WFMU

I am writing a book on New Jersey independent listener-supported freeform radio station WFMU and alternative media for music in America. I post about my research on my blog.

Essays

“Freeform Radio and the History of Music Streaming,” in The Oxford Handbook of Radio Studies, edited by Michele Hilmes and Andrew Bottomley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), 22-40. – About WFMU’s early experiments in “streaming” music via telephone, gopher, and the web in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“Provincializing Spotify: Radio, Algorithms and Conviviality,” Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 18, no. 1 (2020): 29-42. — About the Free Music Archive.

“The Past and Future of Music Listening: Between Freeform DJs and Recommendation Algorithms,” in Radio’s New Wave, ed. Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio (New York: Routledge, 2013), 62-76. — About WFMU’s relationship with music recommendation apps.

Podcast Interview

In November 2023, I was interviewed on Mack Hagood’s Phantom Power podcast, talking about radio audiences, freeform radio station WFMU, and the plundering of open source software movements by big tech.

Image: Cover for WFMU newsletter, Lowest Common Denominator (LCD), for Summer 1986.