I spent this past week in Minneapolis for the annual Conclave radio convention.

Unlike previous years, I really didn’t go to a ton of the panel discussions/sessions this year, because I had a pretty full schedule for work.

Lee Abrams gave a speech, and having worked with Lee briefly at one point when he consulted the radio station I was working for, it was one that I was interested to catch, yet at the last minute, I ended up missing it due to work stuff.

By all accounts from those who went, it was a typically great speech from Abrams. I love the passion that Abrams retains for broadcasting, and continues to have as a MUSIC FAN.

Check out the old blog that he kept during his time at XM Radio for some good reading and learning.

One of the panel discussions that I did attend, was the Triple-A Symposium, moderated by Brad Savage, a musical comrade of mine who oversees a great radio station 106.1 The Corner, in Charlottesville, VA.

I first had the pleasure of meeting Brad about 5 years ago, and he is one of the most passionate fans of radio and all things music that you’ll meet. You can probably figure out why we get along so well. Brad and I don’t get nearly enough chances to talk music, but when we do, it’s always good conversation.

When I first heard the Triple-A format in the early 90s, it was a revelation to learn that there actually was a radio format where the ability to be musically creative and play music because it was GOOD was still allowed. You can read more about the Triple A format here.

Some of my early favorite that I listened to via internet streams were KFOG in San Francisco, and WXRT in Chicago. Hearing both of these stations in the early 90s was a musical awakening for me. Both stations did (and still do) lots of live concert broadcasts, and in the time I first began to listen to them, were broadcasting full concert sets from some of my favorite bands/artists like Del Amitri, Dada, The Jayhawks, and Michael Penn.

The way I figured it, any radio station that was willing to broadcast a full two hour concert from a band like Del Amitri, well…they were alright with me!

Friday morning’s panel discussion covered a lot of ground including addressing the topic of the changing radio landscape in a musical arena where radio is no longer the first place a listener will necessarily hear a new song/artist. Example – songs that have become hits via usage in an Ipod commercial.

With the radio listener hearing new music via different mediums today vs. hearing it first on radio in the past, how does radio remain competitive with those new mediums?

There were a lot of interesting answers for that question.

Overall, it was really a fascinating discussion that left me with my own question at the end that I posed to the panel, in which I asked them if they were keeping their fingers on the pulse of music blogs, and sites like The Hype Machine.

If so, how helpful/important are those blogs to them, as an additional tool for discovering new bands and music?

The collective answer was that for the most part, they find very little importance in music blogs / etc, preferring to rely on their own ears and traditional avenues of musical exploration.

I was a bit floored by that, but at the same time, not surprised. As a fellow radio person, I can admit that I’ve been guilty of wearing the same blinders about things that I later realized could have been really beneficial. Too often we can look at things that are available and right in front of us, as a creative copout that we want to avoid.

If I was in their shoes, I would be interested in music blogs at a minimal level to at least see what is being written about some of the artists in my station playlist. That’s one of the things that I love about music blogs, gaining new perspective that perhaps I hadn’t thought of, and new information about a band that I already love, that I was previously unaware of.

In my mind, that doesn’t make a radio person any less creative as a programmer, and instead, it should be another tool in the arsenal of musical media and reading that we refer to on an ongoing basis to be the music authorities that we wish for our listeners to view us as.

There’s nothing to lose, and some of the smart stations are even aligning themselves with music bloggers, as WXPN did, tapping Heather Browne to write a series of guest blogs during their highly interactive blog series that compiled the 885 Most Memorable Music Moments.

Overall, it was a great session, and the above represents one point that I disagreed with, amongst many other points and discussions that made me happy as a music fan. If you’re searching for “good music on the radio,” check out this list of stations, and tune in to one of them – you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear that “good radio,” indeed still exists.