Tweaking the Jazz Stream

Jazz radio doesn't stand a chance unless DJ/programmers can attract listeners in the new mobile-device-dominated listening environment. 

A group of Boston jazz people have organized to try and snag this growing audience by developing the JazzBird app. I'll be one of the "curators," tasked with trying to set and maintain some standard of quality (which does not involve trying to define "jazz"). 

Jazz DJ/programmers who cut their teeth on "old" radio can't assume their approach will work on smart phones, Androids, etc. They may want to look closely at how people, especially young people and tech savvy elders, now listen to music.

For 70 or so years, bulk/mass was associated with a higher quality of sound, and portability with mere convenience.

                  

Over the last c. 40 years, technology changed all that, delivering hi-fi in small packages. 

At this point, sound in digital form, usually MP3 files, dominates. This is part of a process that's given people access to millions of songs. At the same time, these files come with much less information than LP's or CD's; both musical information (because of compression) and historical information (no liner notes). 

How does radio stand in relation to this? 

I know from experience that the vast majority of young people who do listen to music on the radio tune to a small number of commercial stations, where almost all the talking they hear is ads and other "load," not information about the music. DJ's speak very little, if at all. So, people who have grown up in the digital sound era can either accept a de-contextualized listening experience or go to fan web sites to find out the details they want to know.

Jazz radio generally plays out in a very different way. Jazz DJ's are likely to program several tunes in a row, often long ones, and talk for at least a couple of minutes between sets, telling listeners who all the members of a group are and providing deeper context for the music.

This begs the question: Do DJ's/programmers need to change their approach to keep the streaming audience tuned in on their mobile devices? How much talking should DJ's do and what information should they deliver? 

There's no right answer, of course. People spin jazz because they're emotionally invested in the music and its history. They also tend to be vaguely monomaniacal, with a trace of the didact (mea culpa). Catering to decreased attention spans or dumbing down the music is a non-starter. BUT:

• You can bear in mind the channels of communication that the mobile audience uses: Twitter, Facebook, etc.. Use them to promote your show and announce your social network handles often to allow listeners easy, quick feedback.
• As part of this, you can use more "blindfold" tests and ticket offers-this also helps support live music.
• If the technology really does make it easier for people to find jazz, there will probably be increasingly disparate audiences with varying degrees of familiarity with the music. Finessing that will be tough, but bear in mind that some people snap to when they hear "Jug," while others need to hear the name Gene Ammons. Try to find a balance that doesn't bore one audience and mystify another.
• Have a web site or find space on the station's web site where you can share supplementary material and links with your listeners.
• Make sure your program is archived. You may want to edit it after the fact to eliminate dated material (along with your mistakes).
• Make sure your station's technology allows listeners to choose a bit rate stream that works for them. Paying to make sure you have a wide range of choices is probably worth it.

Readers with ideas about establishing parameters for jazz presentation on mobile platforms, please feel free to share. 

I hope we can make this work.

Make sure to have a nice photo of yourself that people can relate to

Riff-Master 2000 App (NSA-Approved).

Hemingway-or Charlie Sheen

Ernest Hemingway Foundation, your efforts to rebrand the novelist's image have not gone unnoticed.  OK, so you got Ogilvy and Mather, a fancy-dancy Chicago public relations and advertising firm to take on the campaign pro bono (what better use of a fancy-dancy Chicago p.r. and ad firm's time?), but we at the Institute and our hard working cadre of unpaid interns have brought this idea to a new level by creating-with the help of our friends at the NSA-the Riff-Master 2000 App@

Riffmaster-2000 Magnified 2 Billion X

Here's how it works: Because of our relationship with insiders at the NSA, we are privy to, well, all the information there is. We analyze your phone records, your internet surfing records, your school records. We also talk to the priest who blessed you, the Imam who berated you and the Rabbi who circumcised you.
 
Then, we use our Juicy Logarithms@ and Jumbo Computers@ to cross reference this mountain, this Himalaya of information, with our musical data base.
                      
Put this together with a real-time log of your retinal movements and BOOM: The real sound track of your life. 

This is no one-size-fits-all-muzak-to-make-you-shop-faster-at-Walmart's, baby-This is putting your Prism dollars to work for YOU!

Ok, still not clear? Let me give an example. It's 8:00 AM. Our profile says you average 6.9 hours of sleep per night, with 3.1 average REM cycles and hungover 12.4% of the time. You score 72 on the Whipsnade Grogginess Scale, with sexual proclivities averaging 53 on the Mitchum-Loren Curve.Your playlist starts the first minute before you wake up with Dream, moves you seamlessly to A Day in The Life, No Sleep Blues (depending), Best of the Strawberry Alarm Clock, Touch Me in the Morning, Monday, Monday (maybe)...

Anyway, you get the idea. It completely frees the RIff Lobe of your frontal cortex to perform more important chores, like remembering the name of that rhythm guitar player who so impressed you in a 1975 Meters concert; the kind of thing that would otherwise have woken you up in the middle of the night.

So, act now, before someone hacks into our data base. Oh, but with the NSA, that would be impossible. Ok, take your time. 

Available as a free download, or in the Premium Cortex Implantation version for $99.00 (subject to local taxes).
                                                     

The Institute and the NSA. Unbeatable.