WHAT WAS THE INITIAL IDEA OF INDIEPOPRADIO? DID YOU START OUT WANTING TO PLAY MUSIC THAT YOU ALREADY KNEW A LOT OF PEOPLE LIKED ALSO, OR...

Really, it's just been about playing music that I like. That was it from the beginning. It's pretty much music on indie labels, because that's about all that I listen to. I think that early on, I was influenced to go in that direction, just because of the legal aspects. All of the licensing stuff hadn't been sorted out at the time, and I figured that if I was going to get harassed from somebody, it was going to be from a major label and not from an indie label or a band that wasn't signed.

But at the same time, that's the majority of the records that I buy. I hardly ever buy anything that's on a major label. From the beginning I was just playing the music that I enjoyed the most. And that was what people responded to. I kind of made it a point, early on when I decided to pursue it, that I would only play stuff I was excited about. That I would really resist the pressures of publicists or labels or anyone like that, and try not to play anything that I wouldn't want to hear myself, and be happy about hearing.

And there's so much out there that I like. There's so much great music that I didn't feel like that was going to be some kind of restriction or something. Like I wouldn't have enough to play. There's great stuff coming out all the time.

BECAUSE OF ALL THE PRESS THE SITE HAS BEEN RECEIVING, GETTING ON LISTS AND STUFF LIKE THAT, HAVE YOU HAD OFFERS WHERE PEOPLE WERE LIKE "HEY, WE'RE INTERESTED IN SPONSORING YOU."

I did have a couple of business offers. Not anything real recently. I had some vague stuff that happened when I was going to shut down the site. But beyond that, there was one company that I think was pretty serious. They wanted to acquire the site and they would keep me on as a full-time staff person. They were just trying to feel it out. I wasn't too crazy about the scenario they proposed, so they asked me what my budget was (laughs) and I quoted this exorbitant amount of money that it would take to do it. I didn't hear back from them. That was fine, you know? I figured if they would really come up with a lot of money for, not even to go into my pockets, but for technical stuff. If they'd give me lots of bandwidth, then I'd do it. But they disappeared after that.

(LAUGHING) SO YOU QUOTED THEM A TOTALLY UNREALISTIC FIGURE?

Yeah. Well, I wouldn't say unreal. It had a basis. But it was much bigger than what I was doing at the time.

IT'S JUST INTERESTING TO ME BECAUSE IT A REALLY NICE SITE, AND I'M SURPRISED THAT NOBODY HAS TRIED TO CAPITALIZE ON IT.

I guess it's probably because it's such a niche market. The average person isn't even going to be familiar with most of the bands that I play. I'd assume that that's what's behind it. And I haven't actively marketed the site at all. I have yet to pay for a single ad. I haven't done anything beyond participating in some mailing lists. I�ve had some promotional contests, some things like that before. But the vast majority of promotion has just been by word of mouth.

IT'S BEEN TREMENDOUS.

It has. When I was at that point where I was going to shut it down and started getting that flood of e-mails from people, it was great, because on a day-to-day level, you kind of forget about how much it's used. I could look at the numbers. I could look at the statistics and see that three hundred people visited today, or four hundred, or whatever. But that doesn't really tell me much about the people that are out there. And just the fact that people seem to enjoy it a lot. There are a lot of people who were very strong in their feelings about what was going to happen to Indiepopradio.

THERE WAS A POST I READ ON YOUR FORUM IN RESPONSE TO YOUR QUITTING THAT SAID "YOU RUINED MY DAY!"

I expected some kind of feedback, because the previous year, on April Fool's Day, I had done this thing where there was a fake hack into the site. And so it looked like somebody had hacked into the site and they were playing 80's heavy metal music instead. There were a number of people who responded really strongly way back at THAT point- they were sending me all these e-mails about how horrible it was that the real site wasn't up, and they were so depressed they couldn't listen that day. So I knew there would be some kind of reaction, but I just didn't expect it to be as big as it was. And it's great. It's been a lot of work, and it's good to know that it's something people appreciate.

I really love so much of the music that I play, and I've gotten to know some of the bands and people at some of the labels. It's just exciting for me when someone comes to me and tells me they bought a record or had gone to a show because they heard it on the site. Or when a band that I love comes to me and says, "Hey, we heard from somebody last week that heard about us from your site." That kind of stuff is just the biggest reward for me. It's always just makes me smile, very big.

AFTER YOU HAD DECIDED TO QUIT INDIEPOPRADIO, WHAT HAPPENED TO CHANGE YOUR MIND? WAS IT SHIRLEY CALLING TO OFFER HELP?

Shirley e-mailed me and she mentioned that she'd be willing to help. And then there was this interim period for about a week or week and a half where we kind of went back and forth a little bit. Part of it was trying to figure out what level of participation I wanted to have. Whether I was just going to stop completely and hand it over to her, or whether I wanted to be involved. When I realized that I wouldn't be doing it all by myself, I decided that I did want to keep participating. Just because I really do enjoy, and it is rewarding. I would have felt weird stepping away from it completely, but having it still around.

At this point, I'm still dealing with most of the technical issues. Shirley and I have kind of split the music programming. She's probably going to be a little more active in that than I am. There are a couple of other people who are helping out now, who are just going to do writing stuff. We have a web log on the homepage. This guy named Jason who's in the band, Barcelona- he's helping out some. Curt, who is one of the guys who runs Magic Marker Records is going to be helping out with that too.

I was thinking about it when Shirley started getting involved. I realized that I was most excited about the fact that she's really knowledgable about a lot of the new stuff that's coming out now, and it would be really helpful for the listeners and people who come to the site to get her point of view. Then I started thinking, "Who are some other people that I know whose opinion I really respect and have introduced me to a lot of new bands?" Curt came to my mind right away because, of people that I've known here in Portland in the last couple of years, he's told me about more great bands that I hadn't hear of than anyone. And Jason is just a really funny guy, and also really knowledgable. So it's cool that they're going to be helping out as well.

And we'll see what happens. If they're willing to take more on at some point, they may get involved in the music programming. I could definitely see it being done by multiple people.

DO YOU THINK YOUR MUSIC PROGRAMMING IS AFFECTED BY THE FACT THAT YOU LIVE IN PORTLAND, WHERE THERE ARE TONS OF INCREDIBLE BANDS?

Yeah. I think that it is. When I started off, before I had registered the domain name, probably at least a good fifty-percent of what I was playing was really more kind of northwest rock. I played a lot of the K stuff, and the Kill Rock Stars stuff. Pretty much all of the things in that vein. And as time has gone on, I guess partly because of the name, it's been kind of a self-fufilling prophecy (laughs). I felt like I needed to play a lot of indie pop to justify the name, if nothing else.

But also, it's really what I'm listening to more. I don't listen to as much rock or emo or things like that.

***This is the part where Rich ate his now cold grilled cheese sandwich.***

***We chatted about Rich's computer background...***

I HAVE A FRIEND WHO IS INTERESTED IN HAVING HIS OWN STREAMING AUDIO WEBCAST. HOW WOULD THE NOVICE GO ABOUT GETTING INTO IT?

Someone just starting out would be really well served at something like Live 365, because they pretty much have it all set up. They have the web interface for everything. You can run your own server if you want, but that's a lot more work. And you're somehow going to have to supply the bandwidth, which really adds up. I stream at 24K so that people with modems can listen in. Even if you get twenty-four listeners at 24K, that's a significant amount of bandwidth. People who are on DSL do it that way sometimes. That's certainly one option. But I think that a service like Live 365 is pretty cool. If they stay in business.

They contacted me pretty much when they first came out. The guy who's the chief technical officer listened to my site before, and knew about it. They wanted me to use their service, and they talked to me about it. I was like "My God, what's your business plan? You're gonna let people sign up for free, and stream and use vast amounts of bandwidth. Where do you make money?" They've recently put in audio ads, and that's obviously how they're going to make the money. I can't believe that they've held off (inserting ads) as long as they did. But that's the downside of using them. I never used to have any ads at all, but somehow the bandwidth has got to get paid for. I just realized that it couldn't be out of my pocket. Especially if I want the thing to sustain itself. If it's SO dependent on how much money I'm making, then that's more dangerous for the site.

DO PEOPLE SEND YOU TONS OF PROMOS NOW, IN THE HOPES THAT YOU'LL PUT IT ON INDIEPOPRADIO?

Actually, it's weird because a lot of the stuff that I get sent is just not even appropriate- not even in the right genre. I get a lot of self-released stuff. I have a few publicists who work with me, and that's kind of tricky because I don't do this for a day job and my ability to respond sometimes is pretty limited to how much I've got to do in my life. Publicists are really looking for people who are likely to play stuff when they get it, and I can't always promise that, or even promise that I'll be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time. I do get sent a lot of stuff, but I've been buying a lot, too. I think that's one reason having Shirley around will help a lot. She actually is working at a college radio station where she's at, so she has access to stuff she gets there. Plus, she knows one of the big promotion companies that does a lot of the pop stuff pretty well. I hadn't really gotten much from them, but I think she's going to get a lot more than I did.

In terms of how I hear about the stuff, it really usually tends to be either from people I know and trust... I mean, I get a lot of information off of mailing lists that I'm on, like the indie-pop list, the local pop list, the Elephant 6 list... there's a whole bunch. I don't necessarily listen to or buy everything I hear about on one of those lists, but after you hang around for awhile, you kind of get a sense of people that post who maybe you respect, or know, or think alike with. You're able to kind of use them as a basis for stuff that you want to check out. There are some bands that I heard, that I'm sure I would have never picked up on, like this great band from Florida called Brittle Stars. I love them. Their full-length on Shelflife Records is one of the most beautiful records I think I've ever heard. And I'm sure I wouldn't have heard about them if not for the mailing list that I'm on. It's a really valuable source of information. And it's means a lot more to me when it's coming from someone who's not a member of the band, someone who doesn't really have a lot of self-interest as opposed to someone's press release.

We had this funny thing happen a couple weeks ago (laughs), where a publicist that I guess I will keep anonymous posted on the message boards about some band. The post started off with this paragraph with how they weren't connected to the band and they were just a fan. And on the message board, it actually displays the internet name of the computer it was posted to. I could see right away that the domain name was of their publicist. And that's their job- they need to get the word out about stuff. I'm sure that honesty isn't always a part of that experience. So, for me, it means so much more to hear about something from someone I like and trust. I just get so much more stuff than I even have time to listen to.

I guess there's a triage process where I through stuff. I tend to start with labels and bands that I know about already, which I guess is kind of lame in a way, because I'm sure I miss out on some good things. But you have to start somewhere, so I start there and work my way down. If I have time to listen to things that I'm not familiar with, I do, but chances are, if I get something I just don't have a context for, I'm probably not even going to listen to it.

DO YOU AIR OLDER STUFF, OR DO YOU TRY TO KEEP THE PLAYLIST CURRENT?

It tends to be pretty current. I played more older stuff when I started off, then we do now. By older, I mean stuff that's more than a year or two at the most. Pretty much everything we're playing at this point I think has come out in the last year or two years, at the most.

HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WORKING WITH SOMEONE WHO COULD OFFER THE MUSIC FOR PURCHASE?

I'm actually a part of Insound's affiliate program and that's been alright. People don't buy that many CDs on the site. We used to have record reviews and you could buy the records if you read the review. If you read the review on their site, then we'd get a kickback out of it. But it turned out to be so little that it just almost didn't seem worth it.

Again, it's one of those things where if it was really my focus to turn it into a business, that would definitely be one of the things I'd pursue, because that would be one of probably the best ways to make money. Even over advertising... to be able to have a way where people are listening to a song, they can see on a web page what it is and click on a link to buy the record. There's been some research that shows that people are actually pretty apt to do that, if they're given the chance. That would be great for the bands too, if people would have a really convenient way to buy their music. It's just one of those things that I was never able to sink enough time into.

***And we then gossipped about the Portland music scene, heh heh...***

Rich also has another website about film.

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