Indieoma

Anyone living in a big city will have had the experience: you’re bumbling around on the radio waves trying to find your ramalama, when suddenly you come across a sixty year-old Rastadaddy playing ganjaphonic beats and croaking out cryptic mamma-jive over his furry muff. Happens to me all the time.

Despite the introduction of various laws designed to stamp down on this sinister activity (including the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act of 1967 – bye bye Radio Caroline), pirate radio has remained prolific in the UK. There are currently forty six known pirate stations operating in the London area alone, offering everything from the latest in reggae, to the newest in reggae to yet more raggae. And some grime.

Of course, to evade these laws the broadcasters have grown ever more cunning, hiding their transmitters far from the studio locations and cloaking their identities like hunchbacked Dickensian FREAKS.

Still, all is not lost. The arrival of internet radio stations has opened up the radio waves for any complete idiot to broadcast themselves, and indeed a quick scan through its menu reveals a weird variety of options: Radio Free Cannabis, Music For Lovers Through The Night and Death Fucking Metal UK are amongst the stations awaiting you, yes you! Actually, I might look into that last one.

If the feeling takes you, the means to create your own internet radio station can be downloaded quickly and easily (from the child-friendly www.pirateradio.com). Don’t presume that you’re safe from the steel claw of the law just yet though: every time you play a piece of music (even if you’re just streaming it) you should, officially, be paying music copyright fees to the artist.

In 2007, one station known as Hitz Radio became so massively successful (woo!) that Offcom noticed it (ahhhh) and held them to account for a hardcore bill of backdated fees (oowww).

Podcasts are bound by similar rules, which is why the vast majority of them feature people chatting gibberish to each other for as long as is feasibly possible, as opposed to say, playing some decent music.

Still, who needs some geek in a bedroom telling you what to listen to when you can rely on your own inherent geekiness? Apparently the internet is all about you, you, you not them, them, them (or so various annoying channel 4 documentaries keep telling me) and in the digital world, nobody’s trying to sell you anything – it’s you that’s for sale, doofus!

Hence, music streaming programmes like Spotify and Last FM are able to hand you the reigns of your own personal radio show without demanding monthly fees or subscriptions. Having said that, it’s becoming increasingly harder to join Club Spotify: in the golden years, all you had to do was turf up and sign in. Easy! These days however, you have to know some cucumber-sandwhich-eating posh bastard who owns Spotify Premium, beg him to invite you onto the lowly version of the service, then suffer the indignity as he gobs while you’re cowering to pick up his invite. You really are pathetic.

Of course one of the benefits of having Spotify Premium is that you experience a peaceful void in your head where all the advertising used to be. For the rest of us, listening to adverts is an unfortunate side effect of the ‘free’ nature of the service. Every time you create a playlist, its contents are scanned by third party advertisers, and used to generate personalised advertising right up your very arse. In fact, while the advertising is in your arse, it may well notice yesterday’s stir fry and assume you’re a fan of Chinese noodles, but then get it all wrong and send you an advert for Chinese prawn crackers. Proof if proof were needed, that personalised advertising really is full of sh*t.

Of course, the main trade off when you lose the DJ is that you also lose an independent guide to new music. This is where Last FM’s policy of ‘Like This? Try This!’ comes into play – each artist is given a similarity score out of ten to indicate just how much they resemble your favourite. So, Dolly Parton fans, I can now exclusively reveal that Emmylou Harris has a SUPER SIMILARITY to your heroine, while Tammy Wynette only has a VERY HIGH SIMILARITY. Sorry Tammy, that means we can’t be bothered to listen to you.

The sad side effect of all this is that it encourages the listener to take only cautious baby steps out of their comfort zone, and offers little chance for them to experience the shock of the new that a crazed-DJ might offer.

The answer? Either you could spend hours scrambling about with your radio dial (and/or Google) trying to find a pirate station which will almost certainly make you want to hurt yourself within two minutes… or better still, simply become a pirate listener: stream the BBC radio stations online without paying the license fee, and just for effect, call the cops and cackle mysteriously down the phone to them. Take that, The Man!

Links to the other Digital Economy Bill and Piracy And Pieces Of Eight posts:

Digital Economy Bill Feature Intro

Simon Indelicate – Digital Economy Bill

The Indelicates – Corporate Records Business Model

Stop Disconnection Demo – 24th March 2010

Dan Bull – An Interview – How does a pro-filesharing musician plan to make some cash?

Piracy Feature Intro

Julia Indelicate – Bands And Branding

Chris T-T – The Ballad Of Simon Indelicate’s Christmas Fudge

Simon Indelicate – Fudge Really Has Nothing To Do With It

Matt Stockman – Introducing Sharabang Records – a record label which gives songs aways for free

Ric Rawlins – Pirate Radio And The Internet

Ric Rawlins – Film Review – The Boat That Rocked