David Marsden (March 2, 1941 – September 25, 2026)

David Marsden  0:00  
And you know, I I fear that television is the next one to learn the lesson because they sat in their ivory towers when all around them things were creeping up. Netflix, Amazon TV, Google TV, and they just sat there thinking they owned the whole world. And I think I fear that they're the next to realize their mistake, and then they they too will try and play catch up.

Matt Cundill  0:32  
That's the voice of David Marsden, who passed away september 25 at the age of 85. We recorded that back in 2016, and I remember back then there was a lot of talk about millennials and what was going to happen next in traditional media. He was one of the best at answering that question. He had already been curating music and delivering it online since the turn of the millennium. For so many people who love radio, David helped shape what we believed it could be, that's at by the number of legendary people who have posted about his influence on them in the days following his death. His work at CFNY and NYTheSpirit.com gave people the freedom to explore music, and gave listeners the joy of hearing something they might never have discovered on their own. 10 years ago, David joined me on the SoundAll podcast, and today I'm going to share that conversation again. David had an extraordinary history in programming radio, delivering music that mattered, and nurturing radio talent to be their best. And he was still excited about what came next. At nythespirit.com, he was carrying that same sense of discovery onto a new platform, giving personalities and DJs room to follow their curiosity and bring listeners along. There's a moment in this interview when I ask whether he still feels the same passion he felt as CFNY, and he says, "I have a feeling it might come out in my voice, and it does. You'll hear it. Are millennials really different than when Gen X were in their 20s, or when the Boomers were in their 20s?

David Marsden  2:12  
Well, I think as much as Millennials won't admit it, and probably Boomers won't admit that they once were like millennials are now. To me, it's all part of the of the process of growing up. In the seven in the late 60s, early 70s, and again, I wrote this in that article. Most everyone listened to AM radio. FM barely existed, and if it and if you did listen, you were a grandmother, and it was playing Montevondi, and it was on a stereo system the size of a Volkswagen, and along came a bunch of hippies, myself included, and after Sergeant Pepper, we realized because it was the first dynamic stereo album, we realized that we actually had two ears, and so it occurred to myself and Doug Pringle was in on this, and a few other people. We created a revolution in in radio by jumping to FM. Now, in the same way as today, it was only a decade ago when when broadcasters, current broadcasters, said to each other that internet radio thing will never work because you can't get it in cars, and it's not portable. And switch back now to late 60s, early 70s. You could not get FM in cars, and it wasn't portable because it was the size of a Volkswagen and it was Granny's stereo putter. So the parallels are enormously the same, and we're just going through it. The technical it's it's a it's an advancement in technology. It's not an advancement in creativity, and that's where the difference comes for me. It's not about the platform; it's about what you put on the platform. And if you want to reach millennials who are now experiencing music and entertainment as never before, because the internet opened Pandora's box, and I'm not speaking of Pandora, the music system. And once that box was opened, young people realized that they weren't trapped to the three or 400 songs that they were hearing on the radio. They weren't even trapped to a genre. They could move beyond any genre. They could be loving jazz one minute and loving hip hop the next minute, and on and on it went. So the parallels are very similar because when FM radio started, the the freeform hippie DJs, we were allowed to play whatever we wanted in our shows, and so we would choose folk, we would choose blues, we would choose jazz, and so on, and we would intertwine it all into a four-hour presentation. So the similarities are there. Now I could go back one more generation to the 50s when rock and roll was coming in. It was called Keen Music, and there was another evolution that took place, and it was called the transistor radio. So the similarities are there. The differences are in the advancement of the technology.

Matt Cundill  5:55  
So why did radio abandon teenagers, and when did they start to really abandon teenagers?

David Marsden  6:03  
Well, I think it actually worked in reverse. I think teenagers abandon radio. The problem we have here is that, again, similar to that AM/FM thing, when AM had all the teenagers listening, they believed that they were in the ivory tower and they were untouchable. Along came this progressive hippie thing called preform FM, and by gosh, by golly, the AMs very soon began to feel the squeeze. And the squeeze was that nobody was teenagers and young people, young people in their 20s, were no longer listening to AM, they had switched to FM. AM, who thought they were in an ivory tower, untouchable, suddenly were losing audience. So they had to go to what was left for them, and that was called Talk Radio. Again, here we are, the same companies, because the the AM FM was usually owned by the same group of companies, and again they thought they were in an ivory tower. They thought where FM were untouchable, and this goes back about 1012, maybe 15 years ago. So they did nothing about it. They sat there. They kept playing the same 200 songs over and over and over, and it was 10 years later that they all went, "Oops, we've got to do something different. And quite frankly, it's almost too late now. Radio can still win the day. FM radio can still win and do very well. They've got to start thinking creatively rather than what some consultant in Dallas is saying. In that article, I mentioned all the consultants for several decades have been telling the morning shows since about the '90s. You know, just keep laughing. Just keep laughing. Everybody thinks you're having fun. Everybody wants to hear somebody laugh. Well, we all know where that's going to go. I actually received an email this morning from an extremely important FM morning radio DJ who was part of that. Just keep laughing routine, and he wrote me a very nice. I have to leave his name unmentioned at this time because I haven't asked for permission to use it. He wrote me a very nice email saying, "You're absolutely right. That's what we were told by a consultant from somewhere. He just got he's laugh and it'll be fine. And well, they've lapped themselves into a corner. Is what's happened.

Matt Cundill  8:44  
You think back to the early part of 2000s when there really was, you know, Napster came on board, and then everybody had the songs. And tell me about Iceberg Radio and your lessons from that.

David Marsden  8:56  
Well, Iceberg was it was an incredible operation. The problem came in that we were about 10 years too early, and also after the fact, I firmly believed that it was a stock play, and that's something that I did. I admit to not seeing early on. We started basically building radio stations of a of a different quality. We had, for example, we had a hip hop station, we had a black music station, we had a electric annage music station, we had too cool for radio, which was an extension of what CFNY would have been had it hung around long enough. We had all live music was all concerts, and so we had all the stuff, and we had an enormous numbers of people because we were one of the first, and they were coming in literally by the 10s of 1000s. However, it was a free. Service that was to be supported by advertising, and this is the problem we had. We would go to the the advertising agencies and say, you know, beer company X or fast food restaurant X, whatever, could really benefit by this because it's worldwide. And at that time, the advertising agencies just said we don't know anything about this internet. We don't understand it, and we're not interested. And of course, they too missed the vote. So the biggest problem that we had-I mean, the programming-we had a total of 53 DJs working in the building. Each radio station had its own music director and its own program director, and on top of that, there were managers who took care of each of the departments, and it really did sound great, and it really was exceptionally well done. So what I learned from that experience and that extremely exciting five or six year period was many things, and the biggest thing I learned was that we got too far ahead of the parade.

Matt Cundill  11:10  
So I don't need to ever ask you if you had a radio station today, what would it sound like? Because it would sound like nythespirit.com.

David Marsden  11:18  
Probably yes, yes. Now you know, I mean, nythespirit.com really does go deep, and we have five DJs who are permitted total freedom, and they can explore wherever they want to explore. And some of the music that's getting out there through nythespirit.com is quite exceptional. We're not just playing old music. We're playing a lot of the new music that you can't hear anywhere else. I still don't understand how radio is missing so much of the great music. I don't get it. And yes, if I had a radio station, I would certainly. I can't say it would be exactly like NY to Sphere, that would that would be just not the case, but it would certainly be creative, explorative, and exciting to listen to.

Matt Cundill  12:09  
What role does the record companies have in trying to entice millennials, or where have they let us down, perhaps over the years?

David Marsden  12:16  
Well, I think, and this is only my opinion, but I think the record companies, the big majors, not the indies, the big majors made the same mistake that radio made in that they thought they were in their ivory tower, they believed they were untouchable, they believed that as long as they kept feeding the top 40 or the top 20 songs to radio, they'd be set for life, and unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. And again, 10 years too late, the major labels got involved. You know, they bought a one of the major labels owns a huge piece of Spotify, and I believe one of the other labels is heavily involved in Pandora, and that was their solution: is to buy something that already exists. Millennials are downloading their music, as in fact many other boomers do. Are they paying for it? I say 90% of the time they are, but they're not going into record stores. I mean, look around. Can you find a record store anywhere? It's pretty skinny. Far between.

Matt Cundill  13:33  
Yeah. What do you listen to in the car? Do you listen to the phone, the internet, or the radio?

David Marsden  13:39  
Well, I'm. You know, I mean, nythespira.com is is is totally available in an automobile. So I do spend a lot of time listening to that. When I'm not listening to that from the internet feeds or the Bluetooth or whatever, I will go to talk radio just to see how crazy they've gotten. And that would be about it. I I will if I'm on if I'm if I've got a stack of new albums that I have to listen to. I will take those with me if I'm doing a long trip. The

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  14:29  
Sound Off podcast with Matt Cundill,

Matt Cundill  14:34  
nythespirit.com. There is a lot of people who are going to be listening to this who have free time over the holidays to connect with something on the internet they they might not have tried before, so you go to nythespirit.com and you can get yourself a free trial and and listen to this. Can you tell us a little bit more what we can expect when we go there?

David Marsden  14:54  
Well, the first thing I I would hope for, and I don't remember when you're going to launch this podcast, but. The the biggest show that I do in any year at any time, whether it was radio or whatever it was, and it started in 1973 at Chown FM, and that's my Christmas Eve special, and it's a tradition, but it sure ain't traditional. So that comes up on Saturday, December the 24th. After that, of course, we I am doing a between Christmas and New Year's. I'm doing a two hour special feature: words and music and reflections of the musicians who we've lost this year. Lord knows, there's a lot of them. Many people have said, "David, you won't be able to do it in two hours, and that's one of the beauties of of owning your own operation. Because hey, if it takes three hours, it takes three hours. But what nythespirit.com is it is a finely tuned and very very nicely curated selection of music that streams, and we're very careful the textures, the mixes, everything works 90% of the time, and I have to tell you also, it's rare to hear the same song twice in 48 hours. In fact, we'll give you a big prize if you can catch us doing it in 24 hours. So we have a huge library. It bases itself in the 80s of CFNY, but it's really current in terms of how much of the the great new music that's coming out that's being ignored by radio, and I have to say probably even not necessarily ignored by the Pandora's and the Spotify's, but on those systems, if you don't know what to look for, you you won't find it, and what we're doing is we're showing you what to look for. We we top that off with our five DJs, Iver Hamilton, of course, who was major part of CF and Live back in the day. Rob Stewart, he he's a musician with a band called Slave to the Square Wave, and he he does a show that brings a musician's viewpoint to the music. James does a new music show, which is pretty. He's really on top of stuff. All Night Andre, who was again another important part of the early early CFNY, he's with us, and we have a show comes out of Vancouver, hosted by Scott Eagleson, who is very adventurous with his music as well. All the DJs are are they're competing with each other, but at the same time, they're not so far ahead and so cool that you can't keep up with them.

Matt Cundill  18:03  
Are you as excited doing this as you were when you started CFNY? Do you have that same passion? Do you does the blood travel the same way through you?

David Marsden  18:12  
I have a feeling it might come out in my voice. The answer is, of course, yes. This is a this is a whole new and wonderful world, and we have this platform, and the same I call it NY the Spirit for a reason, because the same Spirit that existed that brought CFNY into the foreground exists with NY the Spirit. We're not concerned about being number one, nor was CFNY. We're more concerned about the quality of our audience than the quantity. If someone wants to hear the same 10 songs over and over, we're not for them. If someone wants to hear adventurous music, but at the same time a really well curated stream, then yes, come and try us out. First month is free, and we'd love to have you with us. If you're one of those people who doesn't use credit cards and that sort of thing. Just send a note to to our billing at billing@nythespirit.com, and we'll organize to get you up to your free month. Plus, if if you decide to go with us after that, we'll we'll do electronic, we'll do old fashioned checks, whatever it is that will help make it work is what we'll do. We're a small. There's, as I say, there's the five DJs, and then there's myself and my business partner Igor Lukin, and that's it. So it's it's run very nicely, and I will say this, and I hope you don't mind me promoting this, but our audio fidelity. And our audio sound is better than most on the internet. And I would, I will take any day of the week and compare it to FM radio, and we'll we'll come out first. We'll come out shining. We spent months and months and months and months setting up the audio, and it's you put that thing in a couple of big speakers or into your earbuds on your phone. Oh my! You'll get moist, I guarantee.

Matt Cundill  20:31  
Well, you know, radio has really underlooked the the need to have somebody who can really pay attention to adding codecs to sound and getting a great audio stream going. We pay a lot of attention to the transmitter, but you have to pay the same amount of attention to what is streaming, given the number of people who who are doing it these days.

David Marsden  20:50  
Well, you know, in some ways, listeners' ears, particularly younger people, have become accustomed to a lesser sound because of downloading MP3s, or the worst, the worst people, the worst sound on the internet is YouTube, because they've squeezed the sound down to such a fine degree to save bandwidth that I mean, I would never play a YouTube video or of YouTube sound on NY the Spirit is just so bad, so we're trying to upgrade that and and say to people, this is what it this is what music really sounds like, because we all have become slightly accustomed to it's got you know it's like when Auto Tune first came along, I said auto tune at first everybody was saying, "Oh, it's auto tune. It's horrible. And then gradually, people are accepting auto tune. There will come a day when, if if a song isn't auto tune, people will complain. It's kind of like Echo. Back in the days when what's his name Les Paul created Echo and all that sort of thing, when it first came along, the purists were saying, "Call that's just ruined the music. Well, it wasn't many years later that there was not ever a record produced that didn't have some kind of echo reverb or some other element to it. So our ears become accustomed to certain things, and@mythespirit.com, we're saying upgrade your ears because our sound is absolutely magnificent.

Matt Cundill  22:39  
David, this has been an absolute treat talking to you.

David Marsden  22:42  
The joy has been mine, Matt, and I I appreciate your interest. I think that we have something really exciting here. I think we're we're getting a lot of music out there that wouldn't normally get out, and I hope also to come over and listen and do have a listen to my Christmas Eve show because it's it's very different from what you might expect.