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Favorite non-commercial Music Station? Also, any of them playing pop?

M

mcrawford620

I've recently been listening to a ton of different public, non-commercial NPR stations for their music. I love how they basically play what they consider to be good music without having to kowtow to the dollar bills (well, other than pledge drives, I guess). Then it's just a matter of finding ones where their idea of good music is the same as mine.

My favorite has turned out to be KCSN 88.5 in Northridge. Their DJs are really, really good at playing good music. They play a lot of newer alternative-ish stuff, which is pretty good. But the other stuff they play is just an excellent selection of older rock, alternative, and the occasional offbeat track. They have real DJs and they each have a little bit of their own feel; my favorite is the mid-day guy, Jim Nelson.

The other one that's a close second is KXT 91.7 in Texas. Again, same basic playlist of the newer alternative-ish stuff (I don't know what else to call Mumford & Sons (blech), Black Keys, Avett Brothers). But the other stuff is very well chosen. It ends up sounding different than KCSN because it's a little more Texas. A little more country feel (not much real country, though), southern. Overall, really great.

Third I would go with The Current out of Minnesota. They lean a tiny bit too heavily on the newer stuff, so you'll hear more repeats there from day-to-day. But overall it's excellent.

The rest of the NPR stuff tends to lean too much to the indie rock side, trying to play stuff that is too obscure. One of them that is most well-known, KCRW in Los Angeles, is like that. I always listen to it when I'm in LA in the car, and it's good. But I don't need to hear that much obscure stuff except once in a while. The idea is not to play just more music, the idea should be to play more good music.



The one thing I haven't found is anyone playing pop music. I'd love to find one that is non-commercial (so again, not fettered by pleasing advertisers) but plays a lot of good pop music. Anyone know of any station like that?
 
My favorites:

The Current
WXPN
KCRW
KEXP

One thing about KCRW is they've adapted the "AAA" noncomm format to their city very well, and allow an urban and electronic influence into the programming, which I like. KCSN is doing a good job from a different angle.

I'm not sure if by pop you mean "current" pop material, but for oldies, there's a noncomm university owned AM playing over 5,000 titles:

www.realoldies1480.org

That's gotten some positive reviews - to be fair, I haven't spent much time with it but people seem to appreciate what they're doing.
 
stevensonair said:
My favorites:

The Current
WXPN
KCRW
KEXP

One thing about KCRW is they've adapted the "AAA" noncomm format to their city very well, and allow an urban and electronic influence into the programming, which I like. KCSN is doing a good job from a different angle.

I'm not sure if by pop you mean "current" pop material, but for oldies, there's a noncomm university owned AM playing over 5,000 titles:

www.realoldies1480.org

That's gotten some positive reviews - to be fair, I haven't spent much time with it but people seem to appreciate what they're doing.
Click to expand...

I discovered the 1480 via DTV sporadic-E DX...it's also channel 52.4 of WGVU/WGVK. It's on my YouTube, at the 1:00 mark, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSuq0hMjHs4&list=UUYf_DIrNdVXS8drqf3xrTag&index=6

cd
 
stevensonair said:
My favorites:

The Current
WXPN
KCRW
KEXP

One thing about KCRW is they've adapted the "AAA" noncomm format to their city very well, and allow an urban and electronic influence into the programming, which I like. KCSN is doing a good job from a different angle.

I'm not sure if by pop you mean "current" pop material, but for oldies, there's a noncomm university owned AM playing over 5,000 titles:

www.realoldies1480.org

That's gotten some positive reviews - to be fair, I haven't spent much time with it but people seem to appreciate what they're doing.
Click to expand...

KEXP is definitely another good one that I've listened to a lot, but they definitely skew towards indie stuff. I'm a huge indie fan, but still I like a little more variety.

That's a good point about KCRW playing some urban and electronic stuff, you won't hear that almost anywhere else.

One thing I've noticed that is funny is that a lot of the stations follow the lead of David Dye's World Cafe. He'll play a deep older track on his show, and then instantly in the next few days, you'll see that exact same deep track played on a bunch of NPR stations. It's not terrible, because David Dye is picking really good music, but it is a little strange.



As for pop, I was actually thinking of both older and current stuff. That could really be the advantage of a non-comm station, that it could play some current stuff mixed with Madonna, Prince, some lite dance stuff, on back to the Beach Boys / Supremes. Basically The Current or KCSN but playing pop instead of alternative/rock, mixing in old and new.

But thanks for the tip, that is definitely a good oldies playlist and I haven't heard that for a while. -- Edit: Wow, that oldies playlist really is deeper than normal. Very nice.
 
techie2 said:
I'm also not sure what you mean by pop, but WSWO-LP is a noncommercial LPFM with an oldies format. www.daytonoldies.org

University of Akron's WZIP is a noncommercial station playing current CHR/pop.
www.wzip88.com
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I'll check out those too, thanks! Like I answered above, I'm still looking for someone who is mixing up the current with what gets called "Adult Hits" and Oldies too.
 
I was gonna say: "No love for WERS???" And don't forget WFMU in NYC, either.

One thing I've noticed that is funny is that a lot of the stations follow the lead of David Dye's World Cafe. He'll play a deep older track on his show, and then instantly in the next few days, you'll see that exact same deep track played on a bunch of NPR stations. It's not terrible, because David Dye is picking really good music, but it is a little strange.
Click to expand...

That's in part because David Dye, and rest of the crew at WXPN, are the major driving influence of all triple-A music at NPR. Hell, it's largely because of WXPN's efforts that NPR got into triple-A in the first place. So they end up being the leading indicator for music on a lot of triple-A NPR outlets, too.

I think it was in 2009 I was at Non-Commvention at WXPN talking with a label rep and she told me the three stations they focus on...almost to the exclusion of everything thing...were KCRW, WXPN and WFMU. Get airplay on those, and you're golden. I think in 2013 you'd want to expand that to KUT Austin, KKXT Dallas, KEXP Seattle and KCMP/The Current Minneapolis...quite possibly KCSN in LA, too - their signal is nowhere near as good as KCRW's but they've done an impressive job of coming back from the brink of dissolution to provide a nice on-air product.
 
Two votes for WERS, I'll definitely give it a try. A quick glance at the playlist looks pretty nice. I had not heard of it yet because my source for stations to try has been http://www.npr.org/music/radio, and WERS is not listed there, because I guess they are not an NPR affiliate. Same with WFMU.

That's very interesting about David Dye and your conversation with the label rep!

I've tried WXPN as well, but their stream runs a little too much AAA for me. Actually it's revealing that you're describing these as AAA, which I never realized before, because commercial AAA radio stations are just about my least favorite out there (KFOG is the big one up here). The ratio of what I think of as "bland rock" is just too high. The NPR stations have more latitude, of course, so that ratio isn't so high.
 
Indeed! "Triple-A" means very different things to commercial and non-commercial stations. For non-comm's, it's basically a more refined version of the "we play anything" concept of "Jack", and retaining knowledgeable DJ's. The playlist is pretty broad but usually it skews somewhat to classic rock and oldies since the primary demographic is on the older side, too. Baby boomers, mostly. The difference is that the DJ's are (usually) good enough to examine what makes those tunes popular to that crowd, and then they extrapolate which modern tracks would be likely to appeal as well. Hence why Mumford & Sons and the Decemberists get the crap played out of them on World Cafe. :)
 
Ha, no kidding. Two of the ickiest bands right now, in my opinion. But you're right, they are doing a good job of picking the music people will like.
 
I was interested to listen to "Echoes" from PRI on a recent trip to the South. It seemed out of place in between a re-run of "Fresh Air" and BBC World Service all night, but was a well-done program nonetheless.
 
EJM said:
I don't listen to them myself, but both Seattle's KNHC (http://www.c895.org) and the Phoenix area's KVIT (http://goldmineradio.com) are well-regarded CHR outlets.

Also, Mercyhurst University in Erie recently flipped its FM station to simulcast the Oldies format of its AM; see http://wmce.mercyhurst.edu.
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Thanks, looks good, I'll give them a try!

Now all I need is something in between a CHR and an Oldies station! Any non-commercial stations playing an 80s/90s type mix (doesn't have to be exclusively 80s/90s but something like that, in between)?
 
I've often though that non-commercial radio is missing bet with oldies and standards - now that commercial radio has abandoned both formats. Public TV seems to court older audiences at times - especially pledge times - and they get good support from people out of the money demos. I assume the same people would support "their music" on non-commercial radio, just as they do on non-commercial TV.

There are to non-comm nostalgia stations in my area. Reception is poor, so I don't get to listen except when I'm driving in the right direction (and remember to listen). Even so, these are clearly hobby stations with volunteers, apparently with their own record collections, playing what they want. Sometimes it's good; sometimes it's not. For it to work with oldies or standards, the station has to be as professional as the better classical, jazz and alternative stations are in their formats.
 
I don't believe younger listeners are all that likely to support.
Are there any stats to confirm or refute my thought?
 
One station I've been impressed by, for doing something different, is NPR affiliate KCEP out of Las Vegas. They're playing all kinds of soul and R&B -- old, new, everywhere in between, depending on the day. A real nice change from the typical NPR AAA format.
 
I'll chime in with KPCW in Park City, Utah. They run a morning news block and the same in the afternoon although a song or two got tossed in here or there. The midday and evening music segments hosted by volunteers make use of their 3,000 song playlist and is rather unique. Some stuff you typically don't find on radio is mixed with mostly classic rock. Instead of the same old tired songs, you might get Preluse Northing to Hide by Spirit from 12 Dreams of Dr. Sandonicus, etc. The station is very 'local' with PSAs, weather, NPR News, local news department and even a lost and found feature. Musically the station is hard to describe, plenty of eclectic tunes tempered with familiar classics to give the station more appeal. They stream.
 
mcrawford620 said:
One station I've been impressed by, for doing something different, is NPR affiliate KCEP out of Las Vegas. They're playing all kinds of soul and R&B -- old, new, everywhere in between, depending on the day. A real nice change from the typical NPR AAA format.
Click to expand...

I'll add a plug for my local non-com AAA outlet, WYMS (88.9 Radio Milwaukee). They're basically a typical non-com AAA, but they do mix in a decent amount of urban product, mostly of the more alternative variety (Raphael Saddiq, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.) rather than the Beyonce/Kanye type fare. They also play a bit more alt-rock product, so they do tend to skew a bit younger than the softer AAAs.

Another local non-com that plays some interesting music is WMSE, which plays a heavy amount of blues and vintage rock n' roll, in addition to the typical indie and EDM found on many college stations.

Out of town, I do like KKJZ out of Long Beach, CA, a good jazz outlet. Same goes for WWOZ New Orleans. For classical, I like KING Seattle.

I do a lot of listening via TuneIn and IHeart on my phone, usually in the car. Therefore, I tend to seek out stations that offer lower bitrate AAC+ streams. KCRW and KCSN offer this, and I recently found a backdoor 56k stream for The Current that they use for flash streaming (they should publicize this one more). Of course, that would rule out stations like KEXP and WXPN that don't use that codec. They tend to offer either 128k mp3 or really bad sounding low-bitrate mp3 streams instead, which is really dumb in this day and age. Mp3 is a really outdated streaming format.
 
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