WFMU and the Wonderful World of Freeform Webcasting

When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey I was lucky enough to be within range of the most creative and stimulating radio station on the planet, WFMU.

For decades it was a typical little college station, broadcasting basketball games, classical music, and school announcements. Then in the summer of 1968, as the legend goes, the administrators of the college went on vacation but forgot to lock the studio and turn off the transmitter. A group of students set up residence there and began broadcasting all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff 24-hours a day: avant-garde jazz, beatnik poetry, spacey progressive rock, raw delta blues, lectures on zen Buddhism, raunchy comedy, political manifestos, stoner raps, phone pranks, etc. etc. --- all commercial-free.

The tiny station became a sensation with the hippies, artists and intellectuals of Manhattan's East Village, who had figured out how to pick up the signal using jerry-rigged antenneas made from coat-hangers, tin-foil and raw potatoes (I'm not kidding!). Thus little WFMU became one of the nation's most outstanding exemplars of the "freeform" radio format in the largest market in the nation. (Read more about WFMU here. Read more about freeform radio here.)


When I was a teen in the big-haired 80's, WFMU was a proud bulwark against crappy corporate radio, offering variety and and a sense of adventure and inventiveness that utterly changed my life. They were among the first to champion punk and rap; they almost single-handedly kicked off the "lounge music" craze of the 90's when they started playing long-forgotten records that their DJ's had scavenged from thrift shop bins; and when the White Stripes made "garage" mainstream in 2003, WFMU could proudly point out that they have had a continuously-running garage rock show on their schedule since the mid 70's.

When I moved to the midwest for grad school I lost touch with station, but got a chance to do my own freeform show at a similar station in Indiana, WFHB.

Then internet webcasting hit and I was once again able to listen to WFMU over the web. Today, WFMU is one of the most respected independent radio stations in America, winning Rolling Stone magazine's "best radio station" award multiple times. The college they were once associated with went bankrupt and the DJ's formed a nonprofit corporation and bought the license. They raise money through a once-a-year fund drive and have moved into a much bigger broadcast facility in Jersey City.

The variety of music they offer these days is even more impressive: everything from classic country to punk to death metal to gospel to rare soul to world music to trance to crazed rockabilly to antique phonograph records played on ancient victrolas and edison "talking machines."

Oh yeah, and also barking dog records. . .

They also have goofy call-in shows and an indescribable show in which two New Jersey fat boys play 70's and 80's records and talk about drinking beer, watching the Mets, and going to Insane Clown Posse shows---kind of like having the movie "Clerks" on the radio once a week, but with all-new material! A full listing of all their current shows is here.

I bring all this up because Dr. Kluthe, Mac Kenney, Adrienne Huser and I got into a great discussion about freeform radio in the office and we listened to WFMU's stream. Everyone agreed that more students would probably like to hear about it. We also discussed the issue of MSSU's radio station and the fact that it has never given students an opportunity to do their own creative programming. I would love to get behind a student station at MSSU---even if it was a webcast-only station, that would allow students to share their talents and musical tastes with the world. If anyone is interested, contact me and we'll see if we can put a proposal together. In the meantime, there is WFMU and other great freeform stations to inspire us and teach us about the great medium of radio---and how amazing it can be when it is not locked into the typical commercial format that dominates the airwaves.

wfmu's home page: http://www.wfmu.org/
wfmu's supremely cool blog is http://blog.wfmu.org/

To listen, click on one of the stream links at the top of the page. Almost all computer can play the Windows Media Stream. Most computers now will play the low bandwith MP3 stream (for dialup connections) or the high bandwith stereo MP3 stream (for broadband connections).

wfmu's playlists and archives http://wfmu.org/playlists (descriptions of all shows, plus archives that you can click on and listen to any time. Note, you may need to download and install the Real Audio player---it's highly recommended that you download and install the version available here (newer versions are highly intrusive and mess with your computer).

WFMU frequently asked questions: http://www.wfmu.org/faq.html


Other great freeform internet radio stations that webcast in a variety of formats:

http://www.kdvs.org/
http://www.uiowa.edu/~krui/
http://krvx.com/
http://www.wcsb.org/
http://www.desk.nl/~radio100/
http://www.wbar.org/
http://radiok.cce.umn.edu/
http://www.wcbn.org/
http://www.wfhb.org/index.shtml
http://www.wkdu.org/
http://wnyu.nyu.edu/
http://www.wrct.org/
http://www.wxdu.duke.edu/
http://www.wruw.org/
http://www.wxyc.org/
http://www.kdhx.org/
http://www.accd.edu/sac/ksym/index.htm
http://www.ckut.ca/
http://www.ciut.fm/