You're Listening to the RADIO...the RADIO...the RADIO...

Heard it before? Damn right you have. Radio has always been a repetitive medium, but that has rarely been true of Australia's national radio station Triple J - a government funded alternative to profit driven radio. Peep within for a rant of frustratingly lengthy and inaccurate proportions.

Your sex is on fire and it's not your fault but mine. How many times have you heard that in the past couple of years? Hopefully the last few thousand times have been on radio and not via a nervous phone call from an STD-ridden ex-lover...but the point stands. You have herpes. I mean, what the fuck is going on with music on the radio?

Repetitive radio play is by no means a new thing; it's not like 'Let It Be' hit radio in 1970 only to be played equitably and relative to Charles Manson's 'Look at Your Game, Girl,' but that's always been a part of the beast that is commercial radio. You have to expect that when it comes to pulling in money, a commercial radio station will take the cash from whoever's willing to give it. But can you ever justify this behaviour from a non-profit, government funded vehicle? If there's no need to pull in sponsor's cash via listener numbers, then is there a need to adopt a format that favours repetition of blockbuster artists? Especially when you're a national radio station that has been built as a staple of alternative music for almost 40 years? Especially if you're Triple J.

Useable statistics are notoriously difficult to find for play counts, so yes, a lot of this article is going to be based very, very loosely on 'facts' and 'statistics' and the 'unnecessary' use of 'inverted' comma's, but that's just something you've got to deal with when peeking through the throngs of the internet.

We'll use those aforementioned tracks that combine into a genitalactic admission of guilt to highlight what we're trying to say. According to jplay.com.au Mumford & Son's 'Little Lion Man' is the 114th most played song on Triple J since jplay began tracking artists (from memory, back in 2003...check that up if you want a reasonable argument.) That's a pretty good feat considering that track's only been on air for less than six months. On the same hand, Kings of Leon are the second most played artist in jplay's time, with 1662 airings and three tracks in the top 200 most played, stats which could certainly be ringing bells if you went through the frustrating process of turning on your radio expecting something new in 2009.

To flip those stats on their head, we'll use two artists who released albums last year that us at Soulshine were quite fond of in the form of The Fumes and the Black Ryder. In the case of the Fumes - who even by commercial standards aren't unknown or un-commercial - two singles from last year's album 'Sundancer', 'High City Lights' and 'Python for a Pillow' haven't been played since November in 2009...about the same time that 'Little Lion Man' hit airwaves. The Black Ryder, were also left for dead, with their most played track 'Let It Go' ranking at 6944 in the most played ranks on the J's.

With those hard-hitting facts on the table, how can you justify that skew in play count? For Mumford & Sons (I've heard that fucking name so regularly that I'm almost tearing my hair out just typing it) to have reached number 144 for just one of their several formulaic tracks and Black Ryder to languish at 6944, some sort of high crime has been committed. If just 100 of their plays and a couple of hundred of Kings of Leon's were handed over to The Black Ryder or the Fumes, then maybe they'd be living a much more comfortable existence.

We recently chatted to the Black Ryder at the Playground Weekender (interview coming to Soulshine soon) where they spoke about potentially putting off an Australian tour as it will struggle to find them any decent profit, choosing instead to tour overseas. What would 100 plays of their music over a one month period do for an Australian tour of theirs plugged by Triple J announcers? Imagine the benefit that just a fraction of the time given to Triple J's high rotation artists directed elsewhere could bring to a new, quality local act like the Black Ryder. It amazes me that Triple J still pose as Australian music's saviour, but consistently let down quality artists like the ones we mentioned, people like Grand Salvo and Laura Jean and stacks of others we may possibly never know because they never saw the light of day.

Of course, there are ways around this...for example, you don't have to listen to Triple J. The role of community radio like 2ser and FBi in Sydney, Edge radio in Hobart, Three D in Adelaide and the various city's equivalents in promoting local artists present a format that actually delivers music that varies from day to day. Adding to that, the internet is fast becoming a more important form of music media. With the right website (plug), you can find an agenda free account of what is actually happening in music...or at least, whatever people get around to posting on the web in their own time. Ahem. Like this.

*Cue a rising wall of sound, a banjo and an oft-repeated chorus.*