DJ Excel

Big Music Issue > Big Music Feature
No Static At All
Baltimore Finally Gets Some Urban Radio Alternatives Beyond The Fm Dial
Photographs By Sam Holden
DJ Excel
Dwayne "DJ Diamond-K" Williams
Amotion


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By Al Shipley

"I'm not tryin' to compete with them," DJ Excel says of 92Q, Baltimore's only youth-oriented urban music station on terrestrial radio. "I'm tryin' to offer another scenario." That scenario is Bmore Original Radio (BmoreOriginal.com/radio.cfm), the streaming internet radio station that Excel began about two years ago as an extension of his label of the same name, offering a round-the-clock selection of underground hip-hop and dance music. And it's just one of many, many Baltimore-based online stations that have sprung up in recent years, broadcasting primarily local music far beyond the physical limits of FM broadcasting range.

The Radio One-owned 92.3 FM (WERQ) has now been Baltimore's sole youth urban music station for more than five years straight, without a competitor in its format since X105.7's 2003 demise. In that same time frame, the city's hip-hop community has grown by leaps and bounds, often with growing pains developing between the two. And as more and more artists vied for the station's limited spots for local airplay, rumblings increased about the station management's screening process for independent label submissions, with accusations of corruption coming to a head with an anonymous online petition in mid-2007. The protests and complaints have died down as of late, however, since the departure of embattled program director Victor Starr in December. But with the technology now available for pretty much anyone with a computer and a microphone to broadcast streaming audio online, at least a dozen Baltimoreans are leveling the playing field with their own DIY radio programs.

DJ Excel may not be interested in taking on a corporate broadcasting entity like 92Q, but Bmore Original Radio offers as close to a full-service multimedia entity as a one-man operation can. He has separate shows, regularly updated, for local and national underground hip-hop alike, as well as his calling card, the frenetic dance beats of Baltimore club music. And with the Sessions program, Excel invites artists to his home studio to host and handpick music for the station, peruse his production work for collaborations, and get a free photo session.

"As a favor, as thanks for coming down, I shoot some photos, do some [promotional spots], listen to beats, the whole thing," the 32-year-old DJ explains over dinner at a Canton sushi restaurant, reclining in the booth. "Out of state artists, they come down for the weekend, I'll put 'em up, feed 'em or whatever."

Excel's welcoming nature has had the unexpected side effect of helping to spread the popularity of internet radio in Baltimore well beyond his own site; he hints that, on a couple of occasions, people he'd invite to appear on Bmore Original Radio would decline but then shortly thereafter start their own radio stations.

But even with so many people jumping on the internet radio bandwagon, some are nonetheless jumping off. The first 24-hour club music radio stream, BaltimoreClubTracks.com, has been a popular destination for worldwide fans of homegrown Baltimore dance music for several years. Recently, however, site proprietor and club music legend DJ Technics has taken streaming radio off the site, though many of his club mixes remain available for free download.

By far the longest-running online radio program in Baltimore still standing, however, is Deep Flow Radio (www.deepflowstudios.com/radio... ) Amotion, a female MC from Boston who founded Deep Flow Studios in 2000 after relocating to Maryland, has long been savvy to the potential for reaching an international audience via the web. And after she gained a fan base in Japan with airplay on internet radio station Urscene.com, she launched her own station in 2004.

Lately, like many internet broadcasters, Amotion has received a rude awakening from the U.S. Copyright Office, which in 2007 issued a decision substantially raising royalty fees to be paid by internet radio stations. Because Deep Flow is run through one of the biggest online radio services, Live 365, and because it plays a large amount of music from major-label releases registered with music publishers such as ASCAP and BMI, Amotion's company is much more vulnerable to the effects of those fee increases than most of the other, newer Baltimore-based programs that play music more likely to be under the copyright hawks' radar.

But after four years, she isn't about to let a higher monthly bill stop Deep Flow Radio, which has become an indispensable calling card for the studio. "I did think about not doing [the radio station], but it's not really an option for me to not do it, because we've incorporated it so much into our business," Amotion says.

Unlike many of the Baltimore-based program - City Paper