A more in-depth have a look at NTS’ Don’t Assume Day

By any measure, streaming defines at this time’s music panorama. It’s a interval during which digital platforms decide how audiences entry, uncover, and share music. But as algorithmic playlists saturate the expertise, a counter present has emerged: listeners are searching for context and connection, not simply entry. That is the house the place on-line radio stations like NTS thrive.

An finish to visible tribalism, the beginning of auditory group constructing

On the coronary heart of NTS’s success is a deceptively easy mantra: “Do not Assume”. Impressed by the Maggie Nichols report of the identical identify, this phrase is the station’s founding ethos. Based in 2011 in Hackney, East London, NTS was conceived as an antidote to homogenous playlists – an area the place anybody can play something, and the place pure musical curiosity overrides tribal identification.

This philosophy is more and more related. As NTS’s CEO Sean McAuliffe aptly famous to me, “Folks don’t put on their music style on their sleeves anymore”. The visible cues of music-based identification – the particular haircuts or uniforms of a scene – have largely light. You possibly can champion the anarchic spirit of the Intercourse Pistols with out a leather-based jacket or security pin in sight.

This liberation from visible tribalism creates a brand new problem: if you cannot see your group, how do you discover it? That is the void that on-line radio fills so successfully.

Do not Assume Day: A masterclass in group constructing

The station’s ethos was powerfully realised in its charity broadcast, ‘Don’t Assume Day’.

On the floor, it is an unpredictable day of programming the place leaders from artwork, activism, movie, and literature take over NTS’s channels.  What struck me, nevertheless, wasn’t simply the occasion itself, however the visitor choice and what this meant for scene alignment. This was a very eclectic, but surprisingly intertwined, mixture of figures.

There have been political figures like Jeremy Corbyn (a simple win for the core viewers, positive), but additionally the poignant visitor combine from Keith LaMar, an activist, author and dying row inmate. The lineup additionally included naturalist Chris Packham, documentarian Adam Curtis, artwork director Hans Ulrich Obrist, make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench, and even Turkish Olympic sport shooter and web meme sensation Yusuf Dikeç.

This isn’t name-out-of-a-hat choice. It’s a deliberate reflection of the NTS listener’s personal broad, cross-disciplinary pursuits. It alerts to the group: “We see you”. Layering the occasion with fundraising for the UN World Meals Programme then transforms listening from passive leisure into collective motion, deepening the group’s emotional funding.

However what actually separates that is the profound stage of belief it cultivates. Take the present from Adam Curtis and God Colony – which, true to the documentarian’s type, options no speech. It didn’t matter whether or not you favored what you heard or not. You tune in to listen to what they’ll play. To hear for over an hour based mostly purely on belief within the curator’s imaginative and prescient is a uncommon and highly effective dynamic.

After I requested Sean McAuliffe about this curatorial course of, he modestly attributed it to “who they knew“, somewhat than a drawn-out strategic train. However that’s the purpose. This intuitive understanding is the essence of an genuine group. To know, instinctively, who your viewers desires to listen to from is to actually know your listenership.

The worldwide artwork gallery in N16

Crucially, NTS doesn’t place itself as an oppositional power to the DSPs. Theirs will not be a competitor, however a complementary provide. Their very own analogy is probably the most apt “If DSPs are Pinterest, NTS is an artwork gallery”. One is an immense, user-generated repository; the opposite, a curated house for context and connoisseurship. They’re complementary experiences serving totally different wants.

The last word lesson right here is that in a market saturated with algorithmic abundance, probably the most defensible asset is a group that sees its personal identification mirrored within the model.

NTS has mastered the alchemy of remodeling a solitary listening session right into a shared occasion. In doing so, it has cemented on-line radio’s very important position in our cultural ecosystem. It affords a strong mannequin for the longer term: not simply extra music, however a real sense of belonging.