Has six months of abstaining from listening to jazz on the radio been a wrench?

Back to the old programme haunts, is it?

Is listening independently of radio and via other media instead really possible? 

New web tech empowers us all as listeners and that is its big advantage over radio and why it has proved itself. We do not need above all else a radio presenter/DJ to choose our listening and even more so curate our tastes unless we abdicate our listening choices entirely. Do you want to be an active or passive listener? 

Mainstream jazz shows are dominated by new releases and yet given this are usually behind the beat by a week or two if you are a regular web new jazz seeker and know where to look first through trial and error as much as anything else and because of frequent change. Where radio scores best is in providing unique content, for instance in live broadcasts or recordings of concerts that need more resources than an iPhone.

In terms of what used to be called “needle time” it fares much worse. Track exclusives are now largely and much more satisfactorily the domain of the web as artists and their labels know that even with the biggest jazz shows their audience on the web is much bigger if they leak a track online. When big media does not serve an effective publicity function then you know the caravan has moved on somewhere else.

Not listening to jazz radio ultimately does not mean anyone is less in touch with contemporary jazz and this statement is probably the biggest worrying outcome for any radio boss out there, a shocker given that radio pre-web was the biggest mass media format for jazz given the indifference of TV. Maybe the day will come when standalone radio stations are actually closed down and folded inside a website instead along with all the other offerings a media brand can muster or develop in their race to diversify and adapt. Commercial radio broadcasters have to keep their ratings up to retain their advertising. Public broadcasters can get lost in their own bubble because in the realm of niche areas such as jazz public broadcasters are not held as much to account if ratings are low which means complacency can be rife and is. 

If we continue to switch off to find our jazz media primarily on non radio web services, eg via streaming sites as huge numbers already do, we are definitely not so much reliant on being fed by a top down approach. It is no longer a media/listeners binary something that is both healthy and creative. Our ability to discover new music and be better informed about it is radically different now. Tastemakers have less power surely in this regard. Like the emperor's new clothes it seems subversive but surely isn’t to point out that music broadcasters no matter how distinguished are doing nothing more complicated than putting a few records on as a primary function. Answers to the questions at the beginning: Not at all. No. Yes.