In Thursday’s (6/24) New York Times, Joseph Plambeck writes, “Music has long been part of NPR’s identity, but perhaps never more than in recent years, as its NPR Music Web site has become an increasingly popular outlet for artists and music fans. The site, at www.npr.org/music, features many artists who don’t get heavy airplay on commercial radio, from the soprano Renée Fleming to the jazz musician Fred Hersch. But big-name pop acts get attention too. This month the Web site streamed 45 shows from the Bonnaroo festival, including the sets by the Dave Matthews Band and Tori Amos. More than 40 can still be found on the Web site.” Plambeck reports that Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s general manager of digital media, had been “skeptical about including so many genres under one roof—jazz, hip-hop, rock, world and classical—but that he had been proven wrong. The number of people coming to the site continues to increase, to about 1.7 million unique users in May…. Lois Najarian O’Neill, a longtime music publicist, said that NPR Music is popular among artists and managers because ‘it feels like a pure, unadulterated and credible endorsement from a press outlet.’ ” On Wednesday NPR Music introduced an iPhone application for the website.
Posted June 24, 2010
