Exploring Music to Make Archive Available — For $$

It’s a pretty incredible archive — more than 500 hours of Music Education as taught by the inimitable Bill McLaughlin.  The site goes live on Monday May 6.  If you want to check it out  before it goes behind a paywall, here’s the press release:

WFMT Radio Network to Launch
‘Exploring Music’ Website May 6

Subscribers Can Search and Stream
More Than 500 Hours of Syndicated
Classical Music and Commentary
Hosted By Bill McGlaughlin

Broadcast Archive Configured
for Online Music Education
at ExploringMusic.org

‘Music appreciation, $2 a week’

Editors:

• Complimentary press previews of ExploringMusic.org, with full access to the site, are available now. For pre-launch URL and login information, contact Nat Silverman, natsilv@aol.com, (847) 328-4292.
• Please note that the current landing page for ExploringMusic.org is not the subscription music streaming site launching May 6.
• The WFMT Radio Network’s Steve Robinson and show host Bill McGlaughlin are available for interviews.

CHICAGO, April 18, 2013 — The WFMT Radio Network will launch a subscription website on May 6 where classical music enthusiasts can search and stream hundreds of archived hours of the network’s internationally syndicated “Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin,” a daily music-appreciation show that airs on 55 stations to a weekly audience of more than 400,000 listeners.

The new streaming website, ExploringMusic.org, will advance the show’s mission of classical music education, according to Steve Robinson, general manager of the WFMT Radio Network and WFMT 98.7 FM.

He’s also the show’s executive producer and founder.

“The website, like the show, is unique,” Robinson says. “There’s no place else to hear thoroughly researched commentary, thoughtfully curated music, and Bill McGlaughlin’s engaging manner of demystifying classical music.”

The show, which celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2013, devotes a week or more of daily, one-hour weekday broadcasts to a single topic. Themes have ranged from “Artists in Exile,” “Czech Out Those Bohemians,” and “Nobody Ever Builds a Statue to a Critic” to general topics such as “Piano Concertos,” “Tone Poems,” and “Ninth Symphonies.” The show has devoted multi-week series to composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Fauré, Gershwin, and others.

On the day of the website’s launch, about 500 hours of “Exploring Music” will be available for streaming. About 850 hours have been produced to date. More will be added to the website each week, according to the radio network.

The new site represents an inventive mix of old and new media with its musical selections, educational content, and Web technology, Robinson says. Like the show itself, ExploringMusic.org is for listeners and music students at all levels of musical sophistication.

“Bill is a natural conversationalist with a talent for painting pictures with words. Listeners get drawn into the musical worlds he evokes,” Robinson says. “They share his sense of wonder and discovery. And the music he plays is so enjoyable that even listeners who use classical radio for background music stay tuned during his show.”

The original impetus for the website came from listeners who have long lamented not being able to hear shows they missed on the air — an issue voiced in many of the 7,000 emails the show has received since it went on the air in 2003, Robinson says.

“It’s astonishing to look back and see the body of work we’ve explored in our ten years on the air,” McGlaughlin says. “It’s the answer to a dream for our fans and for everyone who works on the show.”

McGlaughlin describes ExploringMusic.org as an audio “treasure trove” of the sort he would have liked to have had as an inquisitive, music-loving youngster in his native Philadelphia, where he was a frequent visitor to the public library.

In developing ExploringMusic.org, the radio network decided to do more than offer a chronological online archive of shows; it decided to offer a search capability to satisfy listeners’ curiosity and the needs of students and other researchers.

“Call it, Music appreciation, $2 a week,” Robinson says. Two dollars is the cost of subscribing to one week’s worth of five hour-long shows. This entitles the visitor to return to the site and re-listen to those five installments as many times as they want, with no expiration date.

For those who buy a $50 annual subscription, there’s no limit to the number of shows they can stream during the 12-month period. Monthly subscriptions are $7. For a limited time, those purchasing a $50 yearly subscription will become charter members, entitled to unlimited streaming for two years.

Institutional subscriptions are available for schools and colleges, Robinson says.

Nonsubscribers will be able to search the archives and listen to the first seven minutes of any hour-long show at no charge.

Subscription revenues will help fund the website and the production of new episodes, Robinson says. Initial funding for the site came from private donations.

McGlaughlin, who lives in New York, records his commentaries at local classical station WQXR-FM. His voice tracks are downloaded by “Exploring Music” producers at the radio network in Chicago, where the shows are edited, assembled, and distributed to affiliate stations. Producers include Jesse McQuarters, Cydne Gillard, and Noel Morris, with distribution by Carol Martinez and Tony Macaluso.

“Bill’s ability to connect with listeners is the product of vast research on a given topic, combined with his ability to work without a script,” says Macaluso, the radio network’s director of marketing and syndication. “He’s a gifted improviser, and listeners respond to his enthusiasm and conversational tone.”

The show is heard coast to coast on stations as geographically diverse as KNOM, Nome, Alaska; KHPR, Honolulu; and WXXI, Rochester, N.Y. Major market affiliates include KUHA, Houston; WFMT; WICR, Indianapolis; WUOL, Louisville; WRCJ, Detroit; WQED, Pittsburgh; and WQXR.

The WFMT Radio Network created “Exploring Music” and is its exclusive producer, marketer, and distributor. The network is the international syndication division of award-winning classical music station 98.7WFMT.

The network is one of the world’s most well-regarded sources for fine arts radio programming. Chicago-based Window to the World Communications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation, is the licensee of WFMT and WTTW-TV, Chicago’s premiere public television station.

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Press information contact:

for ExploringMusic.org/WFMT Radio Network:

Nat Silverman

Nathan J. Silverman Co. PR
E-mail: natsilv@aol.com