Welcome to episode 33 of The Music Biz Weekly, a weekly podcast co-hosted by Michael Brandvold and Brian Thompson.
Each week Michael and Brian will discuss the latest events in the music business and music marketing events and techniques.
This week’s episode, November 11, 2011 – The Future of Music With Radio Legend Alan Cross.
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Alan Cross is a Canadian radio broadcaster and a writer on music. Alan’s obsession with music began at age six when his grandmother gave him a transistor radio—an old Lloyds—which spawned an all-consuming fascination with things that came over airwaves. A few years later, his uncle—who moonlighted by services jukeboxes—kick started his record collection by dumping a box of old 7-inch singles on him one Sunday afternoon. Alan was hooked.
In 1980, Alan got his start CKUW at the University of Winnipeg, which, at the time, was a closed-circuit station. The broadcast range was limited to one hallway and one cafeteria.
After graduating, Alan ended up at CJRL in Kenora, a 1,000 watt AM station that broadcast to the people and wildlife of Northwestern Ontario. From there, it was on to KX-96/Brandon and Q94-FM/Winnipeg before he ended up at CFNY (renamed The Edge) in October 1986.
After fifteen years as a CFNY/Edge in a variety of announcer gigs, Alan moved to program director at Y95 in Hamilton, overseeing, in part, a frequency change which made the station Y108. In 2004, Alan started a four year stint as the station’s Program Director (where he was named Canada’s Program Director of the year in 2005, 2006 and 2008).
He then became Senior Program Director for Corus Interactive, the online arm of Corus Radio. His last project with Corus was as Head Curator of ExploreMusic, a truly unique online and on-air feature dedicated to music discovery.
Oh, and that radio show. The Ongoing History of New Music debuted in February 1993 and since then it’s…well, it’s taken on a life of its own. There have been over 700 one-hour episodes making it the longest-running music documentary in Canada and one of the longest in North America—if not the world!
If you’re into reading, Alan has a weekly national newspaper column in the Metro commuter paper, four published reference works on alt-rock, and four audio books, The Alan Cross Guide to Alternative Rock.
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About Michael Brandvold:
Michael Brandvold is a freelance music industry consultant based in Northern California. Having launched Michael Brandvold Marketing to leverage his years of experience to provide direction to large and small clients in the areas of online & social marketing as well as e-commerce and customer acquisition and retention.
Gene Simmons of KISS first tapped Michael’s skills as a pioneering online marketing strategist to launch and manage all aspects of Kissonline.com’s multi-million dollar enterprise, including their ground-breaking VIP ticket program.
Michael has also managed the online efforts for Motley Crüe, Rod Stewart, Madonna, Ozzy Osbourne, Madonna and Britney Spears to name only a few.
About Brian Thompson:
Brian Thompson, Managing Partner for Thorny Bleeder Records, is a Vancouver based music industry entrepreneur, record label owner, artist manager, marketing consultant, radio promoter, publicist, web designer, blogger, and industry speaker.
Formerly the corporate head of music buying and marketing for a large national music retail chain, Brian has since moved on to become a well respected voice on the convergence of artist development, music marketing, social media, and technology.
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