Shameless plug

For the past year or so, I've been DJing (in Indian parlance, RJing?) at a radio station (KBCS, on air at 91.3 FM here, streaming online at www.kbcs.fm ) run out of Bellevue. It's a program called "The Spice Route" which plays music from South Asia - ?ollywood (? == B, T, M), Indian classical songs, music from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other countries in South Asia.

Now the station supports streaming archives which you can search here:

http://kbcsweb.bellevuecollege.edu/playlist/searchplaylists.aspx

You can search for me by name or search for "The Spice Route". Playslists are always available. Audio is archived for 15 days after the program is over. The station can't archive more because of USA DMCA regulations.

This means that after my next show on the 24th you'll be able to listen to it till the 8th or 9th of December. I generally DJ on the 3rd Wednesday of every month, and it's been a fun experience for sure. If you're in the Seattle area and are interested in DJing, drop me a line. It's a volunteer thing. You won't get paid, but I guarantee you'll enjoy it.

FAQ:

Yes, I take requests.

No, I don't let you go on air when you call in. With the FCC being what it is, we can't risk you using a swear word on air.

Yes, listening to yourself can be weird at times.

I read 'The Long Tail' a few weeks back.  Kind of late, I know, but I actually read the original seminal Wired magazine article by Chris Anderson when it came out in 2004 and still read the blog off and on.

The book rightly celebrates the growth of the niche and how people aren't bound by the Lowest Common Denominator anymore. Mass entertainment has been turned on its head by an increasingly high number of people happier to stick to their favorite niches and not bother about what is mainstream as much.

This is great for the personalized 'me-first' world we now inhabit. However, David Brooks, an iconoclast as always, asks a very relevant question in terms of music. This is true of music but will probably be equally true of any sort of art or public discourse in general:

"...the era of integration gave way to the era of fragmentation. There are now dozens of niche musical genres where there used to be this thing called rock. There are many bands that can fill 5,000-seat theaters, but there are almost no new groups with the broad following or longevity of the Rolling Stones, Springsteen or U2."

It's kind of difficult to disagree with him or the points he makes. As he says:

"We live in an age in which the technological and commercial momentum drives fragmentation. It’s going to be necessary to set up countervailing forces — institutions that span social, class and ethnic lines.

Music used to do this. Not so much anymore."

The truth is, there's no single cultural force left in this country that does this anymore. Sports is going strong, but the insular world of sports in the US means the cheering is local and parochial. I can't go to Pittsburgh and cheer for the Seahawks or to Boston and cheer for the Yankees.

This is great for the small creative guy who's trying to get a hundred CDs sold to break even, but a country which defined cultural flashpoints by events like Woodstock and Elvismania now struggles to find one cultural icon. This is also the tale of the Long Tail.

Gratis! Libre!

A long, long time ago, even before the New York Times decided to do its 'Select' experiment where they walled off part of the newspaper behind a paid wall, I thought that ads would be a good way for them and for the Wall Street Journal to monetize their websites. I still think that there's value-addition that they could do and charge for. After all, Bloomberg made billions from that idea.

It's kind of self-evident now, but the proliferation of blogs, search engines and link-astic goodness has led to ad-served free content becoming more lucrative than paid content, especially for mass-market content.

The New York Times has finally seen the light. Their content is free again. Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd and my personal favorite, David Brooks will finally be freely accessible again. The New York Times has the potential to really be among the top news websites in the world with the quality of its reportage and analysis if it embraces the challenge fully. At least a beginning has been made.

Though I'd really appreciate it if they'd do away with the login altogether. Free as in beer is nice, free as in freedom is even better.