Christoph Lindemann: “Music deserves to be treated as proper art form”
Czeching juror Christoph Lindemann of PULS Radio on discovering new music and the role of radio.
Throughout September Radio Wave will introduce five promising music projects with the potential to succeed abroad in a project called Czeching. One of the acts will be picked by an international jury composed of radio professionals from more than ten European countries. The winner will be announced during Czeching Showcase and gets a chance to record and release a new EP, to shoot a music video and play at the biggest European showcase festival Eurosonic Noorderslag.
One of the members of the Czeching jury Christoph Lindemann, is the Head of Music at the Bavarian youth radio station PULS, and also an experienced DJ. He will be one of the guests of Czeching Showcase in a panel discussion on the topic of “Power of Music in the Changing Music Industry”.. In a short interview, we talked about his view on music journalism, role of radio and discovering new music talents.
What was your personal journey to radio like? How did you get to work in PULS.
I always loved radio and after school when I thought about what I’m going to do with my life the only thing I could only come up with was that i would really love to work in a radio so I started to work at my local radio station, they were teaching me everything. While I did this I really got a taste for it and I studied journalism at university. Afterwards I continued working at the radio but only in the evenings and during the day I was an editor in the music magazine. I was doing lots of interviews with bands and traveled all over the world. Nine years ago I join the Bayerischer Rundfunk, the young station of the public radio network in Bavaria, Germany. And that’s where I am now as head of music.
Speaking of music journalism, how has this profession changed throughout your career and what is the state of music journalism now?
That’s a very good question. I think it has become more difficult to reach people with more meaningful content just because there is so much more distraction and there is so much more good entertainment available from so many different sources. But I still think people care about music deeply. When I am DJing I see very young people singing the lyrics from the first word to the last. So people really listen to bands and they still care. It’s just difficult to reach them. Sometimes it’s tempting to think that people care only about some funny Instagram pictures because you get a reaction much easier than when you post a documentary or an interview. But I think both things can coexist. So you should offer content that is probably harder to digest and makes you think about an artist. I think music deserves to be treated as proper art form.
What about the role of radio? How do you see it’s role in an evolving music industry?
I always love radio when I learn something or hear a story that I can remember. The pure entertainment aspect of radio when you listen to music and it doesn’t disturb you much is diminishing. You have streaming services, playlists and your own devices. But radio is still meaningful when it tells you a story about an artist. And I still think it still has a strong reach among young people, stronger than we sometimes think. Radio still reaches many people and it is a great way to discover music for example driving a car or being home alone in the evening. Even sometimes in the morning I listen to BBC 6 od BBC Radio 1 and discover new songs, I write them down or look them up on net. It still has a strong role and it’s much better in pointing your attention to something than for example streaming services. Just a playlist won’t point my attention in a meaningful way to something, I might discover a song that I like but it’s much better when someone tells you a story that grabs your attention and makes you turn up the volume because now you really want to hear the next song.
It seems that dividing music into genres is becoming less relevant. Have you observed this trend?
Ten or twelve years ago when I started DJing there was still this kind of “india fascism” when people got really angry when they went to an indie club and heard a Hip Hop song. This completely changed in the last decade. People’s taste became so eclectic and opened and this is a great thing. It proposes new challenges to the radio programming. Because it’s becoming less easy to say we are this and that. PULS always had this alternative approach because we don’t have an FM frequency and we are not one of the mainstream widely broadcasted radios. People usually have to discover us so it was always much more meaningful to play something for people who discover. So we had a unique selling proposition, we used to be a real indie radio but now we also pick mainstream songs if we like them. We sometimes play a song by Rihanna if it’s really progressive and amazing, but the next three songs we will not play because we don’t like them. And this is still something that is hard to understand by record companies that would say: “You played Rihanna last time why don’t you play it this time.” Yeah, because we don’t like it. And you can still find your own way by picking artistically relevant or more interesting things but it’s harder. But the good side to it is that the people are much more opened.
What are you looking for in the new music? When you pick new music, what do you follow?
On the current state of music and the current state of our program. When we realize we don’t have enough Hip Hop we specifically look for great Hip Hop songs. And the process takes place usually on Monday afternoons. The whole editorial office, our music team comes together, everybody brings two or three songs that they think would be relevant and great for our program. Then we listen to them, discuss it and then we pick them or we pick them not. And we research in many different sources, we read different blogs and many of us actually DJ at night which is a great way to try out new songs on young club audience. We listen to other stations etc.
What would you recommend to young bands who want to get airplay?
A certain professionalism and the way they present themselves their info sheets they are sending out, the links and the demos, that’s one thing but I also notice that when I have a feeling that an artist or a band really wants to be on the radio and try many things to be fit for a radio then the outcome sometimes can be very boring. So my advice would be to really stick to your character and be confident in what you do. Some of the acts i see who make it and get a good record deal with a progressive label and magazines are talking about them, sometimes these are not the bands that immediately get a radio attention. But after a while some people will notice, like some evening radio DJ who maybe has a small audience but this audience really cares what he/she tells them, they will pick up on it and they might interview them… So don’t try too hard to fit into radio program just be yourselves.
Looking at the music scene in Bavaria, can we talk about a specific scene? Can you recommend any interesting local acts that caught your attention?
Fortunately over the last years the music scene in Bavaria has become very eclectic. There is a strong HIp Hop scene that is sometimes even outside Bavaria. But this would probably be hard for you to understand what they are saying, I have sometimes trouble understanding them. What I find really interesting in Bavaria is what we call the new weird Bavaria. And these are acts who are still influenced by the scene around Notwist, who were a very successful band about 10 to 20 years ago also internationally. The music has a folky element in it but also electronic and is usually very playful and sophisticated. I would recommend listening to Joasinho, who were picked by the SXSW last year and played many shows abroad and also Lalipuna is a great act that blends folk, electronic music and pop.
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