WOXY.com, the best Internet-based alternative music radio station, has announced that it is seeking contributions from listeners and subscriptions to its premium-quality music streams in order to support continue its existence.
From their website:
We're now into week 3 of our "Just Sign Up" campaign - asking you to show your support for WOXY.com and sign up for our premium members-only service for $9.95 a month. We're happy to say membership is still climbing. A big round of thanks to everyone who has signed up, contributed, and emailed their friends, loved-ones and strangers in the effort to get the word out and get people signed up. We have a ways to go, but if your staggering outpouring of support is indicative, we can get there.If you're just showing up and wondering what we're making a fuss about, find out what we're doing and why.
What you can do to help:
1. Sign up and become a member
2. Make a contribution
3. Email your friends and tell 'em how great WOXY.com is
Some things about this trouble me greatly.
First, and most obviously, is that Internet-based content is valued in a ridiculously inconsistent and unfathomable way. On one hand, AOL spent $25 million on a cluster of 50 or so established blogs. On the other hand, we have an innovative and industry-leading Internet music provider struggling to scrounge up even a hundredth of that. How is it that a text blog, which can be created (and replicated) with little expertise or capital, is valued so significantly more than a radio station with all its music industry expertise, experience, and capital investment?
Second, I wonder whether someone is potentially asleep at the wheel at WOXY.com. We've all heard how Internet-based advertising is becoming all the rage again. Could it truly be that hard to dig up some advertising contracts to support the station?
One of the comments the WOXY.com folks have made is that advertisers haven't really figured out what they are yet. Is WOXY.com a website? Certainly not just a website, but theirs is integral to the listener community. Is WOXY.com a radio station? Well, kind of, but not in the geographically bounded sense that typifies terrestrial stations. So, according to the station, advertisers don't know what to make of them yet. Well, then it's WOXY's job to tell them. It's called "selling"...something nobody at WOXY these days is apparently very good at (not that I blame the folks there...I, myself, suck at selling). Sounds like they need WKRP's Herb Tarlek to round up some advertising accounts.
Finally, this situation clearly demonstrates that creativity, artistic talent, and good intentions are ultimately dependent upon some business savvy in order to survive in the corporate world. I personally like the folks at WOXY -- they've always been fantastic to their listeners and truly dedicated to the music they play -- but they don't seem interested in understanding how businesses grow and prosper. I'm not saying everyone there needs to know...but at least someone should.
In the interim, between now and when they go off the air (again), go visit their website and give them a listen -- I bet you a dollar that you'll like what you hear...a lot.
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