Maybe you remember Texamericana, that little nonprofit record store with big ideas to support public radio?

When Texamericana closed in 2007, your CDs were lovingly cared for by Barbara K while she and co-founders Wolfgang Pracht and Ben Bright laid the groundwork for Artists for Media Diversity.  A4MD became what Texamericana could not:  a 501(c)(3) tax exempt charitable organization.

The method has changed but the mission is the same: A4MD enables artists to advocate for noncommercial radio.  Our groundbreaking signature service – the Archive for Music Diversity – has recently been endorsed by the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the Latino Public Radio Consortium.

We launch A4MD next month at the NFCB National Community Radio Conference in our workshop for community broadcasters called  “Culture for the Common Good”.

If you’d like to donate your CDs to A4MD – the ones that you had consigned to Texamericana – we’ll give them to radio stations or as thank you gifts to folks making donations to our organization.  We are very grateful for the support of all our sponsors.

And if you’d like your CDs returned to you, then please make a $10 donation to A4MD and we’ll send them on their way back home.

As you visit A4MD, you may notice the Yellow Rose of Texamericana.  Without your support early on, we would have never made it this far.

And as you visit A4MD, sign up for our newsletter and stay tuned.  After all, which is more powerful, commercials or culture? Musicians know the answer to that one.

Culture for the Common Good.  Artists for Media Diversity.

Thanks for considering a musical donation.

With gratitude,

Christine

Christine Farren, just back from the International Folk Alliance Conference, will welcome musicians and share information about our exciting new partnership with the National Federation of Community Broadcasters.

Barbara and Christine will be traveling to Houston in June for the NFCB’s National Community Radio Conference where they will be presenting “Culture for the Common Good” – a workshop all about A4MD’s Archive for Music Diversity – a service for noncommercial radio stations.

So stop by and say hi!

Does your station record local and visiting musicians and then produce CDs of their work which you sell or use as premiums?

Artists for Media Diversity (a4md.org) is an organization putting together independent musicians, community radio stations and other nonprofits, and money — money to provide goods and services for the stations and tour support services for the musicians.  Artists for Media Diversity is organized to foster awareness of the need for independent media voices in America, to provide assistance to emerging community-based or public media outlets and to promote musical and cultural diversity.

NFCB sees great potential in this work.  We see community stations sharing their musical discoveries with other stations; independent musicians getting national exposure; and money from sales of downloads supporting both stations and musicians.

A4MD will begin by working with stations that already have CDs in hand.  They will take all the necessary steps to obtain releases and cover all the legal issues.  At this point, we just want to get a sense of which stations have produced CDs and might be interested in getting the music you love out to other stations.  You’re not committing yourself to anything else.

As the project goes forward, A4MD will enable other stations with live recordings that have not yet been mastered to CD to participate.

If your station has produced CDs and you are interested in knowing more about the project, please send an email to Barbara Kooyman at bk@a4md.org.

Barbara and the A4MD project team will be presenting a session at the NFCB Community Radio Conference in Houston.

Ginny Z. Berson
Vice President and Director of Federation Services
National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB)

Christine Farren, representing Artists for Media Diversity, is excited to be attending the 2012 International Folk Alliance Conference from February 22 – 26.  While volunteering at the Conference, she’s looking forward to meeting recording artists and hearing lots of great music.

Christine will be happy to share information about our initiative:

Culture for the Common Good.

If you are a recording artist who has ever played live on a community radio station, share your story with Christine.  Then sign up with A4MD and stay tuned as, together, we create powerful support for public media.

Nonprofit Capitalism is a road on which the power of self-interest meets the ethics of social responsibility; a journey to where the lions and lambs of globalization stop the hunt and peacefully use local economics to transform their swords into plowshares to restore a long lost balance of Life; a means and not an end – why we are here and what we can do together.

Do you have a vision for a better future with more justice for all?

Artists for Media Diversity reaches out for conscious collaboration with the growing national movement for cooperative economics and social entrepreneurship. Across this country, large networks of organizations have already tested and established a variety of business and service models with different forms of worker/owner management, production/distribution, and public/member participation. Fair trade is a significant component and value in action.

A4MD is ready to merge its model of culture, community media and public service with these existing nonprofit alternative economic and fair trade networks. By creating a national touring network for artists and activists, through simultaneous support of public media, we leverage our collective assets to develop expanded resources to be shared by all.

Our planetary cultures are strangled by the greed of those whose vision is limited to looking at life through the lens of illusion of human separation and disconnection. A4MD’s vision is that culture enhances and media supports a sustainable future that is locally based, locally scaled and locally controllable.

A4MD’s business model of nonprofit capitalism encourages a co-creation of shared opportunities, harnessing the power achieved from breaking down the isolation of self-interest of individuals and organizations, then channeling the new economic energy into larger, more sustainable and regenerative outcomes.

The A4MD economic engine consists of three complementary functions, mutually supportive parts of the same service.

• The Archive of Music Diversity—for Internet-based distribution and sale of original music recorded at noncommercial radio stations and live concerts at local venues in collaboration with local nonprofits and coops. https://a4md.org/home/archive-for-music-diversity/
• The Artist Activist Network— a manifestation of music, creativity and positive social action in the form of events and special gatherings of people to celebrate what unites them and serves the quality of their inner and social lives. A4MD is creating a regional/national touring network of radio stations and local venues for artists to connect with people and organizations that share interests and concerns on a wired range of issues. https://a4md.org/artists/artist-activist-network/
• Nonprofit Capitalism — Cooperative economics and social responsibility for sustaining community media, local culture and nonprofit organizations. For more background, please reference “An Ethical Context for Economic Reform: The Business and Public Service Model of Artists for Media Diversity” https://a4md.org/about/philosophy/.

Together, we build movements for positive change. Together, we create social spaces for people to gather, to share their stories and to build relationships of mutual trust and understanding. Effective teamwork becomes possible even in times of extreme stress. We are living in such times. Together, we can do anything.

For more information, contact Artists for Media Diversity.

Artists for Media Diversity (A4MD) is creating a new national network for artist touring that combines support for noncommercial radio stations and the local communities they serve.

The Artist Activist Network represents a new and unique artist-led and community media based movement to co-create a positive response to the serious economic and social challenges facing people across the country. A4MD affiliated radio stations may choose to participate in a national touring network of community service for artists to connect their activist concerns in a myriad of areas with local organizations that share the same mission and purpose.

The goal of this network of artists, noncom radio stations and local organizations is to unite, energize and support people while simultaneously generating ongoing support for the noncom stations that make this network possible.

As local touring sites are identified and links are established between artists and local activist organizations, regional and national sources will be identified to provide top down support as the grass roots grow up. As this circuit of artists, people, organizations and local media is activated, the energy and spirit can flow to all areas creating a self-supporting, renewable and sustainable cultural and economic model for further community service development.

A4MD launched it’s unique and innovative service project for noncommercial radio, the Archive for Music Diversity, in October, and already several stations have registered at https://a4md.org. Affiliated stations will be submitting songs recorded during live broadcasts by artists who want to support local noncom radio and the spirit of community service. Artists who donate downloads of their recorded songs from the broadcasts, for sale to the public by A4MD, will receive valuable and strategic national exposure for their music. The combined services of the Archive and the Network will help to grow the local, regional and national audiences for both community radio and artists, something that is becoming increasingly difficult and rare in the current media environment.

For more information about A4MD, the Archive for Music Diversity and the Artist Activist Network, contact Artists for Media Diversity.

Artists for Media Diversity, https://a4md.org.

The Archive for Music Diversity – A “Musical Stimulus Package” to Support Noncommercial Radio Stations

Artists for Media Diversity (A4MD) announces the beginning of a new service for noncommercial radio stations:  The Archive for Music Diversity.

The Archive for Music Diversity turns live music recordings from recording artist broadcasts into studio equipment for noncommercial stations and more. It’s all about recording artists and radio broadcasters working together, supporting each other and growing the audience.

Music downloads contributed by participating artists generated from recordings made at noncommercial radio stations provides a simple investment by conscious partners to co-create a new national programming tool exclusively for community, college, low-power-fm and public radio stations.

Internet-based sales from the forthcoming A4MD online catalog of songs donated to the Archive for Music Diversity will provide ongoing resources to support the noncommercial radio stations.

All across the country, community and college-based radio stations are facing major challenges and unprecedented levels of financial stress. The once-powerful and influential relationship between artists and radio has been marginalized by excess greed and lack of creative long-term thinking. People, by being treated primarily as consumer objects, have lost the desire to make a deeper and more respectful financial connection with the creators and the broadcasters of local music.

Artists for Media Diversity, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, was founded to restore and renew the sacred relationship between music and community through support for the noncommercial broadcast medium.

Radio stations and recording artists interested in joining A4MD’s campaign are encouraged to sign up at http://a4md.org.

For more information, contact Artists for Media Diversity.
Artists for Media Diversity http://a4md.org