Radio 7

Radio 7 is officially on the air. Well, sort of. It's on the air whenever I remember to leave my computer running, which is not very often, but the fact that it's on the air at all is an achievment. The official launch date was last Saturday, and I'm happy to report that Radio 7 is now proudly streaming music off my hard drive to thousands of listeners all over the world.

Well, ok, maybe not thousands, hundreds would be more like it...oh ok, not hundreds either...yeah, I know, not even tens for that matter, but I did have 3 listeners on Saturday (that's 75% capacity!), and then not a single soul since. It's all my fault too. Everything was running perfectly until, for some reason, I started monkeying around with the playlist. I must have hit a button or changed a setting because all of a sudden my computer became possessed and began playing the same song over and over and over again. Nothing I did could stop it so I decided to stop the broadcast, close down the program, and reboot the computer. And, of course, anyone in the broadcasting business can tell you what happened next...

Dead Air.

Oh my God, I've got Dead Air (or as we broadcasters like to say "technical difficulties"). I rebooted, launched the JetCast softare, and waited for my 3 listeners to come back to me.

And they never came back.

Oh geez, I lost my listeners and now my audience has been stuck at a big, fat ZERO for 3 straight days. Man, I tell you, this broadcasting business is tough. One little glitch and bam, there goes your audience. Problem is, once you lose them how do you get them back? I know a lot of radio stations do the Howard Stern thing to get listeners. You know, that's where you wag your tongue and tell lots of loud, dirty jokes, and if I had to I could do that. I know some dirty jokes, good ones too. Jokes that would make a sailor blush, but the whole thing seems pretty desperate to me.

I'll have to try a different approach. I think the major problem I'm having is using the JetCast platform. Not that there's anything wrong with the software. In fact JetCast is ridiculously simple and makes it almost effortless to get an MP3 stream out there on the internet. The problem with JetCast is that nobody else seems to be using it. I was looking through the JetCast directory the other day and there were only about 20 people total tuned into the 97 streams they had listed. That's not good. That's like having 97 hamburger stands out in the middle of the Mojave desert. Who cares how good the burgers are if there's no one around to buy 'em.

So, I'll be moving to the Shoutcast platform pretty soon. The Shoutcast directory always has hundreds, if not thousands of people tuned in to their streams. Of course, they have a lot more streams and it's easy for a little guy to get lost among all these professional businesses sending out thousands of high-bitrate streams. Who wants to tune into some guy broadcasting four 48kbs streams when there are these monster outfits putting out hundreds of 128kbs or 192kbs streams. It's like a little 10 watt pirate station going up against Clear Channel.

Still, I think Shoutcast is the way to go. You have to go where the listeners are, and just hope they like the choice that you offer. Right now I'm just broadcasting old 70's FM type Rock. Not because I want to but just because that was the easiest for me. It was enough of a chore just getting the thing running without trying to put together a playlist, so I just took some old 70's rock I had lying around on my hard drive, shuffled it up and sent it out as is. My real goal is to put together a 24/7 all opera and vocal music station, but I'll have to put some thought and effort into that. First I'll get the Shoutcast thing figured out, then I'll work on the playlist.

Which brings up this whole question of royalties. Damn. I don't think anyone will mind if I send out 4 puny little streams of 48kbs MP3 audio, but if decide to actually go with one of these shoutcast hosting services things could get a little sticky, couldn't they. Not that any of these other people seem to mind broadcasting pirated music over high-quality streams, but I couldn't do that ( I know, I'm just too good). I think I'll have to stay small and just beg for my listeners.

So I'm begging. Please, give Radio 7 a try. Please, Pretty Please, Pretty Please with Sugar on Top. I'll pay you. I'll do your dishes. I'll clean your house. Anything. Please, please, please, please, please....

(Okay, this is embarrasing. No more begging. Someone will listen. Someone's got to listen. Someday, somewhere. I can't stay at ZERO for ever - sigh)

(Did you notice all the hyperlinks - hint, hint)