erockster: A Service Whose Time Has Passed/Arrived/Yet To Be Determined

When Clear Channel launched its new online/HD radio music service last Friday, the first thing that struck me was its clunky name: erockster. With its “e” prefix and “ster” suffix, erockster looked like a long-forgotten start-up from the 2000 dot-com crash.

One week later, I’m warming to the erockster concept — if not its lazy, Web 1.0 moniker — but it’s still hard to know what to do with it. Currently a purely online phenomenon that will eventually broadcast as an alternate high-definition stream for Clear Channel rock stations, erockster.com is Jack FM for hipsters.

The service produced by Eric Szmanda (an actor on “CSI”) will eventually have a 5,000-song playlist and offers a wide variety of alternative rock, funk, true classic rock, authentic country and dance tracks. Listeners have a solid shot at hearing Led Zeppelin after LCD Soundsystem, or Prince after The Ting Tings, or Belle and Sebastian after Patsy Cline — it’s heart-warmingly haphazard.