In 2002, the BBC launched a scrappy new radio station, aimed at highlighting its massive archive of live music sessions, “on a thing called DAB, which no one had really heard of”, says early morning presenter Chris Hawkins. Twenty years on, 6 Music is the biggest digital station in the UK, with 2.6 million listeners. It survived a serious threat of closure in 2010. Its audience has grown up with it (breakfast show host Lauren Laverne even DJed at the wedding of a couple who met discussing the station). The presence of independent acts that it championed such as Dry Cleaning and Yard Act in the UK album chart – and Little Simz winning a Brit award – reflects its impact.
But a lot has changed in 20 years. 6 Music positions itself as “beyond the mainstream” – but indie and alternative music have become central to British culture: while 1.5 million people applied to attend Wimbledon this year, 2.5 million tried for Glastonbury tickets. The independent music scene has become markedly more diverse, and music fandom is no longer the sole preserve of the young. Taylor Swift collaborates with the National now. Is 6 Music too cosy to reflect these shifts? And how does it handle change when – as they discovered when DJ Shaun Keaveny left last September – many of its listeners would quite like things to remain exactly the same?
