SIOUX CITY, Iowa (Iowa Media Wire) — It’s a big weekend at Morningside University’s campus radio station KMSC as they participate in Vinylthon. It’s a 24-hour celebration of vinyls.
It started at noon on Saturday and the plan is to go to noon on Sunday playing nothing but vinyl albums.
“Vinylthon is a nationwide event that college radio stations can participate in. You register at the beginning of the year and you play vinyl records for 24-hours straight on air. Which is a little bit different from what we’ve been doing. Usually, I have a computer that auto-plays music, auto plays PSA’s. I can set it and forget it,” said Ahndreya Roberts, the Student Radio Director, at Morningside Campus Media.
The station is all automated and plays digital music, so there weren’t many vinyl albums around. Luckily the Morningside staff and kicked in with their record collections.
“A lot of our collection this year was donated by Doctor Greg Guelcher here at Morningside. He has come to vinylthon and been a guest DJ every year for the last couple of years, including last year and he’ll be here today from 2:00-4:00,” added Roberts. “He saw the state of our collection last year and was like oh. And decided to give us some donations.”
The students at Morningside are used to getting their music from streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music, so there was a learning curve on how to play vinyl albums.
“I was shown how to do it last year do I could kind of run the event and it was a little rocky at the beginning. Just not really understanding how to use the equipment. I didn’t really understand how to handle the records. I figured you shouldn’t touch them with your greasy hands, but I didn’t really know,” added Roberts.
There will be around 11 students and 3 Morningside staff members that will be on the air for the 24-hour vinylthon. If they reach 24-hours of continuous music, they will receive the “Golden Slipmat Award.”
An award they last won in 2022. Winning the award would be a big boost to the campus media department.
“It’s really important for us to do it this year. Morningside just restructured their communications program,” said Jaden Carney, Community Engagement and Public Relations for Morningside Campus Media. “Campus media is student led now. It was really important for us to get ourselves back out there, start making some awards. Really get that footing again.”