You want to do radio? Well, what's stopping you? Here's how to do it for free

     

OK, here's a challenge. How cheaply can you get started doing your own radio shows? How low-cost can you go? I ask because I'm always looking for workable, simple approaches that let people who want to learn the trade get some serious practise. At this stage I'm not concerned with perfect sound; I am concerned with learning the ropes. The more you do, the better it gets. 

Why? Well, for radio to grow and survive, we need great broadcasters, and we need them fast. And that's just for starters.

On being a DJ

The Buggles got it wrong. Radio killed the Radio Star; DJs now live somewhere else.

No, I didn't use this rig. Honest.
Thanks go to the Ableton forum.

Last week, I DJ’d a gig. Ruby Turner at the Crossing. 

I don’t DJ that often. When I do, it’s for serious fun and good reasons: because I like the idea, or the night, or the band, or the organisers, or whatever. 

On the way home from my stint, it struck me how the word has travelled, shifting in meaning from its radio origins. The noun DJ has become a verb. It has become a Title, a descriptor. Its meaning has changed, dramatically. Disk Jockeys often don't play disks these days.

Hey, when did it shift? Now we have DJ Culture. Now, you DJ a gig; or maybe you do a DJ set. Or you call yourself something like DJ Krooshal to tell people you’re doing a gig, fly-posting those traffic lights. Me, I’m DJ Urassic, I like that. But I don't fly-post. 

All this is a very long way from Make Believe Ballroom or the Geator with the Heater playing the Platters That Matter. The Geator's still going, still on US radio after well over fifty years. But that only takes us back to the sixties. You need to go back a further thirty years to when the term was coined.