One of my fondest memories as a kid was jumping around an album—those were big round plastic things that mysteriously held music captive until you dropped a needle on the album and sound was created from the collision of the two entities—and listening to my favorites from that particular artist. I am not even going to admit to playing 45 rpms as a VERY young kid. That would put me mere years after Edison’s invention of the phonograph and I am not going there.

This “playing disc-jockey” continued with CDs as I would jump around the disc passing up songs that I didn’t particularly like to get to one that would stop me in my tracks (excuse the pun). There was an anticipation of knowing the song that I was going to hear and then actually experiencing it.

Stop for a second and think of your favorite song. Then hear it in your mind. Even that is an incredibly enjoyable experience. Even that makes you feel good. Actually add the sound of the song and the next 4 minutes is great.

I can remember the first time I heard “Roundabout” from the album Fragile by Yes. First of all, it is about 8 and one half minutes. And it takes you through about 10 emotions. I sat on the floor and just played it over and over all night. And no, I was not high. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. Even today I will stop whatever I am doing and just listen to the song if I run across it.

Where am I going with this?

The CD is dead. The album is long dead.

That experience is dying.

Today music listeners will get “in the ballpark” of that experience. I know that if want to hear “Roundabout” I had better be listening to a Classic Rock station. WUSN is not going to play it. And even then my chance is about 1 in 4000.

Yeah, I can program Pandora for a Yes Channel and “Roundabout” is going to come up at some point.

Yeah, I can go on Spotify and “ask” for “Roundabout.”

Yeah, I can go to my iPod and play “Roundabout.”

Why does none of that feel the same?

Last week The NPD Group, a consumer research firm, published a study showing that Internet and on-demand services (Pandora, Spotify and YouTube) are pushing the CD off the shelves in America.

Our friends on Music Row can vouch for this.

So far these services are far behind radio but they are going in different directions and The NPD Group found radio listening down 4% year to year. Even digital downloads were reported down 2%

From an article I read (online) from the San Francisco Chronicle, NPD SVP Russ Crupnick said, “Although AM/FM radio remains America’s favorite music-listening choice, the basket of Internet Radio and Streaming services that are available today have, on a whole, replaced the CD for second place.”

With even digital downloads losing some ground music listeners have decided that owning the music is not important. Having access to the music is more important.

The thing about all of these services it that the revenue model is still shaky. I have Pandora. I have Spotify. I use YouTube. I have the free version of all of these channels.

I do not want the artist to be compromised by my not paying for the service but it seems like the artist payment is so far down the road on some of these services that me putting up with a commercial every 15 minutes or so is not going to impact them.

Artists reportedly get about 1/3 of a penny per stream on iTunes Match, but that is for playing a song you have already purchased once.

Want to make a dollar from Spotify? Hope that your song streams hundreds of times.

I like broadcast radio. I like the streaming services but both should be sources for introducing music to the consumer who then goes out and BUYS the music so that they can sit on the floor and play their favorites over and over and over.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MusicRow)

Voting is now open to all Country radio station employees for the CRS 2013 New Faces of Country Music Show. The show will be held Friday, March 1, 2013, at the Nashville Convention Center.

This year’s nominees are Greg Bates, Easton Corbin, Edens Edge, The Farm, Florida Georgia Line, Andy Gibson, Brantley Gilbert, Casey James, Jana Kramer, Dustin Lynch, Scotty McCreery, Kip Moore, Jon Pardi and James Wesley.

“The New Faces show has always been a great barometer of talent in our format,” says New Faces Committee Chair John Crenshaw. “Some of the biggest superstars in Country music played this show at CRS early on in their careers, and it’s always exciting to see that kind of talent on display in such an intimate setting.”

The New Faces of Country Music Show, co-sponsored by the Academy of Country Music and Muscular Dystrophy Association, is one of the most anticipated events at Country Radio Seminar. Five emerging artists who have achieved significant success at Country radio are selected each year to perform at the showcase event. Below are the New Faces of Country Music qualification criteria:

1. The qualification period is Nov. 1 – Oct. 31 during the year immediately preceding the New Faces of Country Music Show.

2. Nominees may not have appeared on a previous New Faces of Country Music Show.

3. Nominees must have charted at least one Top 25 single on the the Mediabase or Billboard Country Charts.

4. Nominees may not have more than two albums on the Billboard Country Top Country Albums chart, nor more than two albums that peaked above No. 50 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart by the end of the qualification period.

Any employee of a commercial, full-time Country radio station may vote for the 2013 New Faces of Country Music Show performers. Voting determines the five finalists and remains open through Monday, Nov. 19, at www.CountryRadioSeminar.com.

Last week I wrote about going to the Eric Church show in Washington, DC, a couple of nights before Hurricane Sandy. Of course, I knew at the time that Sandy was churning her way to the East Coast after doing a great deal of damage in the Caribbean.

I was in DC on Friday and Saturday and the weather was beautiful. Like most cynics, I thought that the forecasters were overestimating the potential damage. I mean, come on, who believes weather forecasters?

This is not news. They were right this time.

I got home to West Virginia early Sunday morning, and the newscasts were warning of snow as our contribution from Sandy. But Sunday was not a bad day and, after all, who believes weather forecasters?

Monday morning Sandy arrived and brought her cousin Frosty the Snow Devil.

Millions were surprised by the force of the storm, in conjunction with cold air from the north that dumped feet of snow on West Virginia and western Maryland. As I write this a week later schools are still closed, and thousands in West Virginia are still without power. The last number I heard about NY/NJ was that 3.5 million people are without power.

The stations that I work with here in West Virginia were all touched in some manner. Some for short periods of time and some for longer times. In most cases it was a loss of commercial power at transmitter and studio sites. Some of these sites are on top of mountains on the other side of scores of downed trees and drifts of snow. These roads up to the mountain tops are not easy to traverse in August, much less after storms.

The list of stations off the air included New York City and Washington DC—big markets, with redundancy in place in most cases. Yet this storm said, “Hah! I am the real king of all media.”

If you are in the radio business you know that silence is the worst sound. Radio people call it “dead air.”

Everyone jumps when there is dead air.

For no significant length of time were any of our home cities without service from at least one of our properties. If we had a problem with one signal, another in our cluster was serving the public. There were a dozen employees of West Virginia Radio Corp. that went way beyond the call of duty by trudging to snowbound sites to fill generators with fuel and helping clear roadways.

The FCC (not always a friend of radio) reported that broadcast radio performed better than cellular phone services, and that 25% of the cell towers in the area went out.

I didn’t experience any cell problems so I can’t tell you whether those who did are back online today.

There are still a lot of people without power. I heard from a number of listeners who went to their cars to listen so they could learn about shelters and where to find fuel.

Broadcast radio, like it always does, rose to the challenge and provided important information to those in harm’s way. So many in the radio industry have been asking cell phone manufacturers to include AM/FM in the phone. Maybe we would be better served investing in batteries that drive portable radios.

Join me in applauding the hundreds of radio engineers who worked their asses off to make sure the public was served in a time of need.

Just to be fair, not all broadcasters are to be applauded. I follow a particularly offensive internet radio host on Twitter. He and his listeners spent much of last week laughing at and berating East Coasters devastated by the storm. Treating their fellow Americans like dummies for where they live. This note from Karma: “I’m watching and listening.”

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MusicRow)

Country Radio veteran Becky Brenner has been elevated to full partner of consulting firm Albright & O’Malley, which she joined in January 2012. Following Brenner’s promotion, the company will now be renamed Albright & O’Malley & Brenner.

“We knew that this would be the perfect addition of yet another first team player to Albright & O’Malley’s arsenal of strategic and tactical weapons for our clients,” says partner Jaye Albright. “Becky has done everything including morning drive personality, promotions, marketing, programming, operations and new media manager, during her illustrious 35 year career at CBS Radio, ARS, EZ Communications, Broadcast Programming and Midwest Family.”

Brenner was previously the longtime Program Director/Digital Web Manager for KMPS-FM and the CBS Radio Seattle cluster, from 1982-1992 and 1995-2011. She was named as one of the top PDs in the country (all formats) for multiple years, and recognized as Country’s No. 1 programmer five times by Radio Ink.

Brenner will continue to be based out of her Seattle home office. Congratulate her here.