I have been a DJ at my university’s radio station since March. To this day, whenever I meet someone new and I end up telling them what I do with the station, the response typically falls around the lines of:
“wait, our school has a radio station?”
Yes, we do, and it is quite powerful. We have a jam-packed schedule almost every day of the week. From as early as nine a.m. amp-up shows to get you ready for the day to ten p.m. rock-out shows to get you pumped up for a night of studying, there is always something to listen to.
What is unique about West Chester’s college radio station is that there is a lot of freedom. You can play whatever you want, whatever genre you are feeling that day, and you can talk on the mic as little or as much as you want.
Our station isn’t just a way for students to play music and go live on air; we also have different committees just like a normal club would. We interact with local bands to get their name out there, as well as staying involved with the campus community by playing music at various events. If there is a major event taking place on campus, there is a large chance that WCUR will be in attendance.
Before streaming services came around, college radio used to be one of the best ways for students to gain experience in the industry, connect with peers about future careers in radio, and overall build a community of music lovers. But this is hard to do nowadays when nobody wants to tune in – let alone know how to tune in. College radio is still a great way for students to get experience, but it is at a lower scale now. Our generation is weary of listening to the radio – most people our age will only listen to the radio with their parents, in the car.
Not only are students not listening to college radio, but almost nobody listens to the regular radio station. With almost every song ever created at your fingertips through streaming services, why wouldn’t anyone just want to listen to what they want?
With all of this considered, why should we listen to college radio?
College radio offers something every college student desires: no cost. We are all college students, so something free is something good. Even if you’re someone who doesn’t have your car on campus to listen to the radio, college radio stations usually have their stream live on their website. You can listen to it just as you would with Spotify. WCUR, West Chester University’s radio streams their radio feed live on wcur.org.
Listening to the radio is a different experience than listening to a playlist; listening to the radio allows you to hear stories and opinions about a song you might have never heard of, or change the experience of listening to a song you’ve heard repeatedly.
When listening to a Spotify playlist, you have full control. If you hate what you are listening to, you can skip with as much force as you want. Any song you love can simply be heaped into one place. Radio listening revokes this freedom, yet makes up for the loss with a proposal of an entirely new taste and vibe of someone’s show. Instead of judging a song by its first ten seconds, you get to know the music, the person playing the music, and the magic behind the music.
Of course, streaming services allow you to listen to whatever you want to listen to at the press of a button, but radio is one of the best ways to find new music. It forces you to listen to something you might have never heard before. Radio forces you to get out of your comfort zone.
One thing that I always wanted to do when I got to college was to join my school’s radio station. Now that I have seen the magic of what can be created with a bunch of college-aged music lovers, can we get the rest of the student body to get on the same page?