Matt Samet questions the effectiveness of radio censorship.

Sometimes, beat-recycling and trademark identifiers in music can be excessive and obvious, but maybe that's because they work.

It seems to happen over and over again, that international musicians won't be recognized in the U.S. until long after they gain success internationally. Matt Samet laments the U.S.'s music closed-mindedness and writes about why this is so. 

The Federal Communications Commission determined last week that radio company Saga Communications, which owns the radio station 95.9 FM in Ithaca, had “falsely certified” a permit for construction that was meant to free up the airwaves for locally-owned Finger Lakes Radio Group (95.5 FM).

Normally this here column is all about music. But lately my ears have been a bit preoccupied with a different type of listening. Namely, podcasts. Yes, those audio files that are just like what’s on the radio (heck most of them are even aired on the radio first!), except since they have a snazzy name, I sound slightly erudite or nerdy, take your pick, when I say that I’m listening to podcasts. Well, these podcasts I speak of have been distracting me from keeping tabs on the music scene as I usually do. Instead, I’ve been busy filling the space between my ears with interesting stories and funny anecdotes and culture news and game shows. I. Just. Can’t. Get. Enough.

As my time left in Ithaca dwindles away, there’s one aspect about life in Tompkins County that I only recently realized just how much I’m going to miss: the radio stations. Now, I’m not sure how wonderful or terrible the radio stations were in your hometown, but where I’m from in the New York, tri-state area, FM programming is a waste of frequency space.

While most students were packing up in preparation for Fall Break, 1,000 ticket-holders joined National Public Radio’s Ira Flatow in Bailey auditorium for a live broadcast of Science Friday to millions of listeners across hundreds of NPR affiliate stations. Science Friday is a weekly science talk radio program entering its 19th year of hosting expert panel discussions and listener call-ins on current issues in science, nature and technology.

I want you to stop for a second and think about music. What does it mean to you? When do you listen to it? When do you play it? What do you use it for? This might be, if you’re really thinking about it, an enormous list. We use music to celebrate, to mourn, to get together and PAR-TAY, to reflect a huge range of emotions, to calm us down, to pump us up, for the simple beauty of sound.