Now 20 years in, The Current is still creating and redefining radio
by Reed Fischer
January 22, 2025
In 1981, the British Phonographic Industry issued the now-laughable warning: “Home Taping Is Killing Music.” By early 2005, there was a googolplex of reasons to believe the internet had landed the death blow — at least for folks tracking the bottom line.
For fans 20 years ago, the abundance of new ways to discover and listen to music was transformational. It included an unlikely new radio station in Minnesota.
“Something’s wrong with my radio — it actually sounds good” - Diablo Cody, 2005 City Pages story
What was the state of rock ‘n’ roll radio in the Twin Cities in the mid-aughts? The waves of ’90s alt-rock elation for some, this author included, had devolved into mutilation. Local programmers never saw ratings strong enough to justify keeping local alternative stations around for more than a couple years each. So much for KJ104, The Edge, REV 105, and a more eclectic era of Cities 97.
It was brutal to get a taste of a new radio station and then have it ripped from the airwaves just when tuning in became a habit. (Long-suffering local sports fans know this feeling, too.) “The listening audience in this town [in 2005] was so starved for something that was not garbage,” DJ Mary Lucia said in a 2014 interview. “And I don’t mean the band.”
Formerly the reigning gatekeeper for debuting unreleased new music, radio in the early 21st century had nothing on the chaos and immediacy of internet file-sharing platforms. In 2000, Radiohead’s breakthrough Kid A had arguably its biggest rollout when it leaked online.
“I’m the mother of two college-age students, neither of whom listen to the radio at all,” said Sarah Lutman in a City Pages cover story dated March 2, 2005. She was a senior vice president at American Public Media at that point. “They don’t need to. They have every other device.”
After file-sharing via Napster, LimeWire, and college internet servers made enough noise to enrage even Metallica, owning music felt different. The rise of iPods and iTunes gave direct access to more music than any record store could hold. Easily portable, the MP3 format — obtained legally and illegally — empowered obsessive and casual fans alike to curate their own genre-spanning playlists.
The ivory towers of legacy media dedicated to music — radio, print, and TV — were buckling due to this fast-growing portfolio of digital options. Music blogs, MySpace, and YouTube, all in their infancy, made it easier for anyone with an internet connection to find niche music movements previously reserved for ‘zine subscribers.
While the web exploded as a place to access new songs as soon as they leaked, print music publications had to adapt or die. Many still died. MTV moved its flagship music discovery program 120 Minutes to MTV2, then canceled it altogether, while shifting from music videos to nonstop reality TV.
This was the period that birthed The Current. In early 2005, it was legal to smoke cigarettes during indoor concerts in the Twin Cities, and you could still see bands at the 400 Bar, Triple Rock Social Club, and Uptown Bar. Many signs in the competitive landscape suggested an “anti-format” station gambit wouldn’t work. The team at Minnesota Public Radio still moved ahead.
It was Sarah Lutman who coined The Current’s name and helped lead this venture. Despite a keen awareness of the thoroughly disrupted landscape, there was hope. On the plus side, Minnesota is loaded with local broadcast and journalism talent and is home to many car owners. The Twin Cities metro area is a well-worn touring stop for major musical acts and a proven incubator for developing world-class talent from within.
So where did The Current's red oval come from?Across the U.S., similar, but distinct approaches to programming were on the air or would come soon after. A few examples include Seattle (Kevin Cole’s afternoon show on KEXP), Los Angeles (KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic), Philadelphia (World Cafe at WXPN), and Austin, Texas (KUTX). To finish Lutman’s quote from above, “If our station makes them curious to even turn on their car radio, that would be a huge win to me.”
“And it hit me, Minnesota is dope” - Atmosphere, “Say Shh”
Just before 9 a.m. on Jan. 24, 2005, 89.3 FM listeners heard Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 In E-Flat Major, Op. 55 ("Eroica") wrap up the frequency’s classical era. Then, Twin Cities hip-hop act Atmosphere ushered in the next with the Midwestern love letter “Say Shh.” During the hour that followed, the station’s first music director Thorn Skroch voiced several foundational statements that still apply to The Current’s strategy today.
“This station is all about you,” he said. He addressed an audience who requested songs on The Current’s nascent weblog, some of whom were among the 9,220 founding members who donated to a station they had never heard.
The first-hour playlist included radio-themed songs like Wilco’s “The Late Greats” and the Replacements’ “Left of the Dial,” which nodded to a mission to celebrate underappreciated artists. Spinning Duluth experimental rockers Low and Minneapolis alternative band Polara set the tone for programming Minnesota artists throughout the day — not just during specialty shows. “Speed Bumps” by Luna acknowledged the real-life technical problems of that day, but also the station’s uncertain future.
“It’s like a really hip, cutting-edge indie movie that’s suddenly in wide release to suburban theaters,” Star Tribune music critic Chris Riemenschneider said to MPR at the time. “Are people going to show up to the theaters? That’s the big question.” Given the short tenures of previous alt-rock stations in the Twin Cities, it was a valid concern. Spoiler alert: People kept showing up.
One more sign of things to come: Thorn mentioned two live musical guests — Brooklyn Americana outfit Hem and Minneapolis acoustic band Spaghetti Western String Co. — would perform later in the day at MPR. This would set the tone for brisk activity welcoming artists, from Minnesota and around the world, into the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Recording Studio at MPR.
In its first year, The Current hosted more than 200 studio sessions — including Brandi Carlile, the National, M.I.A., Taj Mahal, Busdriver, Aimee Mann, and Sharon Jones, as well as Atmosphere, Haley, Bob Mould, and Cloud Cult from the local ranks.
“When The Current launched, it was the right people with the right idea,” says Mary Lucia, a member of the original staff who was with the station for 17 years. “ I'm always thinking it's like when people talk about the old days of Studio 54. … You had to be there.”
“This is obviously hitting everyone really hard. Even the journalists are hugging each other.” - Video of Andrea Swensson reporting on Prince’s death from Paisley Park in 2016
Before The Current debuted, MPR News’ David Molpus asked incoming program director Steve Nelson if the station was seeking a younger demographic. “We are looking to serve a different audience that isn’t listening to public radio right now,” Nelson replied, “or maybe even isn’t listening to radio right now.”
Or maybe isn’t listening to radio right now. Or maybe ever.
During the past 20 years, the station has invested in on-air talent, digital tools, editorial processes, streaming equipment, a website, and an app to enhance an award-winning and rating-garnering auditory experience. You can hear The Current all over the world, and people all over the world let The Current know they’re doing just that.
At the same time, a significant amount of effort has been channeled into off-air activity. Talking about The Current is also the website, events, streams, video, on-demand audio, social media, and other output to reach people not listening to The Current on the radio.
In early 2012, Andrea Swensson vacated her role as music editor at Minneapolis alt-weekly newspaper City Pages to work at The Current. Hiring a music journalist was an unorthodox move for a station that wasn’t a news format or National Public Radio.
Although listeners may now associate Swensson with her work as host of The Local Show, she was initially focused on covering Minnesota music as a writer and reporter. “In the beginning, I wanted to take what I was doing at City Pages, and elevate it for this public radio audience, because I've always held NPR Music and public radio journalists in such high regard,” says Swensson, who now works as an editor at Ramsey County Historical Society.
This was during a period when Prince regularly turned local music news into a national story. Swensson and a growing team of digital producers were there to document his every move. “I was reporting from Paisley Park constantly for the last three years of Prince's life,” she says. That included driving to Chanhassen on the day that he died: April 21, 2016.
“It was like standing in the center of a tornado or something,” she recalls. “But I felt very calm and focused, and I was like, ‘I'm just going to try to share what I know.’” After confirming the news with Prince’s drummer Bobby Z, she shared the news on-air with former midday host Jade on The Current, then MPR News, then public radio stations around the world, and to followers on Facebook.
This depth of journalistic coverage extended to Minnesota-tied music stars such as Bob Dylan, the Andrews Sisters, and the Replacements, as well as artists that most people heard for the first time on The Current. Think Lizzo, Jeremy Messersmith, Dessa, and so many others. (It also forged Swensson’s relationship with Cornbread Harris, which led to her 2024 book, Deeper Blues: The Life, Songs, and Salvation of Cornbread Harris.)
“We had these entry points for them where you didn't have to be super established,” Swensson says. “You could get written about on the blog, you could get featured on our social media, or get a spin on The Local Show. Then there'd be this little spark that ignited, and it would start to build and really connect with this wider audience. The Current had already primed their listeners to be ready for this kind of thing, and they are just a lot more open-minded than a typical radio audience.”
Alongside airplay, Minnesota musicians like Hippo Campus, Chastity Brown, the Cactus Blossoms, and Polica gained exposure through the Local Current Blog, the digital version of the daily Gig List, the Cross Currents email newsletter, and The Current’s Facebook and Instagram feeds. A few years after a short-lived series about guitar solos called Facemelter, deeply reported long-form audio pieces about Prince and Hüsker Dü became a way to enter podcast feeds.
A long list of local and national artists have also connected with audiences by performing at events organized by The Current. This programming — which has attracted hundreds of thousands over 20 years — includes The Current Happy Hours series at breweries, special member-only MicroShow events, Grand Old Day, the Minnesota State Fair, and the Rock the Garden Festival at the Walker Art Center. Past collaborations outside Minnesota include South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and the Nordic music festival Iceland Airwaves. Many of these events only happened because of the unique platform of The Current.
If you’ve read this far, you also know that The Current throws an annual bash — once crashed by Prince — at First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis to celebrate the anniversary of the first broadcast. This year, it’s two nights. Friday’s lineup features Pixies frontman Frank Black, Twin Cities shoegaze band she’s green, and The Current’s Transmission host Jake Rudh. On Saturday, it’s Chicago pop-punk band Beach Bunny with local acts Bad Bad Hats and MAKR AN ERIS. (Two digital offerings launched for The Current’s 20th anniversary include The Current's Live Sessions Vault on YouTube, and the 20th Anniversary stream.)
“A successful event for The Current involves working with musicians, venues, and sponsors who are as invested in the community as we are,” says Shellae Mueller, promotions manager for The Current. “Our event partners appreciate our expertise, our willingness to work collaboratively, and that our incredible audience always shows up. People keep showing up because the events are organic opportunities to gather and experience music together.”
Although it might not be obvious, the largest and most disparate group of The Current’s follower is on YouTube. Since the channel published its first studio session videos in January of 2007, the 3,700-plus videos have attracted more than 460,000 subscribers worldwide and 370 million lifetime views. Some of these views are racked up locally, but only about a quarter of them come from inside the United States.
The latest viral hit from The Current’s in-studio sessions is Gigi Perez, a singer-songwriter signed to Interscope Records with a huge TikTok following. Her acoustic version of “Sailor Song” has nearly half a million views on YouTube, and a clip on TikTok has more than 1.7 million views.
By joining platforms and creating content based on the habits of music fans, The Current has successfully engaged several unique audiences. Radio is still the enormous piece of the pie. After 20 years, it’s validating to see how the ideas of its founders still resonate for its supporters, and for the many artists and collaborators who help enhance the experience.
“Community has always been the base of The Current,” says David Safar, The Current’s managing director. “In 2005, launching a station by asking for support before a single song was aired was unprecedented, and music fans in Minnesota showed up with their support. It's still about the circle of music fans who decide: ‘We want something different on the radio, we want to hear independent artists, and we want to have a place where we can discover new music.’”
“How do you strike that balance between something that's really earnest, but then also something that's cool? A lot of times, something earnest can read as something corny.” - Julian Green, Carbon Sound content director
Radio is still not new. While the pitch for The Current — the service that launched on Jan. 24, 2005 — could attract a different demographic for Minnesota Public Radio, that initial audience has since aged 20 years. There is still work done daily to maintain and grow terrestrial radio listenership, but 2025 is a new media era.
Instead of trying to cram every good idea into The Current’s on-air programming, the team has expanded streams to make more space for hip-hop and R&B with Carbon Sound, roots and folk with Radio Heartland, a new post-punk Teenage Kicks stream, and more seasonal offerings like the just-launched 20th Anniversary Stream. A 24-hour radio service is already more listening opportunities than any person could consume. The abundance grows and grows.
The first song played on The Current’s Carbon Sound stream when it launched on June 16, 2022, was Erick Sermon’s 2001 hit “Music.” Carbon Sound content director Julian Green says it is a song he remembers from childhood, and its lyrics — which praise music as a universal connector — serve as a thesis statement for the project.
Sure, Carbon Sound’s rollout in present day has some shared DNA with The Current’s launch 20 years ago, but there’s a whole lot more that hits different. To borrow the tagline, Carbon Sound is a stream dedicated to the depth, breadth, and influence of Black musical expression. It’s an expanded daily platform for the ebullient Sanni Brown, who hosts The Message on Wednesday evenings on The Current.
The Message and previous programs put a spotlight on Black artists, but the launch of Carbon Sound changed the culture at The Current. It signaled an increased commitment to the programming and staff and contributors — designers, writers, promoters, photographers, and DJs — who are members of the community they’re reaching.
When thinking about “the competition” for this stream, it’s not radio. Some of Carbon Sound’s most-fervent early supporters, many of whom are younger than the average Current audience member by a decade or more, admit that they mostly listen to its curated Spotify playlist.
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch are in the forefront, so there’s also competition for length of experience and tone. The meme-fied, short attention span theater of social media often relies on humor, unchecked emotion, and backhandedness. It can be gripping in small doses but exhausting in bulk.
Carbon Sound, which won an Anthem Award for its programming, has its share of irreverent moments. Julian cops to “some troll songs” on the test stream sent out for feedback before launch. “I think I put ‘Africa’ by Toto,” he admits. But he always knew that having something serious at the core of Carbon Sound would pay off.
“It's about having an identity and just owning it,” Green says. “Today, people have a harder time just consuming things earnestly, just like we have a harder time making things earnestly. We're all so used to being judged that we can't express ourselves earnestly anymore. I always wanted this to be like the opposite of that. Like, not doing things ironically, not doing things just for a joke, like just earnestly saying, ‘This is what we believe in.’”
For Carbon Sound, reaching audiences is not about any one platform or approach, but they all tie back to Black musical expression. “Even if it might seem disparate to some people,” he says, “that we help out with open mics, have Music Makers workshops, we get these DJ sets, we give away concert tickets, it's about being a conduit. Because people aren't just one thing.”
“Most radio stations got so scared of people tuning out that they took away all the good stuff that made people want to listen.” - Lindsay Kimball, The Current’s program director
The past 20 years haven’t been overly kind to independent outlets that feature music. Along with the digital music revolution, external factors like the Great Recession, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the public’s ever-changing attention span have made it increasingly hard to survive. Global mergers and acquisitions have condensed, consolidated, paywalled, or closed many important operators in the concert business, music journalism, and radio,
Overall radio listenership has slowly declined nationwide, according to the latest Nielsen and Edison Research, but it still attracts more daily listeners than podcasts, streaming, and satellite radio for all age demographics.
Despite this climate, The Current has remained strong in its radio ratings and is still standing due largely to widespread public support. Recently, member drives have gotten shorter, and the tactic made them more successful.
“When it comes to our team reaching out to listeners during member drives, it's a big thrill to hear our hosts ask for support, and then for The Current's listeners to reach out right away to show support,” says Jeff Moores, Minnesota Public Radio’s senior manager of regional fundraising. “This is an immediate, two-way relationship that's super unique in the world of nonprofit fundraising. Rarely do nonprofits get to immediately hear from their supporters. We're very lucky to be able to work with hosts who people trust.”
The other main factor to The Current’s 20-year longevity: some survivalist hypervigilance. Music consumption has become more segmented and on-demand than ever before with digital streaming platforms like Spotify, Pandora, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and Apple Music. Alongside huge repositories of music, streaming providers have podcasts, audiobooks, and, in the case of YouTube, videos on every topic imaginable. Short-form social video platforms, like TikTok and Instagram Reels, can create staggering popularity for song snippets. Artificial intelligence enhances streaming with features like recommendation algorithms, Spotify Wrapped, and AI DJ personas.
“Everything you want to hear is in the palm of your hand,” says Lindsay Kimball, The Current’s program director. “So that context changes what we need to do. There's been a democratization of a platform through streaming. We've always listened to the audience, but we've had to get better at it. And one thing that didn't exist in 2005 was some really strong tools to hear the audience and aggregate that information.” The inputs include social media, listener surveys, The Chart Show voting, and feedback gathered by Minnesota Public Radio’s Member Audience Services team.
“It's not a surprise, but it's music discovery and local content,” she says. “We do it in a way that isn't just trying to duplicate streaming platforms. Part of that is having hosts who are on-air live, who are knowledgeable, who are in the community, who are passionate about the music. They talk to you like a person, and they aren’t caricatures.”
Kimball currently leads an on-air team that features Jill Riley and Nilufer Arsala in the morning; Zach McCormick at the end of The Morning Show and middays; Jessica Paxton in the afternoons; Bill DeVille, Mac Wilson, Barb Abney, and Diane on weekends; and a deep bench of specialty show and on-call talent. It’s a dream team with a growth mindset.
“Having such a creative hand in curating what people are listening to as they start their day in the morning, I can't think of anywhere else I would want to be,” says Riley, who has been a host on The Current Morning Show since 2009. “Because I can't think of anywhere else where I would have that kind of freedom. So that's a pretty big deal. We know that The Current’s listeners want that human touch.”
“The fact that we still identify every song we play blows most people's minds,” says Kimball. “We have to say what we're playing, because half of the music we're playing is new. Chances are, you don't know it. Not because someone doesn't know enough music. It's literally because it's brand new, like we're all learning it together.”
Annual programming includes listener-voted countdowns like the Top 89 to celebrate the best songs of the year, 893 Essentials providing a deep dive into the station’s vast catalog, and one-off tributes to essential artists. Other yearly features include the Remembered special honoring musicians who died in the past year, themed Block Rockin’ and Time Machine holiday weekends, and the daily voting matchups of March Music Madness.
In 2008, the music trade publication Billboard began publishing the Adult Alternative Airplay chart, which first appeared in 1996. Look at the Triple A chart at any given time, and it’s a snapshot of many of the songs The Current plays frequently. It’s a far cry from Top 40 rotation, but it does ensure some familiarity and consistency for people who only tune in on their commute to and from work.
Deeper listening is rewarded, and a raft of specialty shows — The Local Show, The Chart Show, Teenage Kicks, The Message, Tonal Recall, Transmission, United States of Americana, and Radio Heartland — and segments like The Current Morning Show’s Coffee Break await for those content to leave the radio on for hours at a time.
When it comes to the music of The Current today, it’s partly a reflection of the boutique sounds that have grown and developed at healthy major indie labels like Sub Pop, Merge, New West, Nonesuch, Loma Vista, ATO Records, and many others trying to carve up something larger while remaining connected to something smaller. Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, and Olivia Rodrigo are among the many artists who are beloved by the station’s listeners but are also familiar to pop music fans. With Minnesota brimming with inspired talent, the local songs heard on The Current are plucked from scenes here that reflect larger national movements in music.
“There's a big trend towards pop music,” says Diane, host of The Local Show, citing Ber, Landon Conrath, Colin Bracewell, Gully Boys, Durry, and Yam Haus as a few examples. “I literally cannot get this song by Landon Conrath called ‘Overrated’ out of my head. I went to see Ber at First Avenue. When she started singing these songs, and you'd hear the audience singing along, and I found myself singing along. It's so well-written and it's incredibly well-produced. Not to say that there isn't really good rock ‘n’ roll or indie, but there's becoming a blurrier line between what is ‘indie’ now.”
There is no mandate to be a signed band to be played on The Current, of course. Many artists who have merely caught a few ears in the industry or had a great showing at South by Southwest are in the mix. There are TikTok favorites, and a cadre of influential voices who either got their due in the era when they were active, or have since been raised to a level of prominence and influence. The tie that binds is a level of authenticity: The winners of national prizes, festival favorites, Pitchfork’s Best New Music earners, and chart-toppers all are eligible. In recent years, members of The Current’s programming team — led by former music director Jade — began tracking gender and cultural diversity.
“It makes sure that we are representing the broader community,” Kimball says. “And not just the artists who might be more privileged to have money, to have more promoters, or have been historically lifted up more because of their gender or the color of their skin. That accountability is important in making sure that that everyone has a fair chance to be on air because there's way more great music than we have time to play.”
Bringing it All Back Home: My move from radio silence to signal strength
One person not willingly turning on the radio in 2005: yours truly. By that point I didn’t think the listening experience that I wanted actually existed, and my only steady access to radio was in a taxicab or a Duane Reade pharmacy.
This was not always the case. The radio was almost always on in the house growing up in Northfield, Minnesota. REV 105 kept me company in my car on my weekend Star Tribune paper route. After graduating high school, I was a college radio DJ during my undergrad studies in upstate New York and grad coursework in Missouri.
By the time The Current launched in 2005, I was living in Brooklyn, New York. In pursuit of my master’s project and a music journalism career, I was an intern at college radio’s closest equivalent to Billboard, a now-defunct hub of magazines and a music festival known as the College Music Journal. On my daily bus-to-subway commute into Manhattan, the white wires from iPod to earbuds kept me connected to music. Was it a radio creating the racket in that dingy office? Absolutely not.
Radio did stay in the picture, sort of. My first post-degree job was writing syndicated news stories for corporate radio station websites. Our editorial team was broken up by the traditional formats of the day: Top 40, Hot AC, Country, Hard Rock, and so forth. If anything, this work amplified my belief that the tightly formatted playlists at the stations we served had zero connection to organic, wide-ranging music discovery. My iPod was the only way to broadcast the assortment of genre-agnostic artists and bands my friends and I went to see perform at clubs, bars, warehouses, parks, and the occasional abandoned swimming pool around the city.
Over five-plus years, I made some headway professionally, amassed some debt financially, and left New York at the end of the aughts not long after my day job’s entire editorial staff got laid off. After two humid years working as a music editor at an alt-weekly newspaper in south Florida, I moved back to Minnesota. I filled the music editor opening at City Pages because my then-colleague, now-friend Andrea Swensson had started working at The Current.
It was immediately apparent that I needed to listen to and report on The Current to do my job. Along with recaps of Rock the Garden, I co-wrote an oral history of the station’s first decade when I worked for City Pages. If you want to know a lot more about what those early days were like — directly from Mary Lucia, Bill DeVille, Mark Wheat, Steve Nelson, Derrick Stevens, Jill Riley, and so many more — I recommend you read it. (Send me an email, and I’ll send you the PDF.)
During the past 20 years, I’ve worked music, news, and lifestyle journalism beats. I have profound respect for anyone who makes a go at a career in such a volatile environment. It has been traumatic to see past employers and freelance gigs shutter or make major cutbacks. (One music blog startup I briefly worked for in New York closed after its first day!)
I joined The Current during the summer of 2021. Working for an organization that supports groundbreaking music, and can pay its bills, is a rare privilege.
For a while, I reported to a largely empty building. The pandemic set off changes in the way many industries operate, and as people came back to work here, it was clear that cultural change was in the air. The team members at The Current today have taken our societal shakeup as inspiration to carry on a 20-year legacy of being bold, and to support boldness in our local community.
One bold artist storyline among too many to count: Duluth band Low leaving their mark during The Current’s annual music festival, Rock the Garden. Back in 2013, Low performed a controversial all-drone set, which I covered for City Pages. By 2022, I was in my leadership role at The Current and oversaw editorial coverage of the very last running of the festival. The chameleonic Low curated a vibrant second stage and put on a loud, defiant show for their final Twin Cities performance.
For more of what the team has been up to, you’ve already read about Julian’s efforts with the Carbon Sound team. There’s also groundbreaking work to celebrate Latin American Heritage Month with the Ritmofonica stream. We launched a powerful new website, and plunged into the murky waters of TikTok. The Local Show host Diane and The Current’s digital team began publishing The Scouting Report, a monthly series focused on new local music. In April of 2024, it was expanded as part of Minnesota Music Month to include community input.
Online, my day-to-day includes collaborating with hosts, the digital team, and freelancers to create award-winning profiles, lists, concert recaps, photo galleries, and music discovery resources. Long- and short-form video, showcasing musicians performing in-studio sessions and at events, pops up almost every weekday on YouTube. With some folks logging off social media, The Current’s robust email newsletter, Cross Currents, has seen a massive resurgence.
Outside of my work at The Current, as a music fan, looking back at the past 20 years is like staring down an eternity — and dozens of Guided by Voices albums. Try to remember the band T-shirt you wore the most in 2005. I’ll wait. The past two decades have shaped a present that is both heavily aligned to the digital capabilities of streaming and the analog tactility of vinyl. Except for the Smiths, every band got back together for a reunion tour. Live music is still vital but has grown to be increasingly cost-prohibitive.
Over its history, the Current has remained integral within Minnesota’s music discovery ecosystem, and the world well beyond its borders. By sticking to a few core radio principles and applying new ones all the time, the station has created a wide range of dynamic experiences with overlapping goals. There’s a greater opportunity today to listen to the community, learn what is needed, and be agile to react. By now, every audience member has their own example of an artist they discovered through The Current. The work ahead is a lot more of that. Outputs and platforms will change. Let’s explore and find them together, shall we?
