Eight years into the 21^st century and we are witnessing the rapid death of traditional terrestrial radio and the major record labels. Many fingers are pointed and many excuses made but the bottom line is that they just don’t get it. They refuse to see the trends in front of them every minute of every day. What’s so hard to see? Just stand on any street corner in any city or town anywhere in the world and count the people with earbuds. It’s that simple.

Still, with all the money and all the assets that today’s consolidated radio and music corporations possess, they cannot count the earbuds. I find this most astonishing since these consolidated companies are run by accountants (read bean counters) and lawyers (read litigators). Their tried and true methods just don’t work anymore. They just don’t get it. Absolute control of the market worked for eighty years and industrial consolidation only added to the destruction. You need not look any further than all the failed marketing strategies, all the failed congressional initiatives and all the failed lawsuits to see that this is true. To make matters worse, the bean counters cut the budgets and let the creative people go. In their genius to find the bottom line and increase their profits, they brought in canned programming (remember the “Jack” format?) and it served to turn off their audience. How absurd? Wasn’t it obvious that programming entertainment was their core business? Not to the bean counters, they saw their core business as programming marketing – less entertainment, more advertising! Perhaps it was just a case of trying to hold onto inflated incomes and golden parachutes that allowed them to kill creativity. Still, at the end of the day, they couldn’t count the earbuds all around them. Simply put, consolidation bred homogeny, homogeny alienated the disparate market, the market evaporated, the assets lost their value and the stock tanked. End of story.

Radio is free. To the listener, it always was and will remain that way. Radio was subsidized by the advertiser and the record label. Today, two out of three of those components are failing. Advertising cannot salvage them. So what caused it? Most analysts point to the iPod and the new technologies. That is wrong. What killed them was consolidation. Consolidation breeds homogeny and, in a creative business, homogeny creates boredom and kills creativity. The iPod filled the vacuum, that is all. Now the listener could filter the distracting clutter and really listen.

Is it radio or is it listening? It is listening, perhaps even interactive listening. The only success in radio today is found in “talk” radio. Why does Limbaugh still garner a large audience? Whatever you may think about his opinions, he is a large personality who entertains his audience. Why does Paul Harvey, at 90, still garner a large audience? Because he is a large personality who entertains his core audience. And these people listen! Where are the music personalities today? Where are the deejays with a musical attitude? How are these listener markets supplied? This is what the iPod and the new technologies supply – a way to customize listening.

So why is Podarama important? With the emergence of new listening delivery systems, Podarama encourages listening. Podarama encourages interactivity. Podarama encourages creativity. Podarama encourages the antithesis of homogeny as it encourages the diversity of the market of listeners. Why? Because earbuds count.

Welcome to Podarama’s Advanced Blog. While our regular blog allows you to embed images and videos (and even YouTube clips), this Advanced Blog (powered by WordPress) allows all of that plus lots of other very cool features (and more on the way). You can even upload your own podcast!

See, we think that Podarama is a part of the new media wave. We’ve always believed that, even back in the early days of the 21st century when we started this thing. Traditional media is over, it’s yesterday’s news. Sure, we all like to listen to radio-type media but who needs the noisy commercials, the hack disk jockeys, the loud-mouth commentators or the same songs over and over and over and over? So, we don’t do that anymore. We make our own playlists and we listen to that instead. And, while the traditional media companies are desperate to stay in the game (remember The New Jack Format? Stick a fork in it.), they just don’t get it. They never will. No, today’s media is more interactive and involved, more personal and more selective. We try to give you lots of options to enable your tastes.

We offer lots of great music by indy artists - some of it you can’t find anywhere else. Sure, some of it you can find elsewhere but our price is better and our artists keep more (we only keep 8% to cover our nut. Take that iTunes). Listen to it first and then buy it. Keep starving artists well fed and happy and productive. Do it, okay? There’s something for everyone: metal, folk, rock, jazz, blues, funk, classical, avant-guard, easy, mellow and even nuevo wavo.

We offer great podcasts and they are always free. Again, there’s a wealth of diversity to celebrate and we do our best to celebrate. Our most popular podcast is the Relax! Yoga series. So if you need to smooth out and center yourself from all the surrounding nonsense, this is for you. We first recorded these meditations in order to take the edge off commuting but we soon discovered that there was a global audience downloading them. Tree of Avalon takes it a step further and explores holistic and new age alternatives. And it’s all good.

On the musical side, The Ol’ Hippie Show is off the wall with music you’ve never heard before or maybe haven’t heard for years. Years ago, iTunes banned the Ol’ Hippie Show because they were afraid they would get into trouble for airing this stuff. Our position is that if The Ol’ Hippie doesn’t care then neither do we. There’s also Metalization, which sounds just like it’s name. ZydecoRoad On The Air brings you interviews and highlights of the Cajun/Creole/Zydeco/Louisiana/New Orleans region and it is absolutely guaranteed to shake your booty. dj blank’s show is groove/house/underground sounds. Six String Island is folky whith The Down Home Radio Show is folk history. noizepunk and Das Krooner bring you the new classical world of cutting-edge music. And then there’s Jim’s Kitchen with interviews, recipes and tours of the latest innovative cuisine. The East End Marine Report wants to make sure you boat safely. Spackle Queen will help you fix your house. Heather Buchanan’s Kiss and Tell takes a wisegal’s approach to the Sex in The City crowd (or in the country, too). And for all you aliens, Zenbock’s Great American Time Machine showcases the Sci-Fi & Horror Film industry as seen through the eyes of a Galactic Traveler. You’ll find some very, very videos there. The Cal Zone is a bark show by dogs for dogs. See what I’m saying? We offer podcasts for every species.

We have some very addictive online games to play. Play on.

We take radio to the next level with our streaming radio. Our Taste of Podarama stream is a never ending feed of podcasts and independent music. Just turn it on and let it play. These days, you don’t have to listen on your computer or your iPod, you can listen in your car, in your boat, even on your bedside clock radio. The DBC Clubhouse, led by Sconee, brings you into the world of Heavy Metal, motorcycles and crazy babes. You can enter the chat room and talk back to the deejays or the other listeners while the show progresses. It’s a great way to get your rocks off.

Blogs. Music. Games. Chat. Live. Videos Podcasts. Even stuff to buy, buy, buy (are you getting that message? We gotta eat, too, you know!). Podarama is the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow and the hippy hippy shake all rolled into one and we’re going to stay that way, adding new stuff and tweaking and innovating…just like e always have. We can’t help it. We’re just drawn that way.

Now it’s time for you to blog. Wadda you got?