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Powered By Love: Niche Music in
the New Millennium
by Stephen Hill
If you read Ambient Visions,
there's a better than average chance that you are also a Public
Radio listener. You probably fit comfortably into a group that is now
being called the "cultural creatives." You are vitally
interested in personal growth and the cultural and media products and
services that sustain it. You follow your own interests, and you're
not deterred if others don't come along. You have confidence in your
own tastes and ability to learn. You steer your own ship through life
on a journey of exploration - and chances are you also enjoy music,
especially music that supports your personal evolution.
I'm a music producer who has made a career
exploring music that falls outside of the mainstream; music that
supported my personal journey, and in time, the journeys of many
others. Back in 1973 I innocently started a local late-night radio
music program in Berkeley,CA. I discovered I'm the slow, steady type;
to my astonishment, 28 years later I'm still doing it - it's called HEARTS
of SPACE.
A BIT OF HISTORY
After ten years as a local show, the program went
national in 1983 via the NPR satellite. Our audience exploded, and
within two years we could be heard on over 200 public radio stations
nationwide. What we were doing didn't have a name and didn't fit into
any category, but people liked it. When the record decided to call it
New Age Music in 1986, Hearts of Space was already well
established and our audience grew even larger. We still hear from
listeners who discovered the show in those days and have fond
memories of the early music and the programs we created. We've been
amazed by the response from all kinds of people, and learned not to
generalize too much about our audience, which includes all ages and
levels of society from nice little old ladies to (I swear...) Charlie
Manson. One of my all time favorites is: "Even though I am a
redneck, I enjoy your music."
In the early years I was just having fun with my
radio hobby and making it up as I went along, but I soon discovered
that the music that appealed to me and my listeners had a long history.
I was originally drawn to electronic space music and other high-tech
explorations, but underneath the patch cords I discovered the
centuries-old tradition of contemplative sound. Today our mission
statement is down to four words: contemplative music, broadly
defined. It's one that can encompass acappella sacred choral music a
thousand years old, trancey tribal sounds, electronic meditations,
and cutting edge fusions.
Ignoring the Orwellian overtones and without much
thought, in 1984 my original partner Anna Turner and I started a
small record label to release some of the fine independent music we
were broadcasting. Later, under the capable management of my wife
Leyla Rudhyar Hill, that casual decision grew into a group of five
labels, 22 employees, and a catalog of over 140 releases until we
sold the record company in 2001. We were very fortunate with our
choices, and during the Celtic music boom of the 90's we had a big
hit with our "Celtic Twilight" compilations.
I still produce new albums for the label, which is like all the fun
and almost none of the hard part.
NICHE AND MAINSTREAM
As a result of these experiences, I've had a lot
of time to reflect on the differences between the music that I've
been working with for the last 30 years and the 'mainstream' genres -
pop, rock, rap, and country. From the beginning, 99% of the music I
was playing on the radio and releasing on the record label fell
outside of these genres. Like most people in the independent side of
the music business, we inhabited what are called the niche genres.
Public radio was also a niche medium. Commercial
radio in the 1970s and 80s was abandoning classical music and jazz,
which had become the dominant music formats on NPR stations. But
there was also a diverse, healthy mix of niche music on public radio: Sean
Barlow's "Afropop" - an early harbinger
of the World Music trend, Fiona Ritchie's delightful "The
Thistle & Shamrock" - covering the Celtic
tradition, Felix Hernandez' "BluesStage,"
Latin "Club del Sol" and R&B "Rhythm
Revue" programming, and Hearts of Space -
bringing together space-creating and contemplative music from many
cultures and traditions; plus hundreds of local niche music shows
covering everything from pipe organ to polka.
All niche music regardless of style or content
has one thing in common: it's all something that relatively small
numbers of people really, truly, love. And around these loves they
build lifestyles, schedules, rituals, and relationships.
If you were an active fan of one of these niche
music genres in the last 30 years, you learned to scour the broadcast
schedules and back bins of record stores looking for your fix. You
might get an hour a week of airtime if you lived near a good station,
maybe two if you were lucky. It was hit and miss. When you found an
album in a record store, you grabbed it, because you knew that it
wouldn't be there forever. You subscribed to newsletters, signed up
for mailing lists and did the best you could to find out about your
favorite artists and genres. It was a lot of work, but if you cared
you enjoyed the challenge and took pleasure in it.
Statistically, music listening decreases as
people age. They settle for the least disagreeable radio format, buy
a few favorite CDs a year, and rely on word of mouth or television to
find out about new artists. (It's a fact that new age chanteuse Enya
became a big star when her music was used in a television commercial,
and Yanni became a household word after appearing on Oprah.)
But most people simply give up. Trying to keep up
an active interest in any kind of niche music takes time and effort.
As people get older, the responsibilities of jobs and families take
over their disposable time budget, if not their disposable income. As
a result, the vast majority of active music buyers are under 30, and
most radio listeners, especially public radio listeners, are 30 and
older -- often much older.
As a contemplative music producer I'm always
looking for ways to sustain a relationship to music that feeds the
hearts and souls of people at every age and level of interest. For
years I did this in public radio and independent music; it was never
particularly easy or lucrative, but during the past few years a
series of upheavals in the record industry and mounting pressures on
public radio stations to "focus" and "format"
their programming have brought increasingly difficult challenges.
Consolidation of these businesses is changing the rules and making it
much more difficult for niche companies, producers, and artists to
reach their audiences. In fact, the stability of the whole system is
in question and the odds are you will not be finding niche music in
mainstream record stores or hearing it on local radio in the future.
All media industries depend on technology, which
does not stand still. Like many other music producers, I saw a
glimmer of hope in the Internet and the new technologies of "streaming"
and "downloading" music. You've heard of the furor
over Napster and MP3.com, and you may have heard about Real Player
and Windows Media Player - free software that enables your computer
to play music from web sites. During the internet boom years, despite
uncertainty over rights issues and high entry and operating costs,
this was a landscape filled with big dreams, big illusions and big
players - almost all of whom are now history! These folks were
looking for big money and big audiences quickly, and for many reasons
it just didn't work.
But underneath all the frontier hubbub I sensed
the potential for a small niche providers to connect with their
audiences in a meaningful and cost-effective way. Following this
intuition, I spent two years researching the possibilities. It was
confusing (even Enron was trying to get into the business!) and
occasionally discouraging, but we persevered and in August, 2001, we
successfully launched our first online music service: The Hearts
of Space Archive.
HEARTS
OF SPACE via SATELLITE and INTERNET
We are using these new technologies to get our
music to listeners. Where we previously were limited to public radio
and operating as an independent record label, we have now expanded
our programming to XM Satellite radio nationwide (AudioVisions
Channel 103), and an exciting new subscription-based online service
that gives our listeners anytime, anywhere access to our entire 600+
program archive of radio programming going back to 1983!
For rural listeners, underserved urbanites who
have been starved for airtime, and for our core fans who have longed
for 'anytime, anywhere' access to current and past programs, this is
a dream come true. We have one subscriber who lives in the deep
northwoods of Wisconsin. He uses a generator to power a satellite
internet connection so he and his moose friends can listen to the HOS
Archive!
Streaming audio is only about seven years old.
Conceived as a way to offer users immediate access to audio files
over the internet rather than forcing a lengthy wait for a download,
streaming had three other benefits that were not immediately obvious.
First and most significant, it enables
listening-on-demand. This may not sound like much to fans of pop,
rock, and rap who can get it 24 hours a day, but for niche music
audiences it's nothing short of a revolution. If you have odd,
singular, or discriminating taste in music, you have always had to
wait for a few crumbs at off hours. From now on you can decide what
you want to hear, when, and how much.
Second, since the music is played as it is being
transferred and not saved, unlike downloads there is none of the
computer overhead needed to manage, file, label, copy or backup huge
audio files. All the functionality is built into the web interface of
the streaming service you choose, and it works anywhere you have an
internet connection. Just sign in and click to listen.
Finally, the internet can support an infinite
number of niche "stations," ending the channel
scarcity problem for good.
RESURRECTING MEDIA
For the Hearts of Space Archive, we designed an
intuitive interface that lists the programs by number, title, date,
description, and genre classification.
(You can see it at http://listen.hos.com).
It's so easy to use, there's no manual. If you
can use a web browser, you can figure it out in less than two minutes.
Sounds too good to be true. Is there a downside?
Right now there are two.
First, the current costs of running a legal
streaming service (mainly bandwidth charges, transaction processing,
and royalties) mean subscription costs are still too high for some
people. To deal with this, we've created several different access
plans with a range of prices. But everyone expects the cost to
decline in the next few years as niche subscription services become
more common.
Second, streaming services are not portable like
normal radio, or like downloads after you take the trouble to
transfer them to a portable electronic music player. This is a
deal-breaker for many commuters or people who spend a lot of time
travelling. Wireless internet service will overcome this problem
eventually. In the meantime, heavy portable music users may find
downloads a better solution, or will just stick to CDs.
ACCESS and CHOICE
But for niche music fans, the world is already
becoming a friendlier place, with increasing choices and easier
access to the music that is truly meaningful to them. So while you
may still support your local public radio station, cable or satellite
provider, you can also have one or more subscriptions to wide and
deep online services that represent your most cherished affinities
and affections - the kind of choices that define who you are.
Our streaming service has not only provided more
flexible way to deliver music to our audience - it has given us a
fresh opportunity to interact directly with our listeners.
Fortunately, our subscribers have been very satisfied with the
performance and quality of the service, and have provided a constant
stream of praise! And thanks to email, I find myself
communicating directly with listeners more than ever before, which is
a deeply gratifying experience. How could it not? After
all&ldots;niche media is powered by love.
:: SH
We invite you to stream four free hours of Hearts
of Space on line at http://listen.hos.com |
