erockster: A Service Whose Time Has Passed/Arrived/Yet To Be Determined
When Clear Channel launched its new online/HD radio music service last Friday, the first thing that struck me was its clunky name: erockster. With its “e” prefix and “ster” suffix, erockster looked like a long-forgotten start-up from the 2000 dot-com crash.
One week later, I’m warming to the erockster concept — if not its lazy, Web 1.0 moniker — but it’s still hard to know what to do with it. Currently a purely online phenomenon that will eventually broadcast as an alternate high-definition stream for Clear Channel rock stations, erockster.com is Jack FM for hipsters.
The service produced by Eric Szmanda (an actor on “CSI”) will eventually have a 5,000-song playlist and offers a wide variety of alternative rock, funk, true classic rock, authentic country and dance tracks. Listeners have a solid shot at hearing Led Zeppelin after LCD Soundsystem, or Prince after The Ting Tings, or Belle and Sebastian after Patsy Cline — it’s heart-warmingly haphazard.
Szmanda previewed erockster during last month’s Coachella Music Festival in Indio, Calif., when it was played on independent station KAJR. But its main platform now is as a streaming service on a few of Clear Channel’s Top 5 market stations’ Web sites.
This is what is so frustrating about erockster: it might be the best formatted station to launch in 20 years, but it cannot be heard yet on the airwaves. Meanwhile, Clear Channel has been moving many of its conservatively programmed alternative rock stations, including KHBZ-FM in Oklahoma City, over to the “active rock” format, which means more Atreyu and Finger 11 for everyone. That move calls into question hopes for erockster venturing out of its online streaming ghetto and into car stereos soon. If Clear Channel is moving away from alternative rock on its terrestrial radio stations, how committed will it be to growing its erockster brand?
My sense is that erockster has managed an odd trick by being simultaneously ahead and behind the times. Streaming radio has been around since names like “erockster” sounded cool, so in its current incarnation, it seems terribly old hat even while it plays great music. Meanwhile, local radio stations are now offering alternative high-definition streams of programming (much like KFOR’s NBC WeatherPlus stream on HDTV), and perhaps erockster could find a home on KHBZ’s digital spectrum, giving terrestrial rock fans a break from all that market-tested, low-tuned angst.
If erockster ever arrives in Oklahoma City, and HD radio becomes readily available, it might make leaving your iPod at home a bit less tragic. As it is, it feels like a half-hearted revolution.
