DUBSTEP.FM
Interview by Ric Baker
Since emerging in 1995, internet radio has revolutionized the broadcasting industry, bringing opportunities to new ideas and new music that otherwise would have no mass outlet. Many djs and producers of emergent underground styles of music have embraced webcasting over the years by starting up internet radio stations and establishing shows in order to gain exposure for their sound and promote themselves as artists. For dubstep, one such station is Dubstep.fm. At the helm is dubstep dj and internet radio champion, Alex LaBranche aka DopeLabs. Officially on the air since April 10th, 2007, Dubstep.fm is one of the only sites broadcasting dubstep at 192 kbps and boasts the highest average numbers of listeners as well as the most listeners at any one time for a dubstep web broadcast. DopeLabs has also recently started a label Dubstep Records.
So how where you first exposed to dubstep?
So I first got into dubstep from a friend letting me hear ‘grime’ in 2006 released on Rephlex. Since I was into dnb at the time, I heard it and I was like ‘WTF is this?’ Then I started to follow Plastician (Plastic Man at the time), which led me to other tunes in the dubstep genre. While I was spinning dnb on various stations, I really got into IDM and downtempo Braindance, Warp, Rephlex, Planet mu, etc. So I liked the slower paced stuff but I liked the hard bass of dnb. When I heard dubstep I fell in love. And that’s what really got me doing internet radio. Since I went to school for networking and systems, my real world work is in IT. I loved this music and djing, so I get to do the best of both worlds: server administration and hosting internet radio technology. I love it. It took me three weeks to get dubstep.fm coded up, the servers bought and configured and some general content. I think I slept maybe a week out of that. I would stay up all night coding and designing the website, then go to work, come home and do it all over again. I think four days was the longest stretch I stayed up for, then I crashed over the weekend.
Can you talk about the interactivity between the audience in the Dubstep.fm chat room and the djs?
I think it’s a wonderful tool. More people are getting into it, and the djs will plug the chat room link. There is no other outlet other than online radio that will allow you to interact with the djs in real time during a live performance. You can’t get that at any club, you can’t get tune ids. It’s also nice this day and age with many djs using Serato or some other digital medium while doing live sets where someone can literally send the dj a tune mid-set and have it played on the air 10 minutes later. In my opinion it doesn’t get any fresher than that. With Dubstep.fm I have a page where anyone can upload dubs, which the djs of the station have access to via a password protected directory. There are over 1200 tunes in there now.
How do you handle program scheduling?
The schedule is completely dynamic which means there is no set schedule. The djs just fill out a webform, they pick a time and date they want to play, fill in their info. and submit it. It then pops up on the stations events list. This way djs aren’t tied to any specific time slot and if there isn’t anyone scheduled the djs have the freedom to hop on ‘renegade’ any time they wish.
How do you fund Dubstep.fm?
[Through donations] Each month the listeners of the station have donated more than the asking mark. $225 is what we try to hit each month, one month we hit over $300 in donations. Amazing.
How would you describe the make up of the audience?
I think I would have to say that it’s about 50/50 as far as the US/UK listener base goes, but I’ve got a new tag line for the station, which is ‘Dubstep.fm – The World Is Listening’. I took a look at the shoutcast server stats page a few weeks ago and noticed the domains of the people listening, and just about every domain you could think of was tuned in: .de, .uk, .com, .net, .cz, etc. etc. etc. I think I counted thirty different countries.
