Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Corporate Radio Really Does Suck

I just took a roadtrip to Chicago to interview for some jobs. It's a 12 hour trip one way. I had no ipod with me because the ipod has been having issues. I tried to burn some mix CDs but after about 8, my laptop decided to stop burning them. We've been selling our CD collection on half.com because we're downsizing so the CDs I had were kind of limited. The mix CDs I made had lots of Rubyfruit artists on them. Lots of Adrienne Pierce, Laura Clapp, Gerty!, Nadine Zahr and a bunch of other people. When I went through bigger cities like Nashville, Lousiville, Indianapolis and while I was in Chicago, I scanned through the stations. They were all pretty much the same. The Urban stations were playing the exact same thing as all the other urban stations, the pop stations were playing the same thing as everyone else, the country stations were playing the same thing and it got really old, really fast. It was the same artists, the same songs. It was sucky. The only station I liked was the Alternative station in Chicago, except for the morning show which I thought was awful. The music they played was a really good mix and I didn't keep hearing the same stuff over and over again. The only bad thing, no women were played at all. On that station, I heard exactly one female artist and that was at 5am the morning I was leaving. They played Luscious Jackson.

So that is why I do Rubyfruit Radio. There are too many awesome female artists who get no attention and who deserve to be heard. It's fine that the pop stations play women, but it's the same women...Pink, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey etc and while I do like some of that music, after a while, it gets a little old. The urban stations are the same way. They just keep playing the same handful of female artists.

I've also decided that "popular" music is not popular because it's good, it's popular because people are listening to what they are told is good and not forming their own opinions. Otherwise, some of the crap I heard on the radio would not be on the radio. The corporate giants are feeding it to us and it sucks.