Easy Listening
By ROB WALKER
KCRW.com
As part of the CMJ Music Marathon this past October, a New York band called Brazilian Girls performed a danceable set of songs in multiple languages before a crowd at the Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan. The sponsor of this particular event was KCRW.com, which presents live music on a regular basis in New York these days, at venues like Joe's Pub and the Mercury Lounge. But residents of the tri-state area who look for the station on their FM dial will be frustrated. KCRW is based in Santa Monica, Calif.
Why is a Southern California public radio station promoting events on the other side of the country? Because while new media and old media are supposed to be enemies, KCRW.com is trying to make them allies, by building an online listener base -- and in the process trying to create what amounts to a national brand. For the past few years, KCRW.com has broadcast three ''streams,'' including a 24-hour music option.
It's hard to come up with a solid figure for the number of online listeners, since the station's Netcasts travel not just from its own site but also through AOL and Apple's iTunes software. But one gauge of popularity that seems relevant to a public radio station is the number of people well outside the traditional broadcast range who become ''members'' -- that is, who donate money. With each KCRW pledge drive in recent years come scores of comments from contributors who listen online. ''I adore your station and listen to it every day here in beautiful Brooklyn, U.S.A.!'' one donor wrote recently. More than 1,000 New Yorkers have become members since 2000; similar comments come from all over the country.
KCRW has long had a certain tastemaker status, centered on the weekday show ''Morning Becomes Eclectic,'' which lives up to its name by giving time to artists across a swath of genres, from Eleni Mandell, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter, to club favorites like the Scissor Sisters and indie-rock bands like Franz Ferdinand. That has continued with that show's current D.J., Nic Harcourt, who has been the station's music director since 1998. He says KCRW was the first radio station to play Norah Jones, and the first in the U.S. to play Dido and Coldplay. (He is also host of a weekly sister program, ''Sounds Eclectic,'' now syndicated on more than 30 public radio stations in cities across the country.) Evening shows like Jason Bentley's dance-and-electronica-oriented Metropolis, and Tom Schnabel's and Chris Douridas's wide-ranging weekend programs, all combine to give the station a playlist that's full of surprises. Along the way, these D.J.'s and others at the station have become music supervisors (basically song pickers) for film and television soundtracks and commercials.
Harcourt has been a particular champion of raising KCRW's profile. The station has sponsored and held more and more music events in Los Angeles, and in the last year or so, has done the same in San Francisco and New York. The idea is that as commercial radio has become increasingly timid, canned and predictable, there is an opportunity for a station like KCRW to leverage its tastemaker status. And while satellite radio is providing one alternative, it's built on the idea of restricting your tastes one genre at a time. So stations like KCRW (along with Philadelphia's WXPN and its syndicated ''World Cafe'' show, and a few others, like WFUV in the Bronx) are now crucial to idiosyncratic bands like Brazilian Girls, the smaller record labels that promote them and the music consumers who want to be surprised.
The Brazilian Girls, a kind of house band for the East Village club Nublu, made an EP last year that found its way to Harcourt. Their music got a lot of KCRW airplay and even earned them a live set on ''Morning Becomes Eclectic.'' They have an album coming out on Verve. According to Jill Weindorf at the label, early promotional posters include a blurb from Harcourt. ''Because of the dot-com following, and some of the music supervision he's done, he's actually becoming a name that even a consumer would recognize,'' she says, noting that she has seen Harcourt quotations on CD stickers as well. ''KCRW is starting to be a brand that means cool.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/magazine/23CONSUMED.html?oref=login
