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, 2023. – about WFMU’s early experiments in “streaming” music via telephone, gopher, and web.
“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 recommendation algorithms.
Archives:
Check out this 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. This catalog includes interviews with Cindy Sherman and Jim Jarmusch.
Here are just a few cool individuals and institutions that supported WFMU in 1992, when the station was fighting a lawsuit by four public stations:
Art: Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Gary Panther, Linda Barry, David Bowie, William Wegman…
Music: Yo La Tengo, John Zorn, They Might Be Giants, Tuli Kupferberg, Sister Carol, Bongwater…
Donations: Jim Jarmusch, Allen Ginsberg…
Space: CBGB, The Kitchen, ABC No Rio, S.O.B.’s, The Ritz, The Bottom Line, Germans van Eck Gallery…
Biden bails out venture capitalists but leaves independent media to fend for themselves. Keep the WFMU on the air.