Special Holiday Broadcasts

To thank its loyal listeners the world over, Bop City will be broadcasting live and commercial free on Christmas Day, December 25th and on New Year's Day.

And, Bop City's Sister Station, The Sound Cellar will be hosting its annual Holiday live and commercial free broadcast of offbeat and classic Christmas music will be on Christmas Eve, December 24th, from 5:00 PM EST until 10:00 PM EST. The Sound Cellar typically features Classic Rock, Oldies, Rhythm and Blues and Soul. The Sound Cellar also broadcasts live shows of many types of music.

Playlist Update

We've updated our playlist with cuts from Dexter Gordon and Coleman Hawkins.  And, we've added a few Christmas songs for your Holiday enjoyment.  Thanks for listening.

Kind of Blue - 50th Anniversary

The jazz world is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis' classic LP, Kind of Blue. Bop City has updated its playlist with the entire LP.

Kind of Blue, an album that sounds like it's never been in a good mood it didn't consider fleeting or a bad one it couldn't brood its way out of. When Davis and his band commenced recording in 1959, they settled on a new form of "modal" jazz that called for improvising through scales as opposed to preordained chord changes. And even if that doesn't sound apparent to an untrained musical ear, it's suggested by a spectral sense of wandering-- an ease with uncertainty that comes across in no uncertain terms. Artists playing with Miles on Kind of Blue were Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb.

Sony's Legacy Recordings has released a fabulous 50th anniversary edition of Kind of Blue. This will make a holiday gift that will never be forgotten for the jazz lovers in your life. You can help support Bop City's broadcast by purchasing this box set through the link below the box set's description.

The SUPER-DELUXE 12-INCH SLIPCASE BOX SET CONTAINS:

• Two CDs (original album plus studio sequences, false starts, and alternate takes from 1958-59 sessions, plus 17-minute “So What” live in Holland, 1960)
• DVD: newly-produced documentary featuring superstars of jazz
• 60-page ‘perfect-bound’ 12x12 full-color book, tons of photos
AND
• 180-gram blue vinyl 12-inch LP– first time ever in a Legacy box set!

In-depth liner note essays written by award-winning Miles Davis authorities Francis Davis and Gerald Early; session transcripts by Ashley Kahn; detailed 1957-60 quintet/sextet timeline by Bob Belden and Ken Vail

Box set memorabilia: 3-page hand-written liner notes by Bill Evans; reproduction of 1959 Columbia promo brochure; six 8"x10" photos; and 22"x 33" foldout poster.

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Playlist Update - Donald Byrd's Free Form

We've just updated the broadcast with Donald Byrd's Free Form LP.

Busy Summer

We haven't posted anything for a while. We've been very busy over the summer. Lately we've been updating the playlist with a nice variety of classic jazz and more will be coming soon.

Broadcast costs are continuing escalate. You can help us out by becoming a Live365 VIP by clicking on the link in the right margin. By becoming a VIP you can listen commercial free. And, you can listen to Bop City via Radio365, a free program that will play the mp3pro stream in excellent quality.

Thanks to everybody for listening to Bop City.

Franz Jackson 1912 - 2008

Bop City honors the great Chicago jazz artist Franz Jackson with the addition of cuts from his Riverside LP, Chicago, The Living Legends. Jackson passed away on May 6, 2008. He played and recorded with many legendary players.

We invite you to go to his website and read some excellent articles about Jackson's life in jazz. We have also posted information on the Bop City Jazz Archive.

Live Broadcast Wednesday May 30, 2008

To celebrate the end of Jazz Appreciation Month Bop City will be broadcasting live and commercial free from 6 PM to 9 PM EDT today, Wednesday May 30, 2008.

To access the broadcast go to: http://www.live365.com/stations/bop_city/?play

April is Jazz Appreciation Month

Join BOP CITY and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month this April, 2008 (JAM 2008). In honor of JAM 2008 we are upgrading our broadcast and doubling the size of our playlist.

What is Jazz Appreciation Month?

The concept is simple: designate one month for an annual public spotlight on jazz. Jazz Appreciation Month (or JAM) is intended to draw public attention to the glories of jazz as both an historical and a living treasure. The idea is to encourage musicians, concert halls, schools,colleges, museums, libraries, and public broadcasters to offer special programs on jazz every April.

What are the purposes of Jazz Appreciation Month?
To draw greater public attention to the extraordinary heritage and history of jazz and its importance as an American cultural heritage. In addition, JAM is intended to stimulate the current jazz scene and encourage people of all ages to participate in jazz—to study the music, attend concerts, listen to jazz on radio and recordings, read books about jazz, and support institutional jazz programs.

What can I do to celebrate JAM?
See the list, How to Celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month on www.smithsonianjazz.org.

One Year Anniversary, December 23, 2007

December 23, 2007 was the one year anniversary of Bop City's 24/7 broadcast of classic jazz. Over the last year we had approximately 35,000 listening hours. Listeners from every state in the U.S. and countries all across the world have enjoyed our broadcast. It has been incredible how many different countries have enjoyed Bop City's classic jazz. We need to brush up on our geography a little - there are countries that have listened that we didn't know existed.

In the last thirty days fifty different countries have listened - the top ten countries, other than the U.S. which is number one, are Germany, Canada, Japan, Brazil, United Kingdom, Italy, Denmark, Spain, Ukraine and Netherlands. As for the U.S. the top ten metro areas that have listened in the last thirty days are Los Angeles, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Cincinnati, Washington D.C., Boston, Buffalo NY and Dallas. Our outreach has been significant. The fact that so many over-the-air radio stations have dropped classic jazz programming we felt the need to plug that hole and it seems to be working.

We have done very little promotion of Bop City. The performance royalty issue precluded us from effectively promoting the station. We weren't sure if the broadcast's plug would be pulled any and every day since the first part of March 2007. In fact, everything is still not worked out and we are still in limbo. Most of Bop City's listeners have come from word of mouth and from the jazz community on MySpace, and a few folks have mentioned us on their website. Erika Smith, business and technology reporter of the Indianapolis Star, has covered the royalty issue and mentioned our stations in her articles and I'm sure that resulted in some listeners for Bop City. We're working on some more promotion ideas and all of you good people should feel free to spread the word about Bop City.

Thanks for listening. As all of you know, Bop City is a labor of love and knowing that you listen when you can makes it all worthwhile.

We had a great time hosting The Sound Cellar's live Christmas broadcast. Thanks to everybody that listened and enjoyed the show.

Happy Holidays from The Sound Cellar and Bop City.

Happy Holidays

We've added a little Holiday Cheer to the broadcast with the addition of selections from Yule Struttin,' A Blue Note Christmas that features cuts from Chet Baker, Count Basie, Dexter Gordon, Benny Green and other contemporary artists.

Enjoy the Jazz!

As We Near Our One Year Anniversary

Bop City sends, to all of our valued listeners and their friends and families, our warmest greetings during this holiday season. And, we wish you and yours a healthy and Happy New Year!

Our first live broadcast two weeks ago was a big success. We had the biggest listening audience of the month. Listeners from over twenty countries and fifteen states checked out the jazz. Thanks to everybody for listening.

We would love to go live for the majority of our broadcast which would provide a much better variety of music on a day to day basis from our extensive collection. It would also would allow us to do special programming. To accomplish this we need a computer solely dedicated to streaming our broadcast, which is not in the immediate financial future of Bop City.

Bop City is getting near its first anniversary of broadcasting. We've had listeners from all across the United States and all over the world. Just over the last thirty days we've had listeners from 52 countries. The breadth of the outreach of our classic jazz broadcast has exceeded our expectations.

Thanks to everyone who made donations to Bop City this past year. We greatly appreciate the help in defraying the costs of broadcasting. Donations can be made via Paypal links here on our webpage. And, if you are planning to treat someone with a gift of jazz, our webstore, in association with Amazon, has an excellent selection of CDs, books and videos. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the store.

We would appreciate hearing from you if you enjoy our broadcast. You can contact us via email at bop_city@indy.net to let us know your thoughts.

Playlist Update

!Happy Holidays!

We've just updated our broadcast with some great cuts from the following aritsts:

Paul Chambers, Top Brass, The Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Roy Eldridge, Jo Jones, Jazzical Moods, Jackie McLean, Hampton Hawes, Dizzy Gillespie, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Ben Webster and Horace Silver.

Broadcast Updated

The broadcast had a big update yesterday with some nice rarities.

Thanks to everybody all over the world that listens to Bop City.

Playlist Update

We've updated our playlist with a bunch of new cuts. Check out the Breaking News crawler for the artists included.

We still are in limbo regarding the future of internet radio. We'll post information when we learn something solid.

Here's the top 15 countries that have listened to Bop City over the last 30 days:

United States
Germany
Canada
Japan
Chile
United Kingdom
Australia
Netherlands
France
Italy
Brazil
Sweden
Spain
Ukraine
Belgium

And, here's the top ten metro areas that have listened to Bop City over the last 30 days:

New York
Los Angeles
Baltimore
Washington DC
Philadelphia
Chicago
Seattle - Tacoma
Paducah - Cape Girardeau - Harrisburg - Mt Vernon
Boston
Atlanta

Thanks for listening to Bop City.

What's New?

There has been an ebb and flow of events surrounding the plight of internet radio over the last few months. We are still essentially at a standstill. I really don't feel like going into all of the details, but basically what is happening is that the negotiations with Sound Exchange are pretty much of a joke. They put small webcasters out of business in about three years and the only way the big boys get a break is if they only play those artists represented by Sound Exchange. The Internet Radio Equality Act will be the only saving grace, and right now it appears to be doomed and headed into the black hole of United States Congress inaction.

The bottom line is that the freedom and opportunity that was supposed to be the future of the internet is coming to an end as the corporate world is throwing its political influence, money and lawyers around. If Net Neutrality is not supported and upheld, it's all over. Big business will have won and effectively neutered the internet for their profit.

Almost for certain, if by some miracle, internet radio survives this fiasco, broadcast costs will increase dramatically. So Bop City has been in a holding pattern until we know something solid and which direction we will be going. Even so, we've added some great new music this week - Miles Davis and also Thelonious Monk live at the Monterey Jazz Festival from Concord Music Group and some fab Joe Henderson cuts.

Order the new live Miles and Monk and Joe Henderson CDs below and support Bop City!

Internet Radio - Still Alive

Today, July 15, 2007 was supposed to be the day internet radio died. Thanks to actions from listeners from around the world and a hard line by Live365, we're still streaming classic jazz to the world.

Live365 has decided that they are not going to pull the plug today. By standing firm, they were going to force Sound Exchange's (SX) hand to use the legal system to shut them down. Sound Exchange and their associated culprits realized that they could not withstand the public outcry if they took legal action against live365 and backed off.

Congress has stepped in with a temporary bill delaying the new performance royalty rates for sixty days so that negotiations can continue between SX and webcasters. Essentially, all parties were called onto the carpet by Congress and a round-table discussion was held in Washington D.C. with various members of Congress and several webcasters. This was a very good thing as SX had been very busy with a strategy of propaganda consisting of half-truths being relayed to Congress and the public. When the details of any proposal that SX had made were uncovered, it was discovered that their "deals" were completely disingenuous and unworkable. One of their offers even required webcasters to give up their rights to pursue existing and future legislation with regard to royalty rates - nothing like dealing with a little extortion while "negotiating."

Distilled, all of this mess comes down to nothing more than a huge effort to not allow control of the distribution of music on the internet by a small contingent of corporations that are only interested in their bottom line. This is a struggle of music lovers versus bean counters and lawyers. This has become more than just about "internet radio."

The folks that stand to lose the most if internet radio goes away are the artists. If the major labels take over internet radio, artists will no longer see performance royalty checks as the labels will direct license their music to label associated stations (see what is happening at last.fm). And, they will lose one of the their only outlets for playing their music for the public's discovery. Independent artists and artists with small audiences will lose big time.

Realizing that satellite radio pays performance royalties as a percentage of revenue and over-the-air radio pays no performance royalties, there are still inequities to be worked out within the scope of the Internet Radio Equality Act (IREA). This fact cannot be ignored.

In summary, it looks like SX's propaganda campaign strategy didn't work. So we're continuing full speed ahead. We're updating the broadcast with more great classic jazz. We've just added the entire LP, Soul Junction by the Red Garland Quintet, featuring John Coltrane and Donald Byrd. What beautiful LP. We just recorded some cuts from Freddie Hubbard's impulse LP, The Body And The Soul. Lurking in our record stack are LPs from The Modern Jazz Quartet (Prestige), Jay Jay Johnson (Blue Note), Gene Krupa (Clef), Jimmy Heath Quintet (Riverside), Jam Session (Verve), Montgomery Brothers (Pacific Jazz), Johnny Hodges (impulse) and Jack McDuff (Prestige) and more.

Thanks for listening to Bop City!

Bop City In The News

Erika D. Smith wrote an excellent article on the plight of internet radio in the Indianapolis Sunday Star. I was interviewed for the article and Erika included a couple of quotes from our discussion.*

The demise of internet radio at the hands of the RIAA and the major labels may well be at hand. If this does happen they will have succeeded in making millions of their customers incredibly upset and the world will have lost an exceptional cultural asset. The music business, what's left of it, will have changed forever in ways that will not be apparent for some period of time. The artists, that have mostly remained silent throughout this fiasco, are the biggest losers. They will have lost an incredibly valuable promotional and distribution outlet.

It may seem like I'm being overly dramatic about all of this, but I really do believe that once the major labels control music distribution on the internet all will be lost. These folks are lawyers and bean counters. They aren't music people. They don't care about how music can enrich lives, how artists can inspire, how music can be an escape from every day drudgery, how music can lift our spirits in times of trouble... all they care about is moving units and maximizing profits. A perfect example of how badly all of this is going, and has gone, is what Mr. Bronfman Jr. has done to the once great Warners Music.

Internet radio is run by music lovers that want to share that love with the rest of the world. In this day and age, this just cannot be allowed.

Que sera sera.

Here's hoping for nothing short of a miracle before July 15, 2007 - the day the music dies.

*Go to our jazz archive to check out all of the countries and citys in the United States. There are some countries that listen to Bop City that we didn't know existed. Maybe we should brush up on our world geography! ;P

A side note to Erika's article...

Something to keep in mind regarding these supposed negotiations between webcasters and SX as requested by Congress...

From RAIN:

One important point to keep in mind, as webcasters are discussing today, that a direct settlement between SoundExchange and webcasters -- what the Small Business Committee (and most of Congress, I'd assume) says it wants -- would only cover the minority of recording artsits for whom SoundExchange is authorized to negotiate. This is not the intended result of a "one-license-to-cover-it-all" statutory rate.

Therefore, Sound Exchange is not able to negotiate blanket royalty rates. So the negotiations that Congress requested Webcasters and Sound Exchange engage in are essentially worthless, unless a webcaster only wants to play the music that Sound Exchange will allow them to play. (Sounds like socialism has come to internet radio - this is what you have to play and this is what you have to pay us to play what we tell you you can play.) This is what it's come to...

Day of Silence - June 26, 2007

Well, time is running out. Desperate times calls for desperate measures. To call attention to our plight, tomorrow, June 26, 2007, will be a day of silence for internet radio.

The Copyright Royalty Board in conjunction with Sound Exchange, the RIAA and the major music labels have all but colluded to put internet radio out of business by setting completely stupid royalty rates that result in more money due to Sound Exchange than most internet radio businesses gross. They are content to ruin businesses and livelihoods and, not to mention, put many, many folks out of a job for their own self serving greed. If the culprits have their way independent artists, artists with smaller audiences and many genres, like classic jazz, will lose a valuable outlet for their music. Internet radio currently pays royalties to artists and their record labels. Over the air radio does not and satellite radio pays a much smaller rate that does internet radio. So artists not only stand to lose airplay but income.

Internet radio will become an outlet for the latest thing from the major music labels. They won't pay the artists any royalties for the airplay, they'll just try to sell music product that will line their pockets. Ask any major label artist how much money their record company pays them for music sales. Roger McGuinn once told me he has never made a penny from sales of his Columbia label recordings with The Byrds... think about that!

On July 15, 2007 internet radio may very well cease to exist. There is legislation in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives that would enable internet radio to continue to bring the world an assortment of music genres that is unparalleled. A hearing is scheduled in the House but time is running out. The bills have been languishing for over two months. The only way the legislation is going to get legs is for the listening audience to rise up and be heard. If you do not want the major labels controlling the internet's music content please contact the House and Senate and tell them to get the Internet Radio Equality Act onto the President's desk for signature.

Please visit Live365 and SaveNetRadio.org for information how you can help.

N. Mark Lam, the CEO of Live365, has said that if the proposed royalty rates are allowed to go into effect that will be the end of Live365, an internet radio service of 10,000 stations. As Bop City is a proud part of the Live365 community, we too will cease to exist.