Journal of the mental environment
Blackspot Radio
RadioParadise.com goes beyond being non-corporate: they are explicitly anti-corporate.
- Fri, 31 Oct 2008 1:04 pm — Posted by Micah M. White
- | 3 comments
What would a Blackspot Radio station look like? Perhaps very similar to RadioParadise.com. RadioParadise is an entirely listener supported, anti-corporate radio station that has about $1,000,000 in annual revenues and provides music to 15,000 listeners at any given time. And best of all, they actually pick their music using their brains, not a computer.
Here is RadioParadise.com in their own words:
Each hour of music is carefully blended together to flow smoothly between different musical styles & genres - just like real DJs used to do on FM. We don’t use the computer-generated playlists or “carefully researched music libraries” that have sucked the soul out of FM radio - and we never just throw songs together at random the way many web stations do.
Our plan is simple: we create the best station we possibly can, refrain from contaminating it with advertising, and then ask you to pay us what you think it’s worth. So far it seems to be working out nicely. We’re not likely to get rich this way, but that’s not our goal.
Here at RP we’re not just non-commercial. We’re anti-commercial. We feel that quality radio programming and advertising just cannot co-exist. We also choose to refrain from forcibly extracting money from you by charging subscription fees. We leave it up to you to decide what our service is worth to you.
The Blackspot's Design Unfolds With Time
Not a product, a brand nor a marketing campaign, the blackspot is a call to shake off the chains of resignation.
- Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:15 am — Posted by Micah M. White
- | 7 comments
In a silent moment a blackspot sprouted as a scribble upon the wall – the remainder of a black crayon circling, blotting out what lay beneath. As pure possibility, the blackspot grew through negation, composting decaying culture to fertilize seedlings of renewal. Taking an ad bloated with pestilential desires, swirling its mark until nothing remained but tilled field, the blackspot prepares the fecund ground, dark with becoming, for our new beginning.
Not a product, a brand nor a marketing campaign, the blackspot is a call to shake off the chains of resignation. Feel the most powerful tremble when faced with our challenge. Slipped into their hands, thrown into their faces, the blackspot signals our ongoing mutiny against consumerism. But our rebellion is of a different kind, where not only the captain of the vessel walks the plank but also the course and even the maps are destroyed. We are not sailing for a distant shore, nor seeking the middle passage. Instead, our destination is here, where we stand. We will retake this ground with the blackspot as guide, pointing toward an alternative present, a viable vision for transforming our communities into lush forests of homegrown culture, unhomogenized by corporate toxins.
Like all untimely ones, the blackspot remained a potentiality yearning toward actuality – waiting for necessity to pollinate its delicate flowers until, weathering storms of cynicism and resignation, the blackspot bore first fruit: we emerged, a tenacious people inspired, prepared to remake the world. Our initial offering, a simple sneaker destined to unswoosh souls by kicking corporate ass, was a fast success. But the shoe was mere beginning, symptom of the coming upheaval, a small taste of the envisioned world to come: castrated capitalism, blackspotted.
See the world freshly made. There’s no need to raze it all, we can embrace what is good and compost the bad. It takes only the courage to daydream, to gaze with intolerance for corporate blight. Our aspirations may be bold but our strategy is sound: dig in for the fight, prepare for the struggle and recruit allies who’ll await the decision moment.
From a scribble on the wall to the incubator of a people, the blackspot’s design unfolds with time – the destined catalyst of cultural rebirth.
