LISTENING IN ON INTERNET FM
S
teve Leventhal is no stranger to terrestrial radio . He spent quite a few years as a broadcaster on stations like WVVX and the Bear ( WCBR ), doing his Sports Radio Nightly show with people like late sportscasters Les Grobstein , Jerry Kuc , and Bob Greenberg .
“ In 2012 ,” Leventhal says , “ I started working with Bart Shore because I wanted him to do some voiceovers for me for a syndicated show I had called Psychedelic Time Warp , that was going out to a handful of terrestrial stations . And he says , ‘ You know , you should really talk to Marty Zivin ; he ' s doing online radio .’”
Zivin showed Leventhal how to do it . “ In 2012 , I launched Acid Flashback Radio , which was an offshoot of what we had done at WCBR . At ' CBR , the phones would ring off the hook all show long because people loved it . I mean , these guys were playing stuff like Firesign Theater and King Crimson and Captain Beyond and just stuff that was way out there . I always liked that concept because it was really Prog radio of the ‘ 60s and ‘ 70s . It took me about six months to perfect the library , to get rid of the stuff I didn ' t want , and to go in and really fill in all the Hendrix , the first 16 Rolling Stones albums , you know , everything Beatles from Revolver on , and built this library up . It ' s now 15,000 songs .”
It wasn ’ t long before Leventhal ’ s son Eric came aboard . “ We had been working on Acid Flashback for a while ,” Eric says , “ and every now and then , I would come in and suggest adding this new artist or that new artist that I was really into . At the time , in 2018 , I was living in Longmont , Colorado . One night we were in a bar and trying to show someone the station , which involved getting out a tablet , and going through a web browser , and pulling up a media player , and it was on crappy Wi-Fi . The whole thing was way more of a rigamarole for what should have been as simple as push-button-get-music , right ? I turned to my dad and said , ‘ Why are we doing this through a browser ? This should be an app .’ So that was our aha moment . That was the first half of the epiphany .
The second half of the epiphany was that we have all these other friends and affiliates who are doing similar stations . Why are we putting only our station on this new app ? It should be all of them - at least all the ones that we like , because TuneIn has 40,000 stations of varying degrees of quality . iTunes Radio is just as much of a haystack . So , we decided that we were going to find others who kind of met our same standards and had the same ethos , same values and put us all together at Internet FM . Instead of having to search thousands of stations , there would only be a few dozen . And you would know you were going to get something good .”
Steve and Eric Leventhal of Internet FM
By Rick Kaempfer
They started small . “ We started with 19 stations ,” Eric explains , “ And now we ' re at 50 . “ We ' ve got all kinds of genres ,” Steve explains , “ not just rock . We ' ve got country , jazz , blues . We ' ve got a lot of indie alternative . We ' ve got a couple of jam band stations . We ' ve got one that ' s Broadway and movie scores . We ' ve got an " Ambien Show ," an entire station that plays sleepy background music . We ' ve got a couple of heavy metal stations , oldies . Yeah , it ' s about 10 different genres all together with 50 stations .”
So , the question is , how is this different than ,
say , just getting Spotify ? “ We see a very symbiotic relationship between what we ' re doing and what Spotify does ,” Stevesays , “ since a lot of what we ' re doing with Acid Flashback is deep tracks . I see no issue with somebody hearing a song from , let ' s say , a deep Jefferson Airplane track and then going on Spotify and listening to the whole album because they haven ' t heard it in 30 years . Because if you think about it when you ' re on one of these services , the onus is on you to create your listening environment .”
“ Their tools for music discovery are robust ,” Eric adds , “ if you know how to use them , but even then , they still have limitations . Spotify can ' t really surprise you . Pandora especially never really surprises you . And after enough time , your playlists will begin to get stale and crusty . So , we are offering ourselves as a way for people who use those services , who like discovering new music , to come listen to us . You ' ll hear stuff you ' ve never heard before . If you hear something you like , you can turn around and add it to your music on-demand service .”
As a father of three grown sons , I had to ask Eric a question . What is it like working with your dad ? “ It does require more than a modicum of patience ,” he said with a laugh , “ But it ' s still a lot of fun . How many people can hang out with their dad every week and still have a blast ? I ’ m lucky .”
If you ’ re wondering how they managed to secure a domain name like InternetFM . com at this late date , Steve has an answer for you . “ I got it in 1995 . I always wanted to do radio . So , I said , let ' s grab Internet FM . I couldn ’ t believe it was available .” october 2023 illinoisentertainer . com 19