Violinist in the Metro--- Wash, DC

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. 

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work. 

The one who paid the most attention was a 3-year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context? 

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

 (a message to bandless songwriters) 

PURSUE A CAREER IN A WAY THAT 1) SAVES MONEY 2) GETS FASTER RESULTS 3) ATTRACTS BETTER MUSICIANS 4) EARNS MORE MONEY 5) MAKES YOUR MUSIC SOUND BETTER, 6) ALLOWS MORE CAREER CONTROL 7) GETS BETTER GIGS 8) ATTRACTS INVESTORS. 

We will never know how many great songs never saw the light of day because undiscovered songwriters bought into the old school mindset: a songwriter must have a performing band before recording.

Here is an alternate approach to music, which we will refer to here as "CD before band." It has been used as a starting point for hundreds of successful artists, yet is relatively unknown to most aspiring songwriters. In a nutshell, you do things backwards: Beginning with a CD-quality recording. As a band is put together (which is easier when you have great- sounding professional music) the artist simultaneously submits to labels, radio stations, management companies, booking agents, independent promoters, publicists and local clubs.

Here are a few reasons why the "CD before band" approach saves money and gets faster results: 

1) SAVES MONEY

It's no secret that having a band costs money. If you choose to put a band together before doing serious recording, you must consider expenses on several fronts:

Rehearsal costs can be huge, and in the real world, rehearsals often occur after an 8-hour workday. With the most expensive arrangement, bands keep their equipment set up in their own rehearsal room at all times. In other situations, band practice time begins with musicians moving their equipment from a storage area into the rehearsal room itself. Often, each band member hauls equipment home after each practice session, storing it somewhere else until the next rehearsal, repeating the process each time. So It's entirely conceivable that the band members are moving drums and heavy amplifiers four times per single rehearsal (into vehicle at home, out of vehicle at rehearsal, then reversing the routine when band practice is done).

There are real costs of rehearsing a band, depending on whether you run the PA system yourself or rent it out. And don't forget guitar and bass strings and drum sticks and tubes for amps and general equipment repair and maintenance. 

Live performances are fun, but from a business perspective, shows will undoubtedly fall into the "expenses" category. Remember that after flyers and posters for each show are designed and paid for, each band member is expected to become a marketer, hyping friends and sending emails to everyone each time the band does a show.

In highly competitive environments like Hollywood or other major cities, clubs often require bands to guarantee ticket sales. If the performance contract is not fulfilled, the band pays penalty fees.

For example, a 4-member band might be required to sell 100 tickets in order to play a show. So each member must personally sell 25 tickets (when he or she isn't working their day job or rehearsing in evenings). This type of situation can be OK, but it doesn't exactly make everyone feel more creative. In fact, it can suck the fun and the team-spirit vibe right out of the band. 

As a part for their marketing campaign, many bands pay for expensive display ads or radio spots. Some clubs charge mandatory "promotion fees," to cover costs of this kind of advertising. And don't forget the often overlooked part of doing shows, finding and training a soundman who knows your material! Hint: the guy who is willing to do your sound for free is the one you don't want.

Then there is the expense and time-investment for a crew: guitars techs and drum techs. Flyers for shows require a professional photo session. Yes, everyone's sister has a new digital camera. But the picture won't project a marketable image for the band unless you have a pro take care of it for you. Here's what 90% of amateur bands don't understand: If you don't have a professional shoot your promotion photos, then you may very well be sending this message to record labels and people you wish to impress "We are beginners who do not understand the importance of image and marketing." It's about looking like the real thing to industry veterans. 

Some of the artists you are competing with will be budgeted for every possible thing, including wardrobe expenses, stage set designers, lights show costs, and there are even professional stage presence coaches. It can go on and on.  

2) FASTER RESULTS

Is the "CD before band" route more time-efficient? Yes, and for many reasons. Bands often spend 12-months looking for the right bassist or drummer! After someone with the right playing skill, attitude, goals and experience is found, personality conflicts can later surface... in a month or in a year. Long after the band has invested in the learning time required by a new band member. 

Do you want your career to bounce up and down according to other people's personal problems and adolescent dramas? Bad business formula.

3) ATTRACT PRO MUSICIANS

How much better would your original songs sound if they were played by top professionals? No industry veteran will argue with this truth: Bands with professionally produced songs attract the highest caliber players. The alternative to "CD before band"? As a bandless songwriter, the artist must sort through an ocean of local players.

Lets talk about you, as a songwriter, sifting through local musicians to put a band behind your songs.

For the moment, lets say you've been able to get the word out about putting together a band. You now face a dual objective: Weed out the flakes, and at the same time convince callers that you are their best chance of music biz success. As a bandless songwriter, you are in an awkward position. You are attempting to interest musicians in your project... despite the fact that you do not have management, financial backing, bookings, attorney, label interest or industry track record.

It's like trying to sell a car without wheels. And don't forget this: Serious players, the ones that can truly propel your career forward, have their own flake-eliminator antenna up. They are searching for a situation with the greatest potential for upward mobility and the fewest obstacles. The experienced players will ask intelligent questions:

Here are some of the questions the experienced heavy hitters will ask (remember, these are the musicians you want in your band): "Do you have financial backing? Have you attracted record label interest? Radio connections? Any booking agents or hot contacts for shows? Any connections for getting on major bills as a warm up act?

Serious musicians, i.e. the ones you hope to hire snare, will expect answers to these questions. But they are also listening for other things. Do you sound confident as you explain the situation? Do you sound like you are making it up as you go? Do you seem like the kind of person that can take your music all the way to the finish line? 

If your goal is to have a performing band before recording your CD, this will be the biggest obstacle: you do not have a recording that accurately represents your professionalism and musical vision. In the absence of well-recorded music, you will have choice but to communicate the depth and nuances of your musical vision with words.

Lets say you have an amateur demo, and you are using this to play for interested musicians. What are the chances of an amateur demo luring the very best players in the city? "Oh, all you have is a very basic demo?" may be the cool response of people you really want in your band. The beginners and players without a track record aren't so picky. The reality is that the players that are chomping at the bit to get in the band may be the ones that have trouble passing auditions. 

Serious songwriters be forewarned: For each player who has their act together, you will interview ten musicians who do not have the talent, attitude, or work style to fit your goals.

If you are dead serious about finding solid committed players, your search may feel like a "wanna be" nightmare. On the phone, everyone claims to be a professional. But which musician will cancel at the last minute because their mom can't drive them to the audition? Which musicians will schedule a time with no real intention of even showing up? Are there musicians answering ads who do not even own their own instrument? Absolutely. Will they volunteer that information? No. Because the industry thrives on hype, it's not easy to know who will ultimately be wasting your time.

These are reasons why putting together a band without the forward inertia of a professionally produced CD is time-consuming and expensive. As you can see, the road requires the songwriter to become a sort of used car salesman, requiring skillful use of smoke and mirrors. From a business perspective, it's the slow way to gather momentum, often resulting in a sea of endless expenses and obstacles.

In some ways, it's a balancing act. How many bass player and drummer auditions will the new guitarist put up with before he or she bails? 

4) EARN MORE MONEY

With the "CD before band" approach, the singer / songwriter demonstrates resourcefulness, business know-how, and the ability to write songs. That's awesome for lots of reasons. Most importantly, the record companies are focused on YOU.

Singers attempting to start their career the more traditional way, by first putting a band together, join the invisible crowd of other unsigned artists submitting demos. These artists all sincerely believe their recordings are great. They submit to radio stations, local press, management companies, concert promoters, record labels and the music industry at large. Real world example: A recent unsigned talent contest generated 40,000 entries, with online advertising only!

Also, with the traditional "band before CD" situations, the band members who rehearsed and performed prior to pivotal recordings often feel they are entitled to compensation as songwriter(s). For this reason, many bands make personnel changes (or break up!) after commercial success. Think about this aspect of the band-before CD approach: More work. More time investment. More expenses. And when you finally get to the finish line... you make less money! Why? Because the other musicians want you to write them into ongoing royalties. 

5) MORE CONTROL OF YOUR CAREER

With the "CD before band" approach, it is obviously the songwriter that put the studio and producer and music together in the first place. And in the big picture, it was you who then offered real opportunities to other players. Bottom line: Your CD made everything else possible.

So what? So the record label is focused on keeping you happy. Congratulations, your life is less about adolescent band dramas, and more about hiring the best musicians and paying them fairly. Music industry decision-makers are interested the people who write the songs! 

Because the band is about your songs, your career is less about personality conflicts, drug problems or other personal problems that create complications, slow your career down, or result in the loss of a recording contract.

Record labels often exclude non-songwriters from recording contracts. In the "CD before band" scenario, the original songwriter is the undisputed leader and propelling force behind the band. Stability is a rare commodity in this business, so if you can create that for yourself, more power to you! 

6) BETTER MUSIC

Beginning your career with the traditional band-before-CD route, your bandmates will be creating the musical parts for your songs. Those parts that will eventually be recorded... often at the expense of your original musical vision. Most aspiring musicians do not have the insight or perspective a qualified producer brings to the table. The skill level of band members can cripple a song, or take it to the next level. Without a veteran producer on your team, it's going to be up to you to know the difference.

Therefore, in band-before-CD approach, the character of your songs is the result of a vote (at best) between band members who often have little or no experience in songwriting, production or arrangement.

If you don't like the way a band member's playing is shaping your songs, you have two choices. You can do nothing and allow your musical vision to be compromised, or place a musician-wanted ad and open your door to another cattle-call. It's very important to understand the gravity of this predicament that you, as a songwriter, may find yourself in. If you don't like your bass player, you must then ask every other band member to place their careers on hold while you start from scratch searching for a new bass player. A task requiring additional rehearsals, time and money investment from the career-minded players in your band.

Also, if your songs aren't sounding right, how will you be able to identify which parts and/or bandmembers are limiting the potential of your tunes? That requires a good set of experienced ears.

Remember, by choosing to make a personnel change, you are asking exceptionally talented players who have invested a substantial investment of time and money, to put everything on hold. They may feel they are taking a step backwards because the goal of playing shows has been replaced with endless auditions and more waiting while another new member gets up to speed. 

With the "CD before band" approach as described here, each musical element is painstakingly aligned to a vision shared by the songwriter and the producer (more about session musicians later).  

7) BETTER GIGS 

Maybe "CD before band," should actually be called "CD before band and gigs."

Wouldn't it be cool to start playing your hometown club scene at the top? Performing for packed audiences at the hottest venues sure beats playing embarrassing off-nights in front of mom, dad, and your girlfriend. Most live music fans know that Friday and Saturday nights are reserved for the very best talent.

With most clubs, Sunday through Thursday nights are opportunities for new acts that have not yet developed a following. Bands that recorded at uncle Joe's home studio (yes it's true, all their friends think it sounds "awesome") and are trying to get an agent and radio play and press... like every other band with a recording software or a hard disk recorder. 

You, on the other hand, can arm yourself with a professional CD demonstrating the highest levels of professionalism, accentuating aspects of your talents that lesser recordings would not reveal. 

The "CD before band" approach gives you the career-advancing momentum other songwriters do not possess. Your own CD with songs and a sound that is competitive with big budget releases will change everything, and places you, in a whole different category in the minds of music industry professionals. Here's what can happen in a very short period of time:

1)   Radio stations are playing your songs.

2) Legit Artist Management in New York has asked to see the band live.

3) Two record companies have offered to help pay for a demo of your newest songs.

4) Your CD is selling at AMAZON.COM.

5) The band is developing a fan-base all over the world via MP3 song samples and it's own website.

6) For the next photo session, the band is now deciding between 3 professional photographers.

7) CD's are selling well at packed local shows.

8) Your MySpace site is exploding with 500 new friends each week. 

Sure, every band hypes club owners and booking agents. But when people in the industry hear an over-the-top CD, they EXPECT BIG THINGS TO HAPPEN.

Lets talk about a best-case scenario: What happens when local journalists, club owners, and booking agents spot a band obviously destined for the big time? They jump onboard. They want to be one of the people who helped "break the band," ...to be able to say they were "right there when it happened."

A band in this situation receives additional help on every level. Local industry professionals participate in any way they can. It's gives them additional credibility. Your bands success is one more success story for their resume. Imagine industry veterans helping to put together your band, while your CD sells online. Imagine the "snowball effect" of industry buzz ...about your songs! Your band. A careful look at virtually any major label signing will reveal a similar scenario.

8) ATTRACT INVESTORS

As far as designing your own music career, you are better off with just about any scenario short of using a record label for investment capitol. Private investors (or to put it simply, people with money) want three things: 1) ego fulfillment, 2) fun, and 3) involvement in a situation that makes them feel creative.

Financial investors want to feel important, like the rest of us. Which band is more fun to work with? ...one that gigged 5-years before getting some local airplay and good reviews, or a band that accomplishes the same in 3 months?

Put yourself in the investor's shoes. If you had a boatload of money, which band would you pick as a business investment? Which band would be the most exciting business endeavor?...The band that breaks all the rules by starting at the top, or the band that started at the bottom, kept showing up, and by default, developed a following? There is no question about it. The band with an unstoppable CD and the element of surprise is an investors dream-come-true.   

HOW DOES A SONGWRITER "GET  A BAND" IN THE RECORDING STUDIO? 

1) Professional production, 2) Expert programming utilizing MIDI and samples, and 3) Great musicians. Note: If you've heard amateur musicians playing around with MIDI, then you know how bad MIDI can sound. But in the hands of a beginner, so can Jimi Hendrix's guitars. 

In one form or another, MIDI is a tool used by every top producer. MIDI and samples can be used to create temporary building blocks. Used in this way, they are tools allowing the producer and artist to explore ideas and arrangements possibilities without the expense of re-recording drums and other parts. The result: Higher production values. Superior song arrangements. Easier on the wallet. 

As far as the "great musicians" part of the equation, session players can be an crucial part of a songwriters career launch. A typical session musician situation might go like this: A session player arrives at the recording studio and listens to your song. After working with the song for 20-minutes, the session musician records the ultimate performance.

NOTE: There is a whole world of nuances, listening skills, and playing skills required by the highest caliber radio-style productions. Musicians without these advanced skills are usually unaware that these nuances exist. Because they do not hear how professional musicians play to the finer nuances of music, they reason that they can record and play as well as the top players in their field. It's a catch- 22 situation, resulting in a great deal of confusion for songwriters putting together bands, as well as for producers opening their doors to new local talent.

Bottom line with session players: In about an hour, he will probably record better tracks than the guy who has been playing the song for a year. And from a dollars and cents standpoint, chalk another up for the CD-before band approach. How much time and money is involved with rehearsing a band for a year? And if you are keeping a band rehearsing for a year (so that you can eventually record a CD), what other substantial time and money investments would should be considered?

We don't hear much about session players because from a marketing standpoint, fans want to hear music created by "a band." Music fans don't want to think of our favorite artist in terms of business transactions, or musicians loaning their talents out at an hourly rate. But session players are a time-tested reality of the music business with an undisputed track record. Music recorded with session pros has resulted in a continuous flow of major label signings and hundreds of gold and platinum successes.

If you want to hear successful music that was created in this way... turn on the radio!

HOW MANY SONGS SHOULD BE ON A "CD?"

The music industry once frowned upon CD's (or albums) with less than 10 – 13 songs. These days, publicists, radio people and industry decision-makers welcome CD's with less tracks. Why? A three to six song release requires less listening time and is therefore easier to review. EP's are good news for songwriters because:  

1) Fewer songs means more production time for each tune, resulting in higher overall production values.

2) Fewer songs is easier on the budget.

3) Fewer songs means only the best material gets released. The weak songs don't get heard, increasing chances of commercial success and enhancing public perception.

REMEMBER: A) Impressive sales, strong production values and great songs are the necessary ingredients for generating local radio and press. B) Record labels focus on artists that are able to create momentum on their own.

When was the last time you heard a recording studio ask their clients to record fewer songs? Rather than cash in on a heap of studio hours, we'd rather know that a CD with our name on it is going make a big impression no matter where it is heard.

A producer looks at each CD as a business card. Either attracting more business or pushing it away. When a CD is extraordinary, the artists career moves forward, as does the producer who helped make it happen. It's called a resume.

The quantity-based approach to CD production is the fastest way to waste money, and it's the most common mistake among aspiring songwriters (the second most common mistake is lack of stylistic focus). With quantity as a priority, production values are compromised, and bands unknowingly suck the potential out of material. Listen to the radio. Those are songs that have been arranged and re-arranged and re-written and massaged until they sounded... like songs on the radio.

Just say NO to the voice in your head that says, "we will record every one of our 14 songs if it's the last thing we do." It's a beginner strategy, and nine times out of ten, it's a train that will crash. Instead, pick your best 3, and take those songs (and your career) to the next level. 

GREAT SONGS: CUSTOM-WRITTEN FOR YOU 

Songwriting is a part of every CD project at Christopherson Productions. A composer with a music industry track record is able to finish songs that seem to be stuck as incomplete song forms, or promising ideas that somehow fell victim to writers block. A skilled songsmith can custom compose full genre-specific songs, or partial works, depending on the needs of the songwriter. Radio programmers chose "Soul rendezvous" as the first radio single from the Lynn Maas CD "Wingless Angel." Music and melody for the song was custom composed by Christopherson for Lynn. Hear the song now at www.LynnMaas.com.

Our in-house publishing company, Cherishment Music, is administered through BMI. So if having a publishing company with a track record in both radio and national media is important to you, then submit your copyrighted material right away! 

Many happy clients have entire songs custom-written for their own CD releases. Songs written by Daniel Christopherson have been featured in major motion picture soundtracks (Warren Miller's "Journey" viewed for 500,000 in 2004), Fox Television shows, and in CD productions by Lynn Maas ("Wingless Angel" CD now receiving national airplay), Kathy Walker, Washington State Idol Contest winner Jessica Oliver, Elle Scott, Ryan Marsh, One Zillion Guitars, Laurie Solheim, Our Funeral Forgotten, Damnaged and Petra Tilotta (KLSY 92.5 FM and KOMO 5 TV Talent Search), the talented young lady who sings the National Anthem at Mariners games. 

BY DANIEL CHRISTOPHERSON COPYRIGHT 2007

The Music Man

Found this on the web, and this is the MOTHERLOAD collection of info about getting your music out there.

As Published in the New York Times May 2007

...

Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog

By CLIVE THOMPSON

Jonathan Coulton sat in Gorilla Coffee in Brooklyn, his Apple PowerBook open before him, and began slogging through the day's e-mail. Coulton is 36 and shaggily handsome. In September 2005, he quit his job as a computer programmer and, with his wife's guarded blessing, became a full-time singer and songwriter. He set a quixotic goal for himself: for the next year, he would write and record a song each week, posting each one to his blog. "It was a sort of forced-march approach to creativity," he admitted to me over the sound of the cafe's cappuccino frothers. He'd always wanted to be a full-time musician, and he figured the only way to prove to himself he could do it was with a drastic challenge. "I learned that it is possible to squeeze a song out of just about anything," he said. "But it's not always an easy or pleasant process." Given the self-imposed time constraints, the "Thing a Week" songs are remarkably good. Coulton tends toward geeky, witty pop tunes: one song, "Tom Cruise Crazy," is a sympathetic ode to the fame-addled star, while "Code Monkey" is a rocking anthem about dead-end programming jobs. By the middle of last year, his project had attracted a sizable audience. More than 3,000 people, on average, were visiting his site every day, and his most popular songs were being downloaded as many as 500,000 times; he was making what he described as "a reasonable middle-class living" — between $3,000 and $5,000 a month — by selling CDs and digital downloads of his work on iTunes and on his own site.

Along the way, he discovered a fact that many small-scale recording artists are coming to terms with these days: his fans do not want merely to buy his music. They want to be his friend. And that means they want to interact with him all day long online. They pore over his blog entries, commenting with sympathy and support every time he recounts the difficulty of writing a song. They send e-mail messages, dozens a day, ranging from simple mash notes of the "you rock!" variety to starkly emotional letters, including one by a man who described singing one of Coulton's love songs to his 6-month-old infant during her heart surgery. Coulton responds to every letter, though as the e-mail volume has grown to as many as 100 messages a day, his replies have grown more and more terse, to the point where he's now feeling guilty about being rude.

Coulton welcomes his fans' avid attention; indeed, he relies on his fans in an almost symbiotic way. When he couldn't perform a guitar solo for "Shop Vac," a glittery pop tune he had written about suburban angst — on his blog, he cursed his "useless sausage fingers" — Coulton asked listeners to record their own attempts, then held an online vote and pasted the winning riff into his tune. Other followers have volunteered hours of their time to help further his career: a professional graphic artist in Cleveland has drawn an illustration for each of the weekly songs, free. Another fan recently reformatted Coulton's tunes so they'd be usable on karaoke machines. On his online discussion board last June, when Coulton asked for advice on how to make more money with his music, dozens of people chimed in with tips on touring and managing the media and even opinions about what kind of songs he ought to write.

Coulton's fans are also his promotion department, an army of thousands who proselytize for his work worldwide. More than 50 fans have created music videos using his music and posted them on YouTube; at a recent gig, half of the audience members I spoke to had originally come across his music via one of these fan-made videos. When he performs, he upends the traditional logic of touring. Normally, a new Brooklyn-based artist like him would trek around the Northeast in grim circles, visiting and revisiting cities like Boston and New York and Chicago in order to slowly build an audience — playing for 3 people the first time, then 10, then (if he got lucky) 50. But Coulton realized he could simply poll his existing online audience members, find out where they lived and stage a tactical strike on any town with more than 100 fans, the point at which he'd be likely to make $1,000 for a concert. It is a flash-mob approach to touring: he parachutes into out-of-the-way towns like Ardmore, Pa., where he recently played to a sold-out club of 140.

His fans need him; he needs them. Which is why, every day, Coulton wakes up, gets coffee, cracks open his PowerBook and hunkers down for up to six hours of nonstop and frequently exhausting communion with his virtual crowd. The day I met him, he was examining a music video that a woman who identified herself as a "blithering fan" had made for his song "Someone Is Crazy." It was a collection of scenes from anime cartoons, expertly spliced together and offered on YouTube.

"She spent hours working on this," Coulton marveled. "And now her friends are watching that video, and fans of that anime cartoon are watching this video. And that's how people are finding me. It's a crucial part of the picture. And so I have to watch this video; I have to respond to her." He bashed out a hasty thank-you note and then forwarded the link to another supporter — this one in Britain — who runs "The Jonathan Coulton Project," a Web site that exists specifically to archive his fan-made music videos.

He sipped his coffee. "People always think that when you're a musician you're sitting around strumming your guitar, and that's your job," he said. "But this" — he clicked his keyboard theatrically — "this is my job."

In the past — way back in the mid-'90s, say — artists had only occasional contact with their fans. If a musician was feeling friendly, he might greet a few audience members at the bar after a show. Then the Internet swept in. Now fans think nothing of sending an e-mail message to their favorite singer — and they actually expect a personal reply. This is not merely an illusion of intimacy. Performing artists these days, particularly new or struggling musicians, are increasingly eager, even desperate, to master the new social rules of Internet fame. They know many young fans aren't hearing about bands from MTV or magazines anymore; fame can come instead through viral word-of-mouth, when a friend forwards a Web-site address, swaps an MP3, e-mails a link to a fan blog or posts a cellphone concert video on YouTube.

So musicians dive into the fray — posting confessional notes on their blogs, reading their fans' comments and carefully replying. They check their personal pages on MySpace, that virtual metropolis where unknown bands and comedians and writers can achieve global renown in a matter of days, if not hours, carried along by rolling cascades of popularity. Band members often post a daily MySpace "bulletin" — a memo to their audience explaining what they're doing right at that moment — and then spend hours more approving "friend requests" from teenagers who want to be put on the artist's sprawling list of online colleagues. (Indeed, the arms race for "friends" is so intense that some artists illicitly employ software robots that generate hundreds of fake online comrades, artificially boosting their numbers.) The pop group Barenaked Ladies held a video contest, asking fans to play air guitar along to the song "Wind It Up"; the best ones were spliced together as the song's official music video. Even artists who haven't got a clue about the Internet are swept along: Arctic Monkeys, a British band, didn't know what MySpace was, but when fans created a page for them in 2005 — which currently boasts over 65,000 "friends" — it propelled their first single, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," to No. 1 on the British charts.

This trend isn't limited to musicians; virtually every genre of artistic endeavor is slowly becoming affected, too. Filmmakers like Kevin Smith ("Clerks") and Rian Johnson ("Brick") post dispatches about the movies they're shooting and politely listen to fans' suggestions; the comedian Dane Cook cultivated such a huge fan base through his Web site that his 2005 CD "Retaliation" became the first comedy album to reach the Billboard Top 5 since 1978. But musicians are at the vanguard of the change. Their product, the three-minute song, was the first piece of pop culture to be fully revolutionized by the Internet. And their second revenue source — touring — makes them highly motivated to connect with far-flung fans.

This confluence of forces has produced a curious inflection point: for rock musicians, being a bit of a nerd now helps you become successful. When I spoke with Damian Kulash, the lead singer for the band OK Go, he discoursed like a professor on the six-degrees-of-separation theory, talking at one point about "rhizomatic networks." (You can Google it.) Kulash has put his networking expertise to good use: last year, OK Go displayed a canny understanding of online dynamics when it posted on YouTube a low-budget homemade video that showed the band members dancing on treadmills to their song "Here It Goes Again." The video quickly became one of the site's all-time biggest hits. It led to the band's live treadmill performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, which in turn led to a Grammy Award for best video.

This is not a trend that affects A-list stars. The most famous corporate acts — Justin Timberlake, Fergie, Beyoncé — are still creatures of mass marketing, carpet-bombed into popularity by expensive ad campaigns and radio airplay. They do not need the online world to find listeners, and indeed, their audiences are too vast for any artist to even pretend intimacy with. No, this is a trend that is catalyzing the B-list, the new, under-the-radar acts that have always built their success fan by fan. Across the country, the CD business is in a spectacular free fall; sales are down 20 percent this year alone. People are increasingly getting their music online (whether or not they're paying for it), and it seems likely that the artists who forge direct access to their fans have the best chance of figuring out what the new economics of the music business will be.

The universe of musicians making their way online includes many bands that function in a traditional way — signing up with a label — while using the Internet primarily as a means of promotion, the way OK Go has done. Two-thirds of OK Go's album sales are still in the physical world: actual CDs sold through traditional CD stores. But the B-list increasingly includes a newer and more curious life-form: performers like Coulton, who construct their entire business model online. Without the Internet, their musical careers might not exist at all. Coulton has forgone a record-label contract; instead, he uses a growing array of online tools to sell music directly to fans. He contracts with a virtual fulfillment house called CD Baby, which warehouses his CDs, processes the credit-card payment for each sale and ships it out, while pocketing only $4 of the album's price, a much smaller cut than a traditional label would take. CD Baby also places his music on the major digital-music stores like iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster. Most lucratively, Coulton sells MP3s from his own personal Web sites, where there's no middleman at all.

In total, 41 percent of Coulton's income is from digital-music sales, three-quarters of which are sold directly off his own Web site. Another 29 percent of his income is from CD sales; 18 percent is from ticket sales for his live shows. The final 11 percent comes from T-shirts, often bought online.

Indeed, running a Web store has allowed Coulton and other artists to experiment with intriguing innovations in flexible pricing. Remarkably, Coulton offers most of his music free on his site; when fans buy his songs, it is because they want to give him money. The Canadian folk-pop singer Jane Siberry has an even more clever system: she has a "pay what you can" policy with her downloadable songs, so fans can download them free — but her site also shows the average price her customers have paid for each track. This subtly creates a community standard, a generalized awareness of how much people think each track is really worth. The result? The average price is as much as $1.30 a track, more than her fans would pay at iTunes.

Yet this phenomenon isn't merely about money and business models. In many ways, the Internet's biggest impact on artists is emotional. When you have thousands of fans interacting with you electronically, it can feel as if you're on stage 24 hours a day.

"I vacillate so much on this," Tad Kubler told me one evening in March. "I'm like, I want to keep some privacy, some sense of mystery. But I also want to have this intimacy with our fans. And I'm not sure you can have both." Kubler is the guitarist for the Brooklyn-based rock band the Hold Steady, and I met up with him at a Japanese bar in Pittsburgh, where the band was performing on its latest national tour. An exuberant but thoughtful blond-surfer type, Kubler drank a Sapporo beer and explained how radically the Internet had changed his life on the road. His previous band existed before the Web became ubiquitous, and each town it visited was a mystery: Would 20 people come out? Would two? When the Hold Steady formed four years ago, Kubler immediately signed up for a MySpace page, later adding a discussion board, and curious fans were drawn in like iron filings to a magnet. Now the band's board teems with fans asking technical questions about Kubler's guitars, swapping bootlegged MP3 recordings of live gigs with each other, organizing carpool drives to see the band. Some send e-mail messages to Kubler from cities where the band will be performing in a couple of weeks, offering to design, print and distribute concert posters free. As the band's appointed geek, Kubler handles the majority of its online audience relations; fans at gigs chant his online screen-name, "Koob."

"It's like night and day, man," Kubler said, comparing his current situation with his pre-Internet musical career. "It's awesome now."

Kubler regards fan interaction as an obligation that is cultural, almost ethical. He remembers what it was like to be a young fan himself, enraptured by the members of Led Zeppelin. "That's all I wanted when I was a fan, right?" he said. "To have some small contact with these guys you really dug. I think I'm still that way. I'll be, like, devastated if I never meet Jimmy Page before I die." Indeed, for a guitarist whose arms are bedecked in tattoos and who maintains an aggressive schedule of drinking, Kubler seems genuinely touched by the shy queries he gets from teenagers.

"If some kid is going to take 10 minutes out of his day to figure out what he wants to say in an e-mail, and then write it and send it, for me to not take the 5 minutes to say, dude, thanks so much — for me to ignore that?" He shrugged. "I can't."

Yet Kubler sometimes has second thoughts about the intimacy. Part of the allure of rock, when he was a kid, was the shadowy glamour that surrounded his favorite stars. He'd parse their lyrics to try to figure out what they were like in person. Now he wonders: Are today's online artists ruining their own aura by blogging? Can you still idolize someone when you know what they had for breakfast this morning? "It takes a little bit of the mystery out of rock 'n' roll," he said.

So Kubler has cultivated a skill that is unique to the age of Internet fandom, and perhaps increasingly necessary to it, as well: a nuanced ability to seem authentic and confessional without spilling over into a Britney Spears level of information overload. He doesn't post about his home life, doesn't mention anything about his daughter or girlfriend — and he certainly doesn't describe any of the ill-fated come-ons he deflects from addled female fans who don't realize he's in a long-term relationship. (Another useful rule he imparts to me: Post in the morning, when you're no longer drunk.)

There's something particularly weird, the band members have also found, about living with fans who can now trade information — and misinformation — about them. All celebrities are accustomed to dealing with reporters; but fans represent a new, wild-card form of journalism. Franz Nicolay, the Hold Steady's nattily-dressed keyboardist, told me that he now becomes slightly paranoid while drinking with fans after a show, because he's never sure if what he says will wind up on someone's blog. After a recent gig in Britain, Nicolay idly mentioned to a fan that he had heard that Bruce Springsteen liked the Hold Steady. Whoops: the next day, that factoid was published on a fan blog, "and it had, like, 25 comments!" Nicolay said. So now he carefully polices what he says in casual conversation, which he thinks is a weird thing for a rock star to do. "You can't be the drunken guy who just got offstage anymore," he said with a sigh. "You start acting like a pro athlete, saying all these banal things after you get off the field." For Nicolay, the intimacy of the Internet has made postshow interactions less intimate and more guarded.

The Hold Steady's online audience has grown so huge that Kubler, like Jonathan Coulton, is struggling to bear the load. It is the central paradox of online networking: if you're really good at it, your audience quickly grows so big that you can no longer network with them. The Internet makes fame more quickly achievable — and more quickly unmanageable. In the early days of the Hold Steady, Kubler fielded only a few e-mail messages a day, and a couple of "friend" requests on MySpace. But by this spring, he was receiving more than 100 communications from fans each day, and he was losing as much as two or three hours a day dealing with them. "People will say to me, 'Hey, dude, how come you haven't posted a bulletin lately?' " Kubler told me. "And I'm like, 'I haven't done one because every time I do we get 300 messages and I spend a day going through them!' "

To cope with the flood, the Hold Steady has programmed a software robot to automatically approve the 100-plus "friend" requests it receives on MySpace every day. Other artists I spoke to were testing out similar tricks, including automatic e-mail macros that generate instant "thank you very much" replies to fan messages. Virtually everyone bemoaned the relentless and often boring slog of keyboarding. It is, of course, precisely the sort of administrative toil that people join rock bands to avoid.

Even the most upbeat artist eventually crashes and burns. Indeed, fan interactions seem to surf along a sine curve, as an artist's energy for managing the emotional demands waxes and wanes. As I roamed through online discussion boards and blogs, the tone was nearly always pleasant, even exuberant — fans politely chatting with their favorite artists or gushing praise. But inevitably, out of the blue, the artist would be overburdened, or a fan would feel slighted, and some minor grievance would flare up. At the end of March, a few weeks after I talked with Kubler in Pittsburgh, I logged on to the Hold Steady's discussion board to discover that he had posted an angry notice about fans who sent him nasty e-mail messages complaining that the band wasn't visiting their cities. "I honestly cannot believe some of the e-mails, hate mail and otherwise total [expletive] I've been hearing," he wrote. "We're coming to rock. Please be ready."

Another evening I visited the message board for the New York post-punk band Nada Surf, where a fan posted a diatribe attacking the bass player for refusing to sign an autograph at a recent show, prompting an extended fan discussion of whether the bass player was a jerk or not. A friend of mine pointed me to the remarkable plight of Poppy Z. Brite, a novelist who in 2005 accused fans on a discussion board of being small-minded about children — at which point her fans banned her from the board.

When Jonathan Coulton first began writing his weekly songs, he carefully tracked how many people listened to each one on his Web site. His listenership rose steadily, from around 1,000 a week at first to 50,000 by the end of his yearlong song-a-week experiment. But there were exceptions to this gradual rise: five songs that became breakout "hits," receiving almost 10 times as many listeners as the songs that preceded and followed them. The first hit was an improbable cover song: Coulton's deadpan version of the 1992 Sir Mix-a-Lot rap song "Baby Got Back," performed like a hippie folk ballad. Another was "Code Monkey," his pop song about a disaffected cubicle worker.

Obviously, Coulton was thrilled when his numbers popped, not least because the surge of traffic produced thousands more dollars in sales. But the successes also tortured him: he would rack his brains trying to figure out why people loved those particular songs so much. What had he done right? Could he repeat the same trick?

"Every time I had a hit, it would sort of ruin me for a few weeks," he told me. "I would feel myself being a little bit repressed in my creativity, and ideas would not come to me as easily. Or else I would censor myself a little bit more." His fans, he realized, were most smitten by his geekier songs, the ones that referenced science fiction, mathematics or video games. Whenever he branches out and records more traditional pop fare, he worries it will alienate his audience.

For many of these ultraconnected artists, it seems the nature of creativity itself is changing. It is no longer a solitary act: their audiences are peering over their shoulders as they work, offering pointed comments and suggestions. When OK Go released its treadmill-dancing video on YouTube, it quickly amassed 15 million views, a number so big that it is, as Kulash, the singer, told me, slightly surreal. "Fifteen million people is more than you can see," he said. "It's like this big mass of ants, and you're sitting at home in your underpants to see how many times you've been downloaded, and you can sort of feel the ebb and flow of mass attention." Fans pestered him to know what the band's next video would be; some even suggested the band try dancing on escalators. Kulash was conflicted. He didn't want to be known just for making goofy videos; he also wanted people to pay attention to OK Go's music. In the end, the band decided not to do another dance video, because, as Kulash concluded, "How do you follow up 15 million hits?" All the artists I spoke to made a point of saying they would never simply pander to their fans' desires. But many of them also said that staying artistically "pure" now requires the mental discipline of a ninja.

These days, Coulton is wondering whether an Internet-built fan base inevitably hits a plateau. Many potential Coulton fans are fanatical users of MySpace and YouTube, of course; but many more aren't, and the only way for him to reach them is via traditional advertising, which he can't afford, or courting media attention, a wearying and decidedly old-school task. Coulton's single biggest spike in traffic to his Web site took place last December, when he appeared on NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday," a fact that, he notes, proves how powerful old-fashioned media still are. (And "Weekend Edition" is orders of magnitude smaller than major entertainment shows like MTV's "Total Request Live," which can make a new artist in an afternoon.) Perhaps there's no way to use the Internet to vault from the B-list to the A-list and the only bands that sell millions of copies will always do it via a well-financed major-label promotion campaign. "Maybe this is what my career will be," Coulton said: slowly building new fans online, playing live occasionally, making a solid living but never a crazy-rich one. He's considered signing on with a label or a cable network to try to chase a higher circle of fame, but that would mean giving up control. And, he says, "I think I'm addicted to running my own show now."

Will the Internet change the type of person who becomes a musician or writer? It's possible to see these online trends as Darwinian pressures that will inevitably produce a new breed — call it an Artist 2.0 — and mark the end of the artist as a sensitive, bohemian soul who shuns the spotlight. In "The Catcher in the Rye," J. D. Salinger wrote about how reading a good book makes you want to call up the author and chat with him, which neatly predicted the modern online urge; but Salinger, a committed recluse, wouldn't last a minute in this confessional new world. Neither would, say, Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies, a singer who was initially so intimidated by a crowd that she would sit facing the back of the stage. What happens to art when people like that are chased away?

It is also possible, though, that this is simply a natural transition point and that the next generation of musicians and artists — even the avowedly "sensitive" ones — will find the constant presence of their fans unremarkable. The psychological landscape has arguably already tilted that way for anyone under 20. There are plenty of teenagers today who regard themselves as "private" individuals, yet who post openly about their everyday activities on Facebook or LiveJournal, complete with camera-phone pictures. For that generation, the line between public and private is so blurry as to become almost nonexistent. Any teenager with a MySpace page is already fluent in managing a constant stream of dozens of semianonymous people clamoring to befriend them; if those numbers rise to hundreds or even thousands, maybe, for them, it won't be a big deal. It's also true that many recluses in real life flower on the Internet, which can famously be a place of self-expression and self-reinvention.

While researching this article, I occasionally scanned the list of top-rated bands on MySpace — the ones with the most "friends." One of the biggest was a duo called the Scene Aesthetic, whose MySpace presence had sat atop several charts (folk, pop, rock) for a few months. I called Andrew de Torres, a 21-year-old Seattle resident and a co-founder of the group, to find out his story. De Torres, who played in a few emo bands as a teenager, had the idea for the Scene Aesthetic in January 2005, when he wrote a song that required two dueling male voices. He called his friend Eric Bowley, and they recorded the song — an aching ballad called "Beauty in the Breakdown" — in a single afternoon in Bowley's basement. They posted it to MySpace, figuring it might get a couple of listens. But the song clearly struck a chord with the teen-heavy MySpace audience, and within days it had racked up thousands of plays. Requests to be the duo's "friend" came surging in, along with messages demanding more songs. De Torres and Bowley quickly banged out three more; when those went online, their growing fan base urged them to produce a full album and to go on tour.

"It just sort of accidentally turned into this huge thing," de Torres told me when I called him up. "We thought this was a little side project. We thought we wouldn't do much with it. We just threw it up online." Now their album is due out this summer, and they have roughly 22,000 people a day listening to their songs on MySpace, plus more than 180,000 "friends." A cross-country tour that ended last December netted them "a pretty good amount of money," de Torres added.

This sort of career arc was never previously possible. If you were a singer with only one good song, there was no way to release it independently on a global scale — and thus no way of knowing if there was a market for your talent. But the online fan world has different gravitational physics: on the basis of a single tune, the Scene Aesthetic kick-started an entire musical career.

Which is perhaps the end result of the new online fan world: it allows a fresh route to creative success, assuming the artist has the correct emotional tools. De Torres, a decade or more younger than Coulton and the Hold Steady, is a natural Artist 2.0: he happily spends two hours a day or more parsing notes from teenagers who tell him "your work totally got me through some rough times." He knows that to lure in listeners, he needs to post some of his work on MySpace, but since he wants people to eventually buy his album, he doesn't want to give away all his goods. He has thus developed an ear for what he calls "the perfect MySpace song" — a tune that is immediately catchy, yet not necessarily the strongest from his forthcoming album. For him, being a musician is rather like being a business manager, memoirist and group therapist rolled into one, with a politician's thick hide to boot.

Clive Thompson, a contributing writer, writes frequently about technology for the magazine.

Christopherson is a Grammy-voting member of National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS). Internationally published BMI songwriter and producer.

While producing in Los Angeles over a 10-year period, Christopherson learned from industry veterans in studios where artists like STEELY DAN, ELTON JOHN, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, THE EAGLES, MICHAEL JACKSON and AEROSMITH recorded.

Christopherson worked with GENE MEROS who has recorded KISS and VAN HALEN. Hollywood producer TOBY WRIGHT (ALICE IN CHAINS and THIRD EYE BLIND) mixed tunes for Christopherson at Can-Am Studios. TOM HALL, who produced QUEENSRYCHE and worked with the PAUL ALLEN GROUP, has been a part of Christopherson's production team on many occasions. In Hollywood, Daniel produced at OCEAN WAY STUDIOS and PARAMOUNT RECORDING with acclaimed producer KIM FOWLEY (JOAN JETT and ALICE COOPER), and later recorded with MATT BISSONETTE and GREG BISSONETTE (JOE SATRIANI, DAVID LEE ROTH, STEVE VAI, JIMMY PAGE).

At the L.A. Street Scene, Christopherson performed with GUNS 'N ROSES in front of 30,000 and MTV camera crews. MIKE FOSS, whose clients include NIRVANA, PEARLJAM, FOO FIGHTERS and SOUNDGARDEN, assisted with the "Automatic Girl" and "6-String Rainbow" cuts on One Zillion Guitars.

Daniel produced ROUNDABOUT, who won the "Best Seattle Band" award as voted by KISS-FM, Universal Studios in Hollywood, Nordstrom's and Gene Stout at the Seattle P-I. While engineering the Roundabout project, ERIC JANKO used the recording techniques he learned from LED ZEPELLIN engineer ANDY JOHNS.

Christopherson recently performed at EMP with LARA LAVI, whose touring credits include PETER GABRIEL, WOMAD, LIVE and PAULA COLE. Lara's songwriting collaborations include KURT COBAIN.  

Live radio interview on Randy Allar's legendary Fusion Show in Cleveland- WCSB. Other guests have included JOE SATRIANI, ERIC JOHNSON AND STEVE VAI and virtually every other guitar maestro on the scene today.

Daniel's original music will be featured in the new extreme sports TV show, "Core Culture," created by the producers of SHOWTIME and FOX TELEVISION, and included in WARREN MILLER ENTERTAINMENT'S 54th annual feature ski and snowboard travelogue documentary titled "Warren Miller's Journey." Journey will theatrically tour across the United States, Canada, U.K., Australia, and New Zealand to over 500,000 people, and be released on DVD for home video and television.

----- Original Message -----

Anxious to get your CD to the local radio station? Radio stations receive as many as 250 CD's each week. They then compensate interns with free CD's (often the CD submissions from independent artists!), since they don't have resources to review that much new music. In most cases, non-major label bands that achieve radio airplay are those who understand the role of independent radio promoters.

This is a partial list of radio stations that have played songs written or co-written and produced by Daniel Christopherson. At the bottom find information about syndicated shows. When a syndicated radio show airs, stations in many other cities "pick it up," broadcasting it simultaneously to their own audiences. In this case, syndicated radio shows total an ADDITIONAL 495 RADIO STATIONS.

WWSP STEVENS POINT
WUSB STONYBROOK
WVUA TUSCALOOSA
KROQ LOS ANGELES
KCME COLORADO SPRINGS 
KCMU SEATTLE
KISS-FM SEATTLE
KFMG ALBUQUERQUE
KFMH MUSCATINE
KFMX LUBBOK
KGB SAN DIEGO
KGUR SAN LUIS OBISPO
KICT WICHITA
KJJO MINNEAPOLIS
KISS SAN ANTONIO
KJOT BOISE
KMSA GRAND JUNCTION
KNCN CORPUS CHRISTI
KOZZ RENO
KQQK BELLAIRE 
KRFA FAYETTEVILLE
KRZQ RENO
KSLC MCMINNVILLE
KSMC AORAGA
KTEC KLAMATH
KUCB VICTORIA
KWLN MEMPHIS
WAIF CINCINNATI
WARC MEADVILLE
WBAB LONG ISLAND
WBIM MANCHESTER
WBNY BUFFALO
WBYR BUFFALO
WCDB ALBANY
WCWP GREENVILLE
WDHA DOVER
WEOS GENEVA
WFBG ALTOONA
WFCS NEW BRITAIN
WGMU FAIRFAX
WHDG HAVRE DEGRACE
WHFS ANNAPOLIS
WHJY PROVIDENCE
WHMH ST. CLOUD
WHUS STORRS
WIXV SAVANNAH
WKNC RALEIGH
WKNH KEENE
WKVU VILLANOVA
WLFT EAST LANSING
WNGS WATKINS GLEN
WNYU NEW YORK
WONE CLEVELAND 
WOUR UTICA 
WOXY CINCINNATI
WPPN NEW ROCHELLE
WPYX ALBANY
WRDL ASHLAND
WRFL LEXINGTON
WRIU VALHALLA
WVVS VALDOSTA
WWUH WEST HARTFORD
WXLP DAVENPORT
WXRC HICKORY
WZMV GREENVILLE
Z ROCK (SATELLITE) 
KAJK Eureka CA 
KASU State University AR 
KAZU Pacific Grove CA 
KCLC St. Charles MO 
KCSS Turlock CA 
KGVA Harlem MT 
KMUD Redway CA 
KNON Dallas TX 
KOCV Odessa TX 
KOPN Columbia MO 
KOTO Telluride CO 
KOTR San Luis Obispo CA
KPBX Spokane WA 
KPHS Plains TX 
KRNI Cedar Falls IA 
KRUX Las Cruces NM 
KRVM Eugene OR 
KRVS Lafayette LA 
KSER Lynnwood WA 
KSYD Eugene OR 
KTTN Trenton MO 
KUFM Missoula MT 
KUNM Albuquerque NM 
KWAN Gualala CA 
KXRJ Russellville AR 
KZFR Chico CA 
KZUM Lincoln NE 
WBAI New York NY 
WBZC Pemberton NJ 
WCRX Chicago IL 
WDMT Eufaula AL 
WEIU Charleston IL 
WGDR Plainfield VT 
WIIS Key West FL 
WKCS Knoxville TN 
WKHG Leitchfield KY 
WLBH Mattoon IL 
WMBR Cambridge MA 
WNHU West Haven CT 
WNJC Sewell NJ 
WNYU New York NY 
WOPP Opp AL 
WORX Madison IN 
WRFG Atlanta GA 
WRNR Annapolis MD 
WRVO Oswego NY 
WSGE Dallas NC 
WTCC Springfield MA
WWSP STEVENS POINT
WUSB STONYBROOK
WVUA TUSCALOOSA
KROQ LOS ANGELES
KCME COLORADO SPRINGS 
KCMU SEATTLE
KISS-FM SEATTLE
KFMG ALBUQUERQUE
KFMH MUSCATINE
KFMX LUBBOK
KGB SAN DIEGO
KGUR SAN LUIS OBISPO
KICT WICHITA
KJJO MINNEAPOLIS
KISS SAN ANTONIO
KJOT BOISE
KMSA GRAND JUNCTION
KNCN CORPUS CHRISTI
KOZZ RENO
KQQK BELLAIRE 
KRFA FAYETTEVILLE
KRZQ RENO
KSLC MCMINNVILLE
KSMC AORAGA
KTEC KLAMATH
KUCB VICTORIA
KWLN MEMPHIS
WAIF CINCINNATI
WARC MEADVILLE
WBAB LONG ISLAND
WBIM MANCHESTER
WBNY BUFFALO
WBYR BUFFALO
WCDB ALBANY
WCWP GREENVILLE
WDHA DOVER
WEOS GENEVA
WFBG ALTOONA
WFCS NEW BRITAIN
WGMU FAIRFAX
WHDG HAVRE DEGRACE
WHFS ANNAPOLIS
WHJY PROVIDENCE
WHMH ST. CLOUD
WHUS STORRS
WIXV SAVANNAH
WKNC RALEIGH
WKNH KEENE
WKVU VILLANOVA
WLFT EAST LANSING
WNGS WATKINS GLEN
WNYU NEW YORK
WONE CLEVELAND 
WOUR UTICA 
WOXY CINCINNATI
WPPN NEW ROCHELLE
WPYX ALBANY
WRDL ASHLAND
WRFL LEXINGTON
WRIU VALHALLAWWUH WEST HARTFORD
WXLP DAVENPORT
WXRC HICKORY
WZMV GREENVILLE
Z ROCK (SATELLITE) 
KAJK Eureka CA 
KASU State University AR 
KAZU Pacific Grove CA 
KCLC St. Charles MO 
KCSS Turlock CA 
KGVA Harlem MT 
KMUD Redway CA 
KNON Dallas TX 
KOCV Odessa TX 
KOPN Columbia MO 
KOTO Telluride CO 
KOTR San Luis Obispo CA
KPBX Spokane WA 
KPHS Plains TX 
KRNI Cedar Falls IA 
KRUX Las Cruces NM 
KRVM Eugene OR 
KRVS Lafayette LA 
KSER Lynnwood WA 
KSYD Eugene OR 
KTTN Trenton MO 
KUFM Missoula MT 
KUNM Albuquerque NM 
KWAN Gualala CA 
KXRJ Russellville AR 
KZFR Chico CA 
KZUM Lincoln NE 
WBAI New York NY 
WBZC Pemberton NJ 
WCRX Chicago IL 
WDMT Eufaula AL 
WEIU Charleston IL 
WGDR Plainfield VT 
WIIS Key West FL 
WKCS Knoxville TN 
WKHG Leitchfield KY 
WLBH Mattoon IL 
WMBR Cambridge MA 
WNHU West Haven CT 
WNJC Sewell NJ 
WNYU New York NY 
WOPP Opp AL 
WORX Madison IN 
WRFG Atlanta GA 
WRNR Annapolis MD 
WRVO Oswego NY 
WSGE Dallas NC 
WTCC Springfield MA 
KRVM-Eugene, OR
WLNZ-Lansing, MI
KKCR-Kauai, HI
KLCC-Eugene, OR
KUNC-Greeley, CO
KXCI-Tucson, AZ
WDIY-Lehigh, PA
WERS-Boston, MA
WERU-East Orland, ME
WUMB-Boston, MA
WEVL-Memphis, TN
WFHB-Bloomington, IN
WGWG-Spartanburg, NC
WMNF-Tampa, FL
WNKU-Highland Heights, KY
WCBE-Columbus, OH
WCOO-Charleston, SC
WEHM-Amagansett, NY
WQKL-Ann Arbor, MI
KAOS-Olympia, WA
KMTT-Seattle, WA
KSER-Everett, WA
KBCS-Bellevue, WA
KOHO-Leavenworth, WA
KRVM-Eugene, OR
WLNZ-Lansing, MI
KKCR-Kauai, HI
KLCC-Eugene, OR
KUNC-Greeley, CO
KXCI-Tucson, AZ
WDIY-Lehigh, PA
WERS-Boston, MA
WERU-East Orland, ME
WUMB-Boston, MA
WEVL-Memphis, TN
WFHB-Bloomington, IN
WGWG-Spartanburg, NC
WMNF-Tampa, FL
WNKU-Highland Heights, KY
WCBE-Columbus, OH
WCOO-Charleston, SC
WEHM-Amagansett, NY
WQKL-Ann Arbor, MI
KAOS-Olympia, WA
KMTT-Seattle, WA
KSER-Everett, WA
KBCS-Bellevue, WA
KOHO-Leavenworth, WA 

WSAM 417 US Stations 
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