iPodarmy

KEXP, which is the only music-based “radio” station I feel is worth listening to at all, is in the middle of their summer pledge drive. It’s a time when, as listener supported media, they ask their listeners to become “members” of the station and donate some money to help keep the cogs running.

It’s actually a great time to listen also. You get to hear all sorts of testimonials from people who listen to the station and you get to learn a lot about how independent, audience supported media works and the struggles they face. See, with all the media consolidation going on, a station like KEXP is very rare. They don’t have advertising (although it wouldn’t bother me if they did) and they have the freedom to play the music they want to play—which is the key, and the reason why I hope they never go away.

Big Media / Small Media

Among traditional media like radio it seems that the players keep getting bigger and bigger. To me, when it comes to music, this isn’t a good thing. What this makes for is a culture where non-music lovers choose what gets played based on how well it will sell itself, and sell product. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m open when it comes to music and just because something is “popular” doesn’t mean I hate it right off the bat. However, I like a bit of variety in my music and it’s hard enough to find a wide range of great music, even with a channel like KEXP.

It would seem that KEXP is struggling with traditional media, and my advice to them might be to turn to where the small are starting to thrive. Things like podcasts and web-based radio (which they do, if you have iTunes you can listen to them) are great ways to get your music or message out to a vast audience easily. In fact this kind of small media is seemingly making a dent in the power and size of big media in some ways.

(Big media is also looking like they want a piece of the small pie, but that is a different story.)

Could monetization be a problem?

The thing many small media producers are struggling with is how to make a living and keep providing content. Many of us do it on the side, or for little (or no) money. This might be fine for some, but for a radio station the size of KEXP to keep running, they’ll need to be able to pull money in. Right now they do it with pledge drives and sponsorships. If they went to some kind of all-Web based delivery I wonder if that’d still be possible. They could also thing about going small to save money.

It’s not without challange though. The Web really levels the playing field. While someone like KEXP might be having a hard time competing with big media, you’d think they’d be able to do very well in smaller circles because of their resources, etc. Not necessarily. And that’s one of the problems all small media faces. There are so many people out there, doing so many things that it’s almost too small. At least for making any money. Seth Godin talks about this and he makes a good point:

If there were thousands and thousands of stations to compete with, it would be an amateur medium, with nobody making enough to invest.

KEXP, and stations like them, are by no means amateur, but they still might suffer from the fact that people only have so much money and might be giving it elsewhere.

Advertising?

I know that independent and small media publishers can make a decent amount of scratch from advertising and still remain true to their message. I’d guess that for most this is a much more viable solution than audience donated funds. The problem here is often perception. People don’t like ads. They especially don’t like ads when it comes to small media as is smacks of big media. I know if I could bring money in without ads, I’d certainly do that, and I wouldn’t need near as much as KEXP or the like would.

New medium, new ways

As big media keeps getting bigger and small media carves out it’s own niche, I see outlets like KEXP, who fall somewhere in the middle, having to make a choice. Can they go the big media route and still stay true to their music and message? Can they go small and still manage to keep their employees fed and happy? My guess is both of these options might have a way about them. Big media can only get so big, one would hope, before there’d be a need to add some “balancing” outlets. And small media will find ways to get paid, especially for those who have the experience, content and talent to stand out from the millions.

For me, I’m hoping for a small media solution.

This is all just speculation, but it’s an interesting time we’re living it when it comes to media. I may be way off base with some of my theories, but I’ll tell you this—things are going to change. You can bank on that.