Slashdot Mirror

I've been listening to triplej for about 20 years and as usual there are plenty of songs I do not recognize in the list. That is part of the deal with triplej, no comfort zone of classics and far more new music than you can follow.

There will be a few teeny pop songs in the list but if you listen to a few, you'll see that the range is far more diverse and none of the usual pop artists.

Over the past few years triplej has been doing a lot of work to foster local music, their site http://www.triplejunearthed.com/ is great and you can legally download plenty of good music.

I guess one day my music tastes will crystallize and I'll join the host of others who think that music was best in year X (usually when they were a teenager). I'll fight that as long as I can.

One approach that might work is to focus instead on newcomers - all the people with a band practicing in the garage or writing music in their bedroom.

We have a great place here in Australia for this - http://www.triplejunearthed.com/ . It has launched the career of many artists.

It is provided by the ABC, our state-owned media broadcaster, as part of their youth radio network Triple J. It is a fantastic service. I've gotten a lot of free music from them and exposure to really awesome bands.

Hey Canada, I don't hear music companies down here in Australia jumping up and down complaining about commercial-free ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission)-broadcast radio services such as http://abc.net.au/triplej, the ABC's commercial-free music video program http://abc.net.au/rage or free on-line streaming services such as http://triplejunearthed.com/.

There are also a number of 'community' radio stations in Australia that have blanket licenses to permit them to broadcast copyright work as they please. None of these have had a particularly negative effect on the Australian music industry -- quite the contrary, you have a much better chance in Australia as an independent musician getting your music heard than in Canada or the US, and this has arguably led to the much more dynamic and thriving music culture in Australia.

The for-profit labels seem content to wait for new artists to become known through these non-commercial, ABC-funded arenas -- Triple J, rage and so forth -- then approach them for commercial distribution and concert promotion. Many big international Australian acts gained their start this way.

Maybe the Canadian music labels need to look down under, and stop being dinosaurs. Having the public broadcaster promote music has contributed heavily to Australia becoming the international force in music that it is today.
 

I did read some good points in your post before I realised that you seem to be discussing a problem which has already been solved, 'though is not yet widespread.

If you were to investigate Triple J Unearthed, you would find a myriad of songs by new artists. There, people who do have the time and inclination listen to the songs, rate and review them. Also, the station employs people to listed to every uploaded song to find the oats in the chaff: the best end up on the radio, win competitions and get exposure for possible signing.

The other thing to note, most of the people using this system listen to the associated station. I generally like the station because it mostly plays songs I have never heard before, and I would much rather hear a crap song once than the same three 'smashes' from the 'eighties played on repeat every time I get in the car. Not that I particularly dislike those songs, I just don't want to hear them all the time.

You seem to presume that the jobs of the labels won't be done when they're 'out of the picture', when truthfully, those jobs are already being done by multitudes more people with far wider spreads of opinion than some suit behind a 10' mahogany desk.

And then there's Jamendo and Magnatune, where you can generally listen by genre and get a good mix to suit your mood.

Disclosure: I do not work for the ABC, but I do contribute to their funding.

These guys did and do. There is no competition involved, they just want their music to be out there. Hey, they don't even have to pay for hosting, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation does.

Stream away. Better still, visit Triple J or even the catch of the day, where they've even found the best stuff for you.

There's also an annual "Triple J Unearthed CD" which is a compiliation of the top ten listeners' choices for the year. Unearthed #4 contains (track 3) Relapse by Endorphin. I loved it the moment I heard it. On the the strength of that one home-made track, when he brought out an album (yes he fell into the hands of the recording industry and is now making that pittance in royalties The Industry likes to refer to as "Big Money"), I bought it. That Unearthed entry was created using two walkmans in his bedroom.

Keep spending, mate, there are others who are simply getting on with it.

In Australia we have projects like Triple J Unearthed which are funded by the government through the Australia Council for the Arts.

Triple J is the government funded national youth broadcaster, Unearthed has been running since 1995 and has discovered bands and artists such as Missy Higgins, Unpaid Debt, The Bumblebeez, Sick Puppies, Endorphin, Killing Heidi, and Grinspoon. And if you haven't heard of any of these, you might have heard of Silverchair.

Give some Aussie music a go and stream or download it.

In Australia we have projects like Triple J Unearthed which are funded by the government through the Australia Council for the Arts.

Triple J is the government funded national youth broadcaster, Unearthed has been running since 1995 and has discovered bands and artists such as Missy Higgins, Unpaid Debt, The Bumblebeez, Sick Puppies, Endorphin, Killing Heidi, and Grinspoon. And if you haven't heard of any of these, you might have heard of Silverchair.

Give some Aussie music a go and stream or download it.

I don't know too much about the rest of the world, but for new australian music downloads I go to

http://www.triplejunearthed.com/

and

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/listen/mp3s.htm

Both sites are run by the local government (read tapayer) funded youth network radio station and aussie music rips the rest of the world to pieces.

Triple J (public youth broadcaster) in Australia have Triple J Unearthed. Unsigned bands can upload their tracks and anyone can download them. DRM free, of course. Listeners can review and rate the tracks and there are a number of "most popular" charts by genre. A handful of big Aussie acts got their start through the Unearthed programme.

Yeh, that's definitely true, but surely there's enough evidence of the prolific spread of internet memes making instant successes out of random douchebags, which hopefully means that there's hope for some excellent small bands to be able to make a living.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, at the moment the only thing that seems to distinguish "really big bands that everyone knows about" and "small bands yet to get on everyone's radar" is that _at the moment_, it is still the marketing efforts of the labels that are responsible for bringing the former to our attention.

Hopefully once someone figures out how to bring the small bands to the masses we'll see some big improvements. We're doing our part in Australia with the Unearthed programme, backed by Australia's (government-funded) youth radio station, TripleJ (best radio station in the world).

"Radio stations are there for one purpose: to promote signed bands with airplay"

In Australia there is a radio station run by the ABC (Federally funded TV/Radio network) called TripleJ (Wikipedia link). It broadcasts in all the state capitals and in a lot of the more populated regional areas (i.e. is available to the vast majority of the population). A large part of its mandate is to promote local bands, especially unsigned artists, although enough of the airplay time is still devoted to quality signed international acts from the US/UK/elsewhere (And by 'quality' I mean you will hear Tool, Radiohead, Ween, the Chemical Brothers, Underworld, etc, but don't hold your breath waiting to hear Britney Spears or JT) that you don't feel completely cut off from the more commercial international music scene by being a listener.

Through the Unearthed project (Wikipedia, Official site) the station has discovered a huge number of unsigned Australian artists and bands, some of whom have gone on to getting spots on nationally touring festivals like the Big Day Out and signing record contracts as a result of their exposure from being Unearthed winners (Missy Higgins and Grinspoon for example). While probably no Unearthed act has had the same success in the US as bands like Silverchair (Whose first single was recorded by TripleJ) or Crowded House (Yeah, two of the band's members are from NZ, but we like to claim them as an Australian band anyway :)), winning Unearthed definitely gets bands a lot of local success.

So yeah, don't know if you have anything like it in the US, but out here there is at least one station doing as much for unsigned artists as for signed ones.

Maybe they could have a promotion like Triple J Unearthed: http://www.triplejunearthed.com/

Triple J is my favourite radio station; in fact I only have five radio stations programmed into my car radio and they are all Triple J (national radio station so different frequencies for different areas). They play a lot of new music, and promote bands that would have not otherwise gotten popular. They often play songs months before the mainstream finds them. They also play lots of songs no other radio station in the world would play, uncensored! Some information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_J#Effects_on_l ocal_record_companies_and_radio_stations

Yep there is a huge amount of music that the artists want you to download and discuss. The national youth radio station in Australia http://www.triplejunearthed.com/ has set up an database of unsigned artists and their MP3's. People rate, discuss, and if it's good it gets played nationally thr ultimate in peer review. I personally know several artists who use this to get more people to their gigs/ webpages so that they don't have to sign up with the devil. Their work is still copyright, they just choose to share it so more people can hear it - then more people come to the gigs/webpages, more people buy their self produced CD's --- more money to the artist.

Good list - I would also add the following:

Support independent music!

There's a lot of music out there made by artists that are as-yet unsigned or don't want to be signed. The Internet is the best avenue for these people to make money without getting sewn up by a label deal. Check them all out - there's a lot of great stuff out there. Just because it's not from Sony or Universal doesn't mean it's not worth listening to.

(Here in Australia we have something going called TripleJ Unearthed, which is a competition which gets new artists to the attention of everyone (run by TripleJ, the greatest radio station in all the world). Support the artists directly and suddenly they don't need a record label!)