OpenAI acquires TBPN : TBPN, “the talk show that every VC, founder, and CTO in Silicon Valley watches,” announced on April 2026 that they’d been acquired by OpenAI for an undisclosed sum. TBPN will apparently retain editorial independence, while “OpenAI will scale and support TBPN as a platform for live conversations, product and industry dialogue, accelerating the reach of new ideas, tools, and technologies to developers and consumers around the world.” A sign that even the most powerful companies are “desperate for storytellers”—and, when it comes to picking media personalities, “you cannot compete with people who are having more fun than you.”
The marketers deciding your taste : Musician eliza mclamb dug into the work of Chaotic Good Projects, “a digital marketing agency that promises to create virality by, among other things, manufacturing hundreds of fake fan accounts for musicians.” Unsurprisingly, many of their clients are pop stars and major commercial successes. “But the roster runs deep, far past the predictable internet sensations one could expect (and, apologies to the internet sensations, including people who could be consider to be genuinely great musicians). Geese and Cameron Winter, but also Dijon and Mk.gee. Laufey and Wet Leg. Oklou and Jane Remover.” Tellingly, since Eliza’s post went up, Chaotic Good has pulled down some of the more incriminating sections from their website. Many readers are disappointed but not necessarily surprised : “That artists and labels believe they need to create fake accounts to have any chance of getting traction in a tough algorithm-controlled marketplace is another race to the bottom.”
Every college radio station has a music library.
At WVAU, they called this the rack : a black wire shelf stacked with promo CDs curated by the music staff, with mini reviews and recommended if you like (“RIYL”) tags lovingly taped onto jewel cases. Sometimes they would play a song on air for the first time based solely on those notes !
“Their music directors have been writing comments on the records and CDs since the seventies,” Marcus Rothera, general manager of Boston College’s WZBC said last year. “It’s like an analog Internet comment section.”
They surveyed 80+ DJs in 2025 who say student interest in college radio has surged in recent years, driven by algorithm fatigue, analog nostalgia and a desire for “third spaces.” The New York Times followed with a fantastic profile of KXLU, capturing college radio’s “unpredictability, uniqueness and random brilliance.”
In search of some fresh music recommendations, I asked college radio stations across North America to share their favorite albums of 2026 so far. Many new releases are now submitted and reviewed digitally, so they asked Dusty Henry of KEXP and Another Thought to illustrate the picks.
This isn’t an official chart. It’s a snapshot of the wide-ranging, deeply human and often surprising taste of college radio DJs right now, in no particular order.
Enjoy digging through the stacks. College radio, forever <3
Deep shoegaze distortion coupled with vulnerable, echoing lyrics, Segmentation can piece together the heel-wounded parts of any listener with its heavy sound. The album transcends its mainstream counterparts, taking you on a journey with swirling liminal riffs. An alternative album for an alternative station : Segmentation is the debut album of Heel, who are also active members at Texas A&M’s KANM Student Radio.
Favorite Tracks : “Through Me,” “August,” and “Waste.”
RIYL : Narrow Head, Trauma Ray, Starflyer 59, grungegaze, Gregg Araki films, limerence, wildflower honey, driving in Texas at night, skateparks, the sound of frogs croaking at the lake after sundown, cyberpunk
Bouncy, down-to-earth love songs. The Mirror, fittingly introspective, feels both chronological and retrospective, distinctly Meek, yet totally relatable in its romantic storytelling.
Favorite tracks : Gasoline (1), Can I Mend It ? (3), Worms (8)
RIYL : Big Thief (of course), acoustic guitar, lavender marriages, if Licorice Pizza is your favorite movie.
