Steadily creeping into my personal list of Top 7 Podcasts* is NPR's All Songs Considered – a half-hour radio show where they showcase music that I would otherwise probably never hear. It's a great show, and its spin-offs are pretty amazing.
Take their live concerts, for example: they have, for free download, a list of live shows that include (right now) Radiohead, Yo La Tengo, Moby and Sonic Youth. All very hipstery, and all very good. (Except the Radiohead show sounds like my neighbour's dog barking next to a dishwasher... which I suppose is how all Radiohead music sounds.)
The only trouble with All Songs Considered is that all songs are - alas - not considered. As Slate's Jody Rosen writes in a very funny piece, NPR adhere to a DORF matrix (you'll have to read the story to see what that means) which excludes anything by contemporary black musicians.
Which is a bad thing. Obviously.
Except...
I couldn't help thinking of NPR's limitations when I read (and listened to a podcast talking about) Sasha Frere-Jones's excellent New Yorker essay on the demise of hip-hop. I guess when you turn your genre into a collection of throwaway ringtones, you can't really expect people to take you seriously any more.
Or, in NPR's case, to consider your songs.
* (Which are – in no particular order – Slate's Gabfest and Culturefest, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and Common Sense, NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, EconTalk and The New Yorker Out Loud)