From 1998 through 2008, Harcourt was the driving force at KCRW, the super-influential public radio station broadcasting from Santa Monica, Calif.: Even if you’ve never heard of him or the station, you’ve heard music and bands he helped make famous via airplay.

I don’t know if his Wikipedia entry is technically accurate (crowdsourcing!), but the list of musicians he’s credited with breaking in the U.S. should give a sense of his vibe, regardless: Coldplay, Norah Jones, Pete Yorn, Franz Ferdinand, etc. Awesome headline of a 2005 New York Times Magazine profile: “The Star Maker of the Semipopular.”

But outside of his work picking music for TV shows and movies, Harcourt hasn’t had a forum for the past two years.

Now he does: Blog network Buzzmedia is putting him in charge of “Live Buzz,” a new site that focuses on music videos.

There are plenty of those, so what’s different? Harcourt says it’s the emphasis on live tapings recorded specifically for the site. But there are plenty of those, too (check out “From the Basement,” which does a really good job).

So what Buzzmedia is really banking on here is that Harcourt’s brand will be enough to attract surfers and keep them coming back. That’s why the site’s homepage announces that it is “Curated by Nic Harcourt” right at the top.

Certainly worth a visit. Here are a couple examples of what you’ll find there. I’m particularly fond of the acoustic Jay-Z:

I do, actually. I’m a big fan of The Current, the alternative but not-too abrasive (I’m old) public radio station that broadcasts out of Minnesota, but apparently has lots of listeners in Brooklyn. And we’re not the only ones listening to old-school radio on the Web. CBS Radio’s (CBS) network, which consists primarily of news-and-talk outlets, is seeing big increases in online listeners. Mediapost:

CBS Radio’s network of radio station Web sites saw its total number of unique visitors increase 30% in December 2008, compared to the same month in 2007, according to Web analytics service OneStat.com, reaching an all-time high for CBS Radio. The online measurement company also noted that unique visitors grew 7% between November and December 2008.

Among the biggest growth stations were KRLD-Dallas, which jumped 133% between December 2007 and 2008; KNX-Los Angeles, up 113%; and WBBM-Chicago, up 104%. Major increases were also seen at WCBS-FM-New York and WPGC-Washington.”

So there’s a rare bit of good news for the radio business, which is losing listeners and ad dollars, courtesy of competition from devices like Apple’s (AAPL) iPod and iPhone. And that’s also good for enterprising companies like Targetspot, a New York-based start-up that’s dedicated to online radio advertising.

There’s still not a whole lot of money in online radio ads–the entire “off air” ad category, of which the Web is only a subset, makes up about nine percent of the radio ad market. And like the other media industries being pummeled by digital, its unlikely that the new online markets will make up for the decline in their existing businesses–that’s the now cliché-but-true “analog dollars to digital pennies” adage. But better to have pennies than nothing at all.