Around 7:30 P.M., the final show was readied and storm clouds rushed in, as if the gods of punk were voicing their displeasure that E.V.R.’s end was nigh. The station’s demise can’t be attributed to the traditional bogeymen of gentrification: rising rents and bank branches. Rather, the station, which took in revenue only from the ads on its Web site, could not sustain the rising costs of licensing fees and greater bandwidth for its more than one million listeners per month. Each new listener cost them money. Their competition, streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, were more of conceptual enemies than direct ones. “With streaming, what’s really missing is the personality of the d.j. describing what he’s playing. He’s giving you the liner notes,” Prisinzano said. “The more people learn about music, the more likely they are to participate in it. An algorithm cannot promote music. I listen to these streaming services, and I start hearing the same things over and over again on the playlists. What’s the point of that?”

One young fashion designer, who had bemoaned the station’s passing on Facebook, owned up to being “another douchey New Yorker, complaining about cool things closing that I never really supported, which is the whole problem in the first place.”

See also: The quoted text above. I've got a wonderful article I'll be sharing later this week that goes more into that. It's been a struggle for a lot of things in my life and I've been on both ends of it.

Bold is for emphasis on that point. I've been involved with workshops for newer DJ's on what makes or breaks a mic-break, and what some good rules of thumb are for developing your own personality. Spotify and streaming services are great for some things, don't get me wrong. But it pains me when I hear people say that they hate radio or that there's never anything good on the radio. If that's the case, you're listening to the wrong, extremely commercialized stations. All the innovation, all of the music and people worth listening to are found on places like East Village Radio, college radio stations, and other non-profits like WFMU.