Student Radio Association

I present and produce a weekly one hour specialist music show on Loughborough Campus Radio, named ‘Jamie’s Show About Music’. My passion for music lies in unearthing the newest, most exciting and most original bands and artists I can find, regardless of genre, and thus chose a music policy for the show that I felt best reflected that.Each week I attempt to draw particular attention to underground and emerging artists who have upcoming releases or tours. I generally try not to repeat tracks/bands from one show to the next in order to fit in as many different artists as possible.I spend on average five hours a week producing the show, this consists of mainly researching new bands using websites such as hype machine, last.fm, myspace and the sixtyone as well as specific blogs that appear to share a similar ethos and music taste. I also spend time following up artists I have seen live, particularly support acts, and recommendations from friends and listeners. I regularly check record labels such as Hotflush, Banquet, Wichita, XL, Domino, Ninja Tune and Big Scary Monsters, having discovered them via the artists on their roster they can usually be depended upon to sign new and exciting acts and to have a mailing list which makes them easier to follow. I regularly check to the recommended releases of independent music stores such as Fopp and Rough Trade as they seem to share the same ethos of promoting exciting and original artists rather than a particular genre.As part of my show I play at least two tracks every week that are legally available to download for free and then post links to them on a blog I have set up for the show (www.jamiesshowaboutmusic.blogspot.com). The aim of this feature, called ‘free love’, is to highlight as wide a variety of new bands and DJs as possible whilst hopefully creating a playlist of music for my listeners that they would otherwise not have owned, and hopefully also encourage responsible downloading/music purchasing. I try to aid those that wish to listen to more tracks from artists I have played by directly linking to an artist’s last.fm, myspace or purevolume page on the show’s blog, depending on which site has more complete audio tracks.This entry is compiled of clips from my shows across the academic year, this was my first year as a presenter and thus my presentation is rough in places, for which I apologise. Joe Hutchinson, the current head of music at LCR, features at the end of the entry after he sat in on one of my shows ‘to see what it was like’, the audio clip at the beginning is the show intro used every week. I realise that I name the Burial and Fourtet track as ‘Wolf Cub’ when it was in fact ‘Moth’, this mistake was corrected on the blog and in the following week’s show.I have very much enjoyed presenting my show over the past academic year as I have always found pleasure in being able to recommend music to people that they have not heard before and, by the creation of a facebook page for the show, I know that I have a committed group of listeners who not only enjoy that show but go on to listen to the artists I play and download the free love.