Tom Hilton, Aldora Britain Records,     starts March 24, 2026

Our guest in Inkwell.vue is Tom Hilton, publisher of Aldora Britain Records. He will be discussing his experience publishing a music e-zine during an unprecedented period of transformational turbulence in the digital media environment and the integration of massive streaming services disintermediating traditional distribution models. He started the zine in 2013, and has been showcasing and interviewing independent artists across a variety of genres over 500 issues in 13 years. See the most recent issue.

He also produces 5-song sampler CDs of his subjects’ work and distributes them on Bandcamp. They offer his readers a great way toget exposed to new artists and to follow up on those who have appeared in ABR’s pages. We will be discussing this multifaceted micromedia property in Inkwell through the end of March.

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Your co-hosts and lead commentators are author/journalist/design maven Bruce Sterling and yours truly, Jon Lebkowsky, digital culture maven and aging dharma punk. This is our 26th annual State of the World discussion. We tend to be more micro than macro in these discussions, which makes sense given that the actual state of the world is slippery, fluid, hard to assess reliably.

 

VISIT the archived conversation

The loss of public funding forces us to confront questions about the very identity of public radio. Will stations shift toward a more commercial model, relying heavily on corporate sponsorships? Can they adapt to new digital platforms while retaining their commitment to accessibility and diversity? Or will public radio lean more deeply into community-driven models, where audiences not only consume content but actively support and shape it?

 

We have assembled an illustrious panel of subject matter experts with substantial experience in Public Radio to discuss the looming challenges facing public radio stations, content producer networks, and distribution platforms as public funding is being disrupted.