New UK webradio player will include public & private stations

A new online player for both public (BBC) and private radio stations from the United Kingdom was presented in England yesterday.

This is what British newspaper The Guardian writes about the project:

'iPlayer for radio' set for December launch
Radio streaming application containing content from BBC and commercial stations unveiled at Radio Festival in Salford

A BBC-backed radio streaming application with the potential to allow users access to audio content from more than 400 stations nationwide is to launch in December.

The first working version of the UK Radioplayer project – dubbed 'the iPlayer for radio' – was unveiled at the annual Radio Festival in Salford yesterday.

Content from about 50 radio stations, both BBC and commercial, will be available when the site goes live in December, with 150 more on board at the time of full commercial launch in February 2011.

Click here to read the whole article.

No, new music doesn't suck

Please enjoy this excellent article written for the Huffington Post by our partner Jeff Pollack in Los Angeles:

"I have been struck by the number of comments to some of my recent blogs about the continued deterioration of the traditional music business, that the main culprit (other than the greed of the labels) is the low quality of new music today. But it's simply not the case. This tired argument has been used by each succeeding generation after they pass through their primary music discovery years. Somehow, the music from the era they grew up in represented a special window of innovation and quality that will never be duplicated.

In the past 50 years, it's certainly true that there have been a handful of bands and artists whose originality, lyrics, and musicianship have provided us with timeless music that resonates with a wide range of ages. And among those artists, there are a small number of remarkable gems - what I like to call "100-Year Artists"- who like Gershwin, will be listened to forever. But these are few and far between, historical aberrations that emanated from the real world of contemporary music and transcended any era. We talk about Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd still today because they were Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, not because they existed in the past.

It's easy to forget that the majority of music of every era and every genre was disposable. We forget that The Beatles flourished at the same time as Freddie and the Dreamers and Herman Hermits. Joplin and The Doors were released around the time of the Monkees and Tommy James. So many of the guilty pleasures of the 80's, like the Buggles and Flock of Seagulls, had little to do with real quality but were of a time, place, and mood. In each era, a few bands are truly great, but mostly the old disposable music is replaced by equally forgettable songs... no different than what is being produced by Idol today."

To read the whole article, please click here.