Contributed by Alaska Music & Arts
About 30 years ago, the computer took off as a key device in the creative process for musicians. A revolution in studio technology that included MIDI standards, audio wave file recordings, integrated studio software, and of course the internet. An interesting program dedicated to mass copyright violations was Napster which allowed MP3 file sharing. Napster was co-founded by Shawn Fanning, John Fanning, and Sean Parker and was very popular way to steal ... sorry ... to share music.
Steve Jobs took the idea for downloadable music for a fee and presented it to Warner, Universal, and Sony, giant corporations with thousands of recording artists. The idea was to promote Internet song access and instead of stealing the music, customers could buy the songs and download them to their personal computers. This lead to iTunes and the iPOD and so on.
So much change in such a short time. Vinyl albums and digital CDs are not dead, but they are facing extinction at this present time. Another key process in the digital age was Internet radio including Sky, FM, Pandora, Spotify, and the others in this class. A musician can now record an album, upload it to a service, get it distributed to iTunes or Amazon or Spotify and then someone in Tanzania can stream the song or buy the album. This is very cool.
At the newly spawned Alaska Music and Arts company in Palmer, we have been busy as beavers building a professional grade recording studio with high quality gear and soundproof rooms and an Automated Processes Inc. 1608 mixing desk. Not quite ready for bands as of this writing, we hope to be open in fall 2016. As part of our holistic approach to the music liberation, we have constructed our own Internet radio station. Located at http://alaskamusicradio.com, this station is streaming live 24/7.
The initial playlist is a large set of songs from the Non-Famous Artists of America (NFAA). You might be one of the NFAA. How could you be sure? Do you have a band? Original songs? Recordings? If so, you can submit your songs to our company for review. If we accept your song or CD then it will be uploaded into our playlist. Currently our playlist algorithm is pseudo-random.
Also, importantly, we are not paying for music nor are we promising that you would be paid for your songs. Your gratification would come in the form of "someone in Austria is listening to my song". If you send your music and it is not accepted into the NFAA, don't be sad, just write more songs, practice harder, and record more. Don't stop believing! (Ouch, sorry).