Sorry for dropping off there, I had some things that needed to be worked through. While I was gone though I wasn’t idle and I wanted to run through some changes that are going to be popping up over the next month or so.
The biggest change is I’m no longer going to use 8Tracks for distributing the show. Instead the episodes will be distributed as Spotify playlists and as stand alone mp3 files that you will hopefully be able to access through your favorite podcast tool. Given that the shows are nothing but copyrighted music I’m guessing there will be some networks that aren’t going to let me list, but I’ll do what I can. You’ll also notice along with this change a bit of a branding change away from the “playlist” metaphor I had for this originally and more to a “mixtape” metaphor that I think is more natural. That change is more cosmetic though.
The next change has already started happening. Back in the 90s I had a reputation on a couple of email lists for writing album and show reviews. It was just natural for me to hear a CD or see a show and immediately want to write about it and tell people. It’s been 20+ years, but I still get the urge now and then. I’m going to use WWJRD as a place to post those reviews. You’ve already seen the write up from the recent Floydfest and I’ve also uploaded a couple of older reviews. I’m not sure exactly how much this is going to happen going forward, but don’t be surprised when it does. Subject matter will likely lean towards music related stuff, but other things may pop up as well. There may also be some commentary stuff on local Columbia issues, but I haven’t decided on that yet.
Last change is in song selection for future mixtapes. Originally the idea for the mixtapes was to not use any songs that had explicit language. The idea was to make it a little more family friendly. I’ve been running into issues with this though. For instance, Kathleen Edwards dropped a great album recently that I’ve wanted to include in mixes, but the songs that I enjoyed most, all had a random f or s word in the lyrics. Similarly, I really want to include Hurray For The Riff Raff’s song Pa’lante, but there’s an f word in there. In the end I’ve decided to do away with this restriction and just pick the songs that work. I’ll try to remember to call out when there are curse words in songs if I know they’re there (if the song isn’t in English, I’m not going to know what they’re saying) but that’ll be the extent of it.
OK, that’s about it. Expect the next WWJRD mixtape to drop at the beginning of September. This will be the first show with the podcast option baked in, though I’m going to go back and set up the first three episodes as well.