Resonance FM

http://www.resonancefm.com/

Type: Radio station Age: 5 Nationality: British In its five-year existence, Resonance FM, London's first radio art station, has matured into one of the most exciting and unpredictable broadcasters in the world; a home for surf music enthusiasts, low carbon theorists, white noise fiends and rock’n’roll fishing fanatics. Created by the London Musicians' Collective, in the last few years the community station has broached the confines of its London FM bandwidth and become a small but significant force in the world of podcasts, with shows like Rhythm Incursions, The Hooting Yard and One Life Left all becoming regular fixtures in the iTunes top 10.

More from Resonance FM

Your editorial policy is quite eccentric – was it easy to attract listeners when you started?
For the first six months virtually everybody thought it was some elaborate hoax. We had a show called Xollob Park where everything was recorded and then broadcast back to front. Someone described it as a crap idea badly executed. But after about six months you can’t wait for Xollob Park to come on. Those type of shows now seem almost traditional. I think people are used to the diversity and extreme nature of our content now. Resonance isn’t designed to help you through your working day.

How has putting the shows online benefited the station?
I’m not sure. It’s a good thing that shows like One Life Left top the iTunes podcast charts and The Bike Show gets 20,000 downloads quite regularly. But to me, FM has a certain authenticity – if you turn on five minutes before The Bike Show you’ll hear something that you’ll either loathe or something that will change your life.

What percentage of your audience listen exclusively online?
The core audience is about 100,000 and it’s shifted quite rapidly. A few years ago about 10% were listening online and now I think more than 30% listen to us exclusively online, and half of the remaining listeners use both mediums. People don’t want to move their radios around the room any longer, they just go straight onto their broadband.

Do you have trouble clearing music?
The only stuff available for download is the material we have the rights to, so none of the music shows. We’re a legal station so we have to obey the law. At the moment the argument is moot, at best. In a world of infinite product what marks us out is having someone with some expertise to guide you through the morass. There’s only about 1500 hours available online out of approximately 23,000 hours.

Has any show pushed their luck too far?
I don’t think we’ve taken it too far. One Christmas Day we did 24 hours of Throbbing Gristle just as a joke. You want to surprise yourself, so if someone comes up with a great idea or even a stupid idea then why not? I thought that after six months I’d be bored of it, but I’m not remotely bored at all. Some are just whimsical ideas, others are just irresistible – like Rock N Roll Fishing, where a guy just goes fishing with rock bands. Perfect!

As you’re restrained by FM bandwidth and financial costs, would you be interested in running Resonance purely online?
My interest is in radio, which I guess is becoming more obsolescent because of the digital migration. I wonder if that’s a question that will have evaporated in a few years time? I like all the linearity, liveness and familiarity of radio compared to the consumer led, time stopping nature of the internet. I’m in two minds about it.

Interview by Tim Noakes