The Infinite Dial

When wireless broadband finally brings The Infinite Dial to my car, the stations that get a button will be a lot different. I'll have a regular choice for obscure classic rock (Suburban Phoenix's KCDX), my Country station will be KEEY (K102) Minneapolis, and my replacement for New York's Jack-FM will be one of the original ones from Canada (although I still have to decide between Vancouver and Calgary).

But my first button for Top 40 will be still be my local Top 40, WHTZ (Z100). Covering the radio business from New York--a market that doesn't always have the best-in-category of any given genre--has been frustrating over the years. But I've generally been happy with Z100 over the last decade. Z100 emerged as the market leader in New York's last diary Arbitron ratings yesterday. And they deserved to.

Here are some of the things that Z100 does right:

* Even in market No. 1, where they would certainly be entitled to be conservative, they find their own hit records. And while it doesn't happen as often as some industry folks might wish, they will occasionally play songs that are not on any other reporting Top 40 station.

* They pay a lot of attention to pop culture. Z100 is usually the first stop (and always among the first stops) for Radio Disney artists on their way to the mainstream, from Hilary Duff to Vanessa Hudgens to the Jonas Brothers to Miley Cyrus, whose "See You Again" is in rotation only at Z100 and XM-20.

* It makes good use of library material. During its late '90s success, Z100 was a Top 40 station that did several music tests a year. It reportedly has returned to library testing recently and has been filtering in a lot of unusual titles. And somehow it gets away with "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls and "Ayo Technology" by 50 Cent on the same radio station.

* In fact, Z100 uses both current and library testing the way most of us would like to see them used--to intelligently take more shots on music, not fewer.

* They do a good job of associating themselves with new platforms (a lot of the on-air real-estate now is going to the station's social networking site, the Z-Zone).

* Z100 makes good use of benchmarking during the day. There are as many regular features between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. (the hours when I tend to hear the station most) as most morning shows.

* They have made better use than most of Clear Channel's new presentational austerity without sounding sterilized by it. (It usually feels like some thought went into the cold segue between the first and second record of the hour, for instance.)

Here is a great example of 'leaving deeper footprints,' a phrase I first heard from Scott Shannon 15 years ago. If you have never ordered shoes from Zappos, you are missing out on the best customer service on the web, and this blog post from a Zappos customer epitomizes why.

Leaving deeper footprints is something great stations do on a regular basis. One of the best places to find them in Country radio is on Jaye Albright's blog--she makes a regular point of celebrating the great things that Country radio stations do everyday for their communities. What are some of your favorite radio examples? Post them here--I bet this thread could crash our servers, and I hope it does.

Radiohead's new album comes out next week, and it won't be in stores. It might be on radio, but it needn't be, really. They are giving the whole thing away as 'donationware' on their web site--pay whatever you think its worth. If you want it for free--done.

The best band in the world just hit three birds with one stone:

* I don't need to go into detail on what this means to the labels.

* It challenges iTunes and their monolithic pricing model, which the labels have long railed against to little effect. This move, combined with the NBC situation, may provide enough disruption to allow other software vendors with more flexible pricing models to cut into iTunes.

* It also affects the radio business. We have already seen in at least one recent study that radio now finishes second to the Internet as the place to discover new music (and in the recent studies where this is not the case with the total, it is for persons under 30.) With no 'scarcity' in the Radiohead model, there will be no need to go to radio to hear it first--or hear it at all.

Most significantly, on Oct 10th, I have no doubt that Radiohead's web site will be the most visited music site on earth. You can't fight Radiohead (or the Master Chief). The process of music discovery is now a social mechanism--where the solitary listener used to rely on radio's "tastemakers," they now rely on like-minded individuals (either known or unknown), with these interactions facilitated by the Internet. The "Event" is also more important: just as Prince's recent giveaway of his CD in London spurred a series of sold-out concert dates (where the purple one presumably made back the money from his "loss leader") so too will the upcoming Radiohead tour be one of the biggest "events" of the coming year. Music is discovered and now increasingly transacted at 'events,' whether they are online or out-of-home or both. When I am at a party being "curated" by a DJ, and can get the song he just played beamed to my MP3 player or phone, that is the new model of music discovery.

While Apple will be damaged by this disruption to the iTunes Music Store model, they also know the importance of the "social", as evidenced by their deal with the biggest music retailer on earth, Starbucks. The new wifi functionality of the iPhone and Touch iPod will make Starbucks the curator and transactional facilitator of new music (whether it really is 'new' or just 'new to you.') and Apple will continue to get a piece of that.

And what does all of this mean to you? Here are three things you can do today:

* Build social networking into your web properties--but social networking that makes sense, not just a replica of Facebook. Social Networking around music already lives elsewhere for 12-24, but in formats like Country and Smooth Jazz, where new music is incredibly important for older adults, opportunities abound. Even in formats like Classic Rock, there are loads of opportunities to socialize around the best opening riffs, or the 10 All-Time Worst Song Lyrics.

* Find the arbiters of music taste online--and hire them. Let them talk a little, even. Let them ADD VALUE to your product.

* Become the podcast home for local, unsigned bands. Give them studio space and production facilities and send their fans to you to download podcasts of their shows, demos and singles.

Radio at the local level has little room in its budget to drive wholesale change until the group heads drastically change the model from the top down. But there is no need to wait when all of the things I just listed can be done for practically nothing today. You may not have the money to bring your website completely to 2007 standards today, but wikis are free and half-built by your listeners anyway, so why not build one this week? Or call our friends at Libsyn and start getting your podcasts online today, like WMMR's Preston and Steve have been doing for ages.

No matter what is happening to your budgets, remember that the tools to compete are all out there, and are generally either free or pretty darn close. I'm happy to pitch in, or use your own web staff. In either case, there is no need to wait, and no time like today.