket of the season.

Dr. Dobbs - trends in software development
Tape Op - recording for the rest of us, although biased against digital tech

For music, I like:
CMJ New Music Monthly - only for the included CD
Revolver - heavy music, sometimes misogynistic though
Bandoppler - for reviews of other music

I also like British magazines like Future Music and Sound On Sound. But they're too expensive for subscriptions in the USA. When I'm at the bookstore, I like to flip through Artforum and I.D.

Most likely, that was just to report to CMJ or somesuch reporting service which helps to keep track of what music is getting played, and not too much more than that.

At the station where I work, I play anything I like, and tell the DJs that work "under" me to do the same, as long as it's not going to get us sued.

Record labels send us stuff for free--they're essentially begging us to play their material, as they know that we're not as easily bought as oh, say, Clear Channel and company.

virtually all music other than your local garage bands are covered by ASCAP

Of course there is no way to quantify this number, but among those in the music department of my college radio station, we figure mainstream music makes up less than 1% of all music, and probably much less. This is judging from the hundreds of CDs we receive each month, a single handful of which might be ASCAP covered. Most of the popular music you will see topping the CMJ charts isn't ASCAP either.

Radio is still a relevant technology, and will probably remain relevant for a long period of time. This is a simplistic article, and it talks about music and image being inseperatable, and goes on about the Music Industry only. It assumes that the only purpose of the radio is to play records, and that information can't be put on the radio. (Of course, it's written by MSNBC, so what do you expect).

Community Radio, on the other hand, is extremely important, since it serves to tie the community together and to play music and ideas not normally heard by the mainstream media. Similarly Campus-based Community Radio stations in Canada also live by this mandate. (College Stations to the US are also like this to a much, MUCH lesser degree.)

What's really interesting is what CMJ was going on about for their yearly conference about there being a job in "the business" when you graduate at their yearly conference for Music Directors at Campus station. It seems that the only thing that will die with radio is the radio promoters, since stations will just use file sharing to get the tracks they need anyway, top 40 or not, since they already pay the RIAA their tax.

Sites like Epitonic and Parasol have steaming audio and are not 'radio' per se. Parasol is a distributor and Epitonic is a site like MP3.com but with a more condensed selection of signed indie artists (not the myriad of DIY stuff that might be fun to wade through at MP3.com, but since you said google was dense, then this is a valid comment). Epitonic's radio stream is cool because you can listen to what they have programmed or 'walk through' genre, labels etc or create a playlist for the broadcast.

Allmusic is very good at guiding yo to stuff you might like. By checking roots, influences, followers and similar artist of an act that you like you might stumble on some new stuff.

Weblogs, forums... of course.

Then there is the old reliable. Magzines, college radio and record store clerks.

Some of my favorite mags: Magnet, Wire, Signal to Noise and CMJ.

You must have some local college stations... some of them do internet streaming if there is none near you. Local to me (Northampton, MA) there is WAMH and WMUA.

There are a few great record stores that send out new release emails of obscure titles. Also, they have employee lists. I have bought many titles without listen by looking at the employee lists. If 10 people that work in the store say it is great, then it more than likely is. Here are two great stores on each coast: Forced Exposure in Boston (click on "Employee Top 10") & Aquarius Records in San Fran (click on "Favorites" for each employee)... for both sites, sign up for the email updates for weekly new releases.

If anyone is into Free Jazz, check out my site.

a great idea. also please be advised that some of the best rated college stations do webcasts as well.

(i guess my west coast prejudices are showing- i'm sure there's great ones on the east coast and midwest, etc as well)

First I should mention that I think well-roundedness is vital to what one does with his technical knowledge, but is often cast aside as foolish and irrelevent by many in the tech industry.

Although the following doesn't answer your specific question, it responds to your general situation. I too am a commuting student, yet I am almost greatful for the commute. It provides me a time during which I can enjoy good music and catch up on news, social commentary, and american culture.

By good music, I mean independent, eclectic music, not the manufactured 2-dimensional garbage that's on every commercial radio station. Check out your college radio station. Also Crud Music Magazine and College Music Journal are both pretty good at identifying intelligent interesting music in the indie scene. The benefit of intelligent music is in terms of social education: enriching your knowledge of humanity and culture. Which of course, is very relevent when considering how you want to use your degree once you've graduated. Also, it sets you apart from the multitudes of geeks that <strikeout>don't understand</strikeout> "cannot be bothered with" culture.

Regarding talk/news radio, you should try listening to NPR. You might not agree with their website linking policies, but in general, they provide a free, high quality service.

<plug type="shameless">And if you live in L.A., you should check out KCRW. I haven't changed my radio dial since discovering them more than 2 years ago.</plug>

Taking this a step further, don't forget about the campus radio stations themselves. The CMJ sourcebook is chock full of station addresses and music directors names.

Hell, send a copy to my alma mater radio station. Drop me a line via the Chemical Wonderland link and I'd be more than happy to help.

Campus Radio Stations are just as easily targeted to payola as anyone else (both in Canada and the US). What's worse is that Campus Stations subscribe to the Campus Music Journal's New Music Report, which is a Music Industry Magazine. This is where the whole formula behind "college first, corporate next" comes from, especially when it comes to alternative rock (largely in part by the success of Nirvana).

Seeing that I currently work at a small Campus Station in Canada, I can tell you the major differences between campus radio North of the border is that revenues of these stations are traditionally much less, and there isn't a station that is really much interest to CMJ. CMJ has a rating system for stations, where 1 is the LPFM college stations and 5 stations are the stations found at large college stations in the US. The largest stations in Canada are still only a 4 and the average campus station in Canada is a 2.

The Canadian Music Industry (If you can call it that, usually US success has to be obtained before anything else happens) has its own journals to determine what should be played, and payola happens here too. For example, to play and chart the latest Strokes CD (Which I thought sucked!) they sent us a ton of promo stuff to try and woo us and claimed to be my friend. The Strokes did get airplay because someone liked them, but all the extra crap wasn't necessary.

Of course, if you don't believe me about how the industry is invading everything but the pirate radio stations out on the fringe, check out A Rancid Amoeba's website and read both "Some of your friends are already this fucked" and "Bubba: The College Radio Music Director Webzine".

Radio in the US doesn't completely suck though. I heard that the Pacifica Network has recently solved some of their board troubles and should be back to bring good radio to the US. Also, I should also point out that CBC in Canada is government owned and rarely bends to the Music Industry rules. I recommend checking out 120seconds.com and CBC Radio 3.

As the former general manager of a college radio station, I'd like to say that you're largely wrong. Take a look at the current college radio top 20 from CMJ. I count one major-label record, and two records on "boutique" labels affiliated with majors. Most college radio is not shitty pre-ClearChannel crap. Most of it is really good.

This is all you need to know: CMJ

...Don't give me this crap about how you know "this guy who is a friend of a friend who has a garage band that uses Napster to distribute his music."...

Interesting. We were at a studio yesterday, shopping for a place to do some demo recording, and this is (in effect) what we heard from the studio. That a few bands recording demos there have been "doing well at MP3.com", which in turn trickles into the napster networks.

I do agree that the commercial stuff has no business flying that free without compensation, but believe it or not, some people do actually use it to swap "garage band" works.

Some thoughts to cast in the pot. I haven't bought a commercial single-artist CD in months. I do however buy CMJ magazine+sampler-CD on a regular basis. A subscription-based napster network following this model would interest me.

When I hear a single I like, I buy the CD. However, since I'd rather buy direct from the artist, make sure they're the ones getting the money, I hunt for their website and order from them.

Recently, I decided to buy Vanessa's latest album (special Internet-edition, direct from them). I placed the order, then thought to myself, since they're receiving the order themselves, why not ask her to autograph it before shipping?

It arrived last week, day after my birthday. :-)

There are enough other magazines out there putting free demos of games and the like with their paper product, why doesn't a magazine like Linux Journal do the same?

I buy CMJ New Music every month just for the included mix CD; I'd do the same for something like Linux Journal.

Thoughts?