Songs & Artists NEVER HEARD on the RADIO?

We have a station, WRNR, in Washington DC area (it's actually in Graysonville, MD) that plays all the eclectic, singer-songwriter stuff you could ever want. I can sometimes get it off the air, but otherwise you can hear it on the internet, site used to be www.wrnr.com. I've also heard a couple of great west coast stations on the internet that play all kinds of artists like the ones mentioned in previous posts as never heard: KCRW (California somewhere) and KCMU (Seattle).

Sounds like the pattern is the same all over the country, I thought it was just the "wasteland" of FM here in the Seattle Tacoma area. I have long given up listening to FM for anything decent, with the wonderful exception of KPLU-Tacoma, which is listener-supported Jazz, Blues and NPR news. My idea of torture is being forced to listen to the same, tired, played-to-death songs that are spun over and over and over and over on the "big" Seattle stations. It's bad, folks, real bad. The upside of this is that I've started reading various music magazines for info on new and exciting artists, and have discovered a whole world of cool music that "corpradio" wouldn't touch with a stick. Stereolab, Beck, even Radiohead? Coldplay, David Byrne, or Moby? Not likely in this lifetime. Good luck finding anything interesting when the advertisers are involved...

Have to admit, when first coming to New York I expected there to be choices for great radio stations. To my dismay, there is absolutely nothing that I consider worth while, save for NPR and one jazz station. The remainder, as Mr. Porter so aptly and reliably put it, is the "fast food" variety, at best. Prior to New York, I was in Charlottesville, VA, where there was both a great college station and a phenominal "listened suported" station that I miss dearly and still sometimes contribute to. These days, the only way I get to hear new or interesting music (save from seeking it out live) is on various internet stations. The favorite for fairly cutting edge "alternative," underground, largely unsigned artists is 3WK.com -- which offers seperate channels for both "New" and "Classic" underground music. Through them I've discovered a whole host of things I wouldn't have found any other way: Crooked Fingers, Tykwar, Callendar Girl, Tawwater, Rainer Maria, Slumber Party, Neutral Milk Hotel, Chicks on Speed, Sigur Ros -- the list goes on. I am frustrated that I am condemned to listening on my decidedly lo-fi computer system (though I try to buy the stuff I like) but my tuner now lives in a box in the closet.... The death of radio is not somehting to fear in the future, I suspect it has already happened.

Direct TV has quite a few different music channels that play a WIDE variety of music. Not only is there a great selection of music styles to choose from, whomever is selecting / organizing the program material seems to have a clue. While this is not as good of quality as i get from a top notch local station, it IS better than most of the sludge and dreck being repeated on a daily basis on the FM band. I assume that if i wanted to improve the audio characteristics, i'd have to start "tweaking" my Sattelite receiver : ( Sean
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The Tragically Hip get airplay in Canada, but nothing in the U.S. Bizarre