Celebrating the impact made by public media on the lives of musicians and their fans, April has been declared as Public Radio Music Month at National Public Radio.
An initiative of NPR, PRMM will promote the role these stations play in “championing and preserving a diverse array of musicians and music styles for millions of listeners.” Public radio is often turned to as an outlet for new and emerging artists in a variety of musical genres.
Numerous stations are joining PRMM by presenting special content and airing performances throughout the month. Updates on these events and more can be found at the PRMM website and Twitter page.
Public radio’s impact to the listening landscape is often understated, while the numbers show a strong diversity compared to commercial radio. These figures are from NPR:
- Nationally, more than 180 public radio stations are devoted to noncommercial music formats such as classical, jazz, blues and bluegrass, and another 480 more include them in their programming line ups.
- A recent study of public radio found that one out of every three hours of listening is to music.
- On the whole, local public radio stations air nearly five million hours of music per year, the majority of which is locally programmed.
- Nearly 90% of all classical radio stations are public radio stations. The number of public radio classical stations has almost tripled in the past 20 years.
