The Virtual Reality Is, It Is Time To Make A Difference

The internet has exploded in less than two decades it has gone from being a place where you pay a very high amount of money to access a limited amount of information online through only one website and whoever they decided to tap into. Today, for the most part we enjoy, in most parts of the world, unlimited access to music streaming online, news, blogs, social media, travel reservation sites and much more. Internet radio stations have sprung up, web series are the rage and magazines like this one established themselves (Riveting Riffs Magazine nine years ago). Considering that a very small percentage of musicians and singers are ever heard on commercial radio and even a smaller percentage are interviewed for radio, television, newspaper and magazines, one would have thought that the massive landscape of our virtual society would have allowed for much more exposure for independent artists, filmmakers and emerging actors. What is particularly troubling is that is not how the virtual world of entertainment is unfolding.

Yahoo and Google, to name two large corporations have been buying up a plethora of social media and new media companies to shape them in their own image. Internet radio stations, which were presented with an opportunity to make a real difference and take us back to the days when local radio stations called the shots concerning what songs were played, has for the most part failed us.  Far too often radio station hosts seem to be individuals who are merely acting out some unfulfilled fantasy of being on air and their program content is indistinguishable from any commercial radio station that is on the airwaves.  We prefer the models employed by two individuals that we know personally Rick Wrigley who owns Our Generation Radio and broadcasts from Columbia, South Carolina and Mike Lidskin the host of Twirl Radio, broadcasting from Sacramento, California on a publically owned radio station.  Both gentlemen play a good mix of independent artists and those who are more familiar to the listeners.  Our Generation Radio operates 24 hours each day and 7 days per week.  Some of that time is automated, but for the most part the station has live DJs, most of whom have had professional careers in some aspect of the music industry either as performers or on air personalities or both, including Rick Wrigley who recently celebrated his fiftieth year in radio. Wrigley also has been a background singer and played the trumpet.  The programming for the individual shows is left up to the DJs and features an assortment of mainstream artists and quality independent musicians and singers. Mike Lidskin’s show follows a similar format and provides a voice for quality artists such as, The Handcuffs out of Chicago, Throwback Suburbia out of Portland and Janelle Sadler from Los Angeles. Lidskin who has always been fond of Rock music, also features quality interviews with both established artists and emerging artists.  Both Wrigley and Lidskin use social media to drive more listeners to their stations and to engage them during their shows with online chat rooms.  If you like, it is the virtual version of the listener call-in show.

We need more radio station owners who empower their people to look for and recognize quality, alternative music. If you look at a playlist for any major commercial radio station in North America and I am told it is the same more much of Europe and Australia, as well, then you will find that the same artists’ names appear over and over and over again. Payola was supposed to have been addressed in America in the 1950s, a time when record companies routinely bribed radio stations and DJs to play certain songs. Alan Freed and Dick Clark were two who were investigated, but by no means were they the only ones that the scandal touched. A few years ago, while asked to be a guest panelist at one of Canada’s largest music events, some industry officials openly talked about the “cost” of getting a single song on radio today in the United States and they were not talking about the cost of marketing and production.  Often this magazine is asked about artists that we interview and thanked for exposing people to good music that is new to them and that they would not have known about otherwise.  Riveting Riffs Magazine also endeavors to strike a balance by interviewing established artists and quality emerging artists.

The internet has quality filmmakers and actors who are developing new web series, such as actress, producer, director Debrianna Mansini  (Crazy Heart, The Lying Game) from Santa Fe, New Mexico and Sheree J. Wilson (Walker Texas Ranger and Dallas). These are just two of the outstanding creators of quality web based series and there are many more.  People in North America are cancelling their cable television subscriptions in droves, so what more encouragement do we need. Hello, corporate America, show us something radically different, like courage and creativity and sponsor some of these series and purchase advertising.

A recent survey by Nielsen revealed that 31% of all people who listen to music streaming through the internet, purchased music and 25% of those purchased their music while listening to a song online. The same report indicated that 74% of music streamers feel more favorable to brands that engage them through music giveaways, sweepstakes and sponsorships.  There is an opportunity for internet radio stations to gain a solid financial foothold through advertising and at the same time establish a true venue for independent artists.

Independent artists and here we are not talking about people who God bless their hearts want to sing and play, but simply should only be listened to in the comfort of their own homes, but we are talking about the literally thousands of quality artists worldwide, they deserve to be heard. They also should be presented with the same opportunities as everyone else enjoys to earn a good living doing something that they feel passionate about. When you gather tens and hundreds and a few thousand followers, connections, listeners and buyers of your music or viewers to your web series here and there, before you know you have a whole lot of people dialed in. It is been our experience that those fans represent a more solid and reliable core of fans than those who are more fickle and easily swayed by trends in the mainstream.

Publications like Riveting Riffs Magazine would not exist if not for the internet and neither would Our Generation Radio or Twirl Radio, so it is time to make a difference and we would like to think that we are changing how people access their entertainment and how quality artists who do not have a big money machine behind them can still have a voice that can be heard.  It is easy to be a “me too,” but it is far more rewarding to blaze your own trail and to know that you are making a difference in the lives of others.  

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