One thing I have learned this past semester as the station manager for Simpson College's radio station 88.9 KSTM FM is this; the amount of bands that never make it big is astounding. And that is a shame considering many of the bands who don't make have great music and talent.
Currently one of my main tasks is packing up our station for our temporary move across campus while the new student center is being constructed. This packing process includes going through nearly 5-8,000 CD's (estimated) that are collecting dust in the station. It honestly is kind of an overwhelming task.
However it is kind of fun to go through and listen to a variety of bands that have had their stuff sent to the station over the past ten to fifteen years or discs that the station has bought personally over that span. It is truly amazing how many bands have come and gone through that time period. There are a lot of artists that I have never heard of or ones that really only had one or two hits and then died off.
Seeing this mass vault of music only proves to me one point and that is this; building and sustaining a career in the music business is damn near impossible. You have to not only have talent but you have to be able to market yourself and give people something that they don't already have. Many of the bands/artists who have music up in this station must have failed at one or all of those things because otherwise they would probably be getting airplay at our station and others.
As a musician it is kind of unsettling knowing that when I release a CD it could potentially end up collecting dust for ten years in a college radio station until somebody decides to clean and possibly get rid of it. That's a hard pill to swallow for any musician but in the end it is the chance you have to take if you want try and be heard by the public. If you take that chance and are successful then you will most likely be selling out concert venues soon after. However if you try and fail then at least you can say that you tried and maybe you were lucky enough to have your songs played a few times on at least a lowly campus radio station. At least that should count for something.
Until next time keep on rocking away music lovers,
JAS
