ShareMyPlaylists.com News
BBC 6 Music to close
Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 1:47pm |
The latest bad news to plague music lovers is the planned axing of BBC 6 Music in a budget cutting exercise, as apparently it doesn’t get enough ‘unique listeners’. The announcement has caused outrage with campaigns to save the station popping up online everywhere from Facebook to Twitter.
The numbers never reflect the whole story either, as most of the people I know do listen to 6 Music. This is because it serves a whole segment of music aficionados that cannot listen to what they want anywhere else on radio. There is a demand for music that isn’t sent on a major label sampler to the larger or more commercial radio stations.
The commercial stations, especially, always brag that they represent real music variety. But they don’t. They play a slim selection of songs deemed acceptable from the charts and a spattering of hits from the eighties so long as they are sufficiently well known.
BBC 6 Music offers listeners DJs who are passionate about playing the music they love, whatever genre it might be and irrelevant of whether it’s on an independent label or even unsigned. It offers both variety and ‘newness’.
Another detrimental effect of the closure of 6 Music would be to the music industry itself. It offers an opportunity for new and exciting young bands who would be heard by a handful of people at gigs to be heard by thousands of people who want to discover bands and artists who share their passion.
The demise of 6 Music would be a great loss to the music scene in this country. Lily Allen summed it up in an article in The Guardian: “If they close 6 Music, instead of acts like Seasick Steve and presenters like Lauren Laverne, it will be the Pussycat Dolls and Fearne Cotton on Radio 1.” Amen.
For fellow fans of 6 Music though, here is a playlist of their very best tracks from 2009. BBC 6 Music Top 100 from 2009
Benjamin O' Connell
