I am writing a book on New Jersey independent listener-supported freeform radio station WFMU and the rise of online music. I post my writing and archival finds here.
Essays:
“Freeform Radio and the History of Music Streaming.” Preprint. Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Radio Studies, edited by Michele Hilmes and Andrew Bottomley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023). – about WFMU’s early experiments in “streaming” music via telephone, gopher, and the web in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“Provincializing Spotify: Radio, Algorithms and Conviviality,” Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 18, no. 1 (2020): 29-42. – about the Free Music Archive.
“The Past and Future of Music Listening: Between Freeform DJs and Recommendation Algorithms,” in Radio’s New Wave, ed. Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio (New York: Routledge, 2013), 62-76. – about WFMU’s relationship with music recommendation apps.
Online:
This map-in-progress chronicles live performances at rock, avant-garde and international music venues such as CBGB’s, Maxwell’s, Lauterbach’s, the Ritz, the Bottom Line, Roulette, PS 122, S.O.B.’s, Wetlands Preserve, ABC No Rio, and others. It lists participating NYC-area and NJ musicians and bands, playing alternative rock, hardcore punk, experimental music, folk, anti-folk & more. It includes links to first-person accounts and/or audio recordings whenever possible.
Archival Finds:
Program and catalog for the WFMU Music/Art Convergence silent and live auctions and benefit performances at the Germans van Eck Gallery, May 26-30, 1992. It includes interviews with Cindy Sherman and Jim Jarmusch.
Joe Biden bails out venture capitalists but leaves independent media to fend for themselves. Keep WFMU on the air!