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almostwitty — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:23:56 -0800

I need examples (good and bad) of how radio stations, DJs or programmes use Facebook. Thank you!

Help me remember the name of a website that records all tracks recently played by almost any radio station.

DeltaForce — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:17:53 -0800

Help me remember the name of a website that records all tracks recently played by almost any radio station. A while ago I came across a website that would track all songs played within a certain time period, eliminating the need to go to individual radio stations' websites. I can't remember what the website was called, any ideas?

Thanks!

How to brand an Internet channel, on my own

frosty_hut — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:03:38 -0800

Your tips on personality branding plus Facebook and Twitter My question is specific to radio personality branding, but I thought I would cast the net wide and ask for any ideas you might have on personality and career branding in general, by way of Internet technology.

I'm the host of an Internet music station. The format is classical, so it attracted some classical music lovers out of the gate, but has potential for more than that because the format is pretty flexible - we're including film scores, television series themes, and new-age music in the mix. The thinking is that we can attract people who like a certain sort of relaxing music, whether classical or not.

The station also has an air signal that plays traditional classical fare. Our audience for that is falling off and not being replaced (which is true for most classical stations out there), and the thought with the Internet channel was to try to bring younger listeners into the fold with a new offering that would shake up the old format just a little.

So far so good - my channel is one of the more successful ventures the station has had. Now I'd like to start branding myself and the channel. Our promotions department has said there are no funds in the budget to do this. So I'm pretty much on my own as far as trying to keep the momentum going with what we've started, and to keep attracting new listeners.

The station I work for does have tentative plans to create Facebook pages for its online channels. I'm not sure what the hold up is. Rather than wait for that, though, I thought I could use my existing Facebook page to promote my channel. The problem is that my FB page has been personal up to now, although nothing compromising is on there. It just hasn't been exclusively music-focused. If my FB page becomes a promotional arm of my music channel, I'm thinking, it'll have to take on a different identity.

I thought I could start favoriting all kinds of music groups, both locally and nationally, if I can find them on Facebook. I was also going to take my list of listeners who've emailed me, and ask them to locate me and friend me. The station I work for also has its own Facebook page (although not for the individual Internet channels, like I said), so I'd ask them to join that as well.

Is there anything I'm not thinking of?

I have a nice shiny studio-type photo of myself on my page. What else should I be doing?

My hubby, my de facto manager (LOL), tweets stuff about my channel pretty regularly. He also tweets a show I co-host on the regular air-signal each Saturday, a few minutes before it begins.

This is too long by far, so I'll ask you to chime in now. What else can I do to shore up my little corner of the Internet music world here? I would also be open to ideas that might involve some minor outlay of cash.

Spotify & Internet Radio?

nam3d — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:23:35 -0800

I am a keen user of Spotify which I use religiously, I am also the proud owner of a Revo iBlik RadioStation which allows me to listen to thousands of internet radio stations. I'd like to figure out someway to listen to the music from Spotify on my radio station without any wires. One way I thought I could get around this is set up my own 'radio station' on my computer and stream it to my radio. What software (on the mac (10.5) would you reccomend me using to stream spotify, and is this at all possible?

Thanks.

To podcast or not to podcast?

frosty_hut — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:22:33 -0800

How to persuade a local radio arts and music station that they should podcast? I'm a newbie at a radio station. I host a music channel that's one of a couple of others the station offers online. So it's available on HD and also from their web site.

The host of one of the other online channels, Alexa, offers interviews with artists and local mover-shakers. From what I can tell, the managers would like the channel to take off but it's been slow going.

We recently heard from a listener who said she loved the idea of an arts conversation channel, and was particularly interested in an interview with a certain artist. She knew the interview was in that audio somewhere, but she didn't have time to listen to the channel for hours in order to find it. Meanwhile, there was no information on the main web site regarding what time the interview would be playing on the air (or online), so she became discouraged and didn't want to keep listening.

I thought this looked like a huge red flag. Currently there is no web content at all associated with the interview channel--it's just a clickable link, with no clue to content, times of interviews or music, etc. This is an on online channel, but there's no information about it online. It seems to me that podcasting would help enormously. A list of labeled links with the names of the artists would be easy to produce. And podcasts aren't brain surgery. People expect content on demand, they're familiar with the technology, and it's just a no brainer.

So I typed out a simple email in response to the listener's question, and asked everyone: If the listener can't find the interview, why not make it available as a podcast from the main web site?

Alexa replied with a lengthy defense of why Podcasts Are Bad. People will only stay for a minute if they see a podcast link, whereas she wants to draw people in for one thing, and keep them there for all the other stuff on the channel.

I can see why that's desirable, but I don't think podcasting would prevent that result. If a person who only wants the Hot Young Star interview leaves the site after listening to it, he wasn't going to stick around anyway. And in the meantime, you've still got your regular listeners who benefit from the added, easy to find content. Plus, you've added a hit to your page count. Once people who are searching for that famous person start finding our site, it can only swell page hits, which I know they're keeping track of.

I'm a newbie and a part-timer, and maybe Alexa thinks I'm a wet-behind-the-ears jerk. I still think this is a rational suggestion. Anyway, the fate of my own channel is at stake too. If everything we offer looks good to people, they're more likely to stick around long enough to click on my section of the site.

Any suggestions on how to spin this more effectively?

Where can I find a radio vocabulary poster in French?

comfortinsound — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:08:02 -0800

I am looking for a specific poster, and any information about where I could find one would be greatly appreciated. It's a poster with colorful illustrations or photographs of equipment found in a radio station (mics, headphones, midis, volume control, etc.) and all the vocabulary is in French. I know such a thing may be impossible to find, but I need to try.

Help me identify a mystery radio station near Seattle/Victoria/Vancouver.

Mid — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:30:40 -0800

Help me identify a great French-language radio station I heard broadcasting near Seattle, WA, or Victoria or Vancouver, BC. I was on San Juan Island a few weeks ago for vacation. While there, I picked up a great radio station that played eclectic music--mostly jazz. The music was almost all American jazz, r&b, soul, etc., but all of the DJs and other announcers spoke French. I never caught a station ID. I'm guessing the station was coming in from Canada, probably near Victoria or Vancouver, which are not too far (Victoria is very close). The frequency was low on the dial - something like 88.x or 89.x. It was not KPLU. I'd love to find out the station name and, if I hit the jackpot, find an online stream. Bonus question: do you know of any non-US online music streams that are similar? (I think I know about all the US ones.) Thanks.

Do radio stations use digitized music?

stevil — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 22:27:28 -0800

How do commercial radio stations organize or manage their music media? When a DJ puts on a song, what format is it in, and how is it retrieved? I heard a great story about the music library in a college radio station in the pre-CD days, how there were index cards attached to the front of the LP sleeve with comments about which tracks were suitable for whatever, that had useful lengths and so on.

It made me wonder in the post-CD age, what a commercial station (i.e., one with a budget) might do. If a DJ (or a producer or engineer?) plays a song, is s/he actually putting a CD in a player and hitting play? [I know many stations are all pre-recorded anyway, and I guess I'd want to focus away from that]...Or are they calling up songs in some digital music database where they can search quickly on title/length/artist as needs be?

I know they create playlists, but they also take requests, and even if they take those non-live (and play 'em back to sound live) they are still rapidly getting some tracks ready.

But enough me theorizing; the question is - how does this work?

Donde esta los pop artists?

Amanda B — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 23:46:18 -0800

Why can't I find "modern" Spanish music on the radio? Where I live, there are several Spanish-language radio stations. However, they only see to play what i would call traditional-style Mexican music.

So I was thinking about it, and I've never heard anything like, say, Juanes or Shakira on the radio. I *know* Spanish pop exists because I own some of it. So why isn't it on the radio? Does anyone have this kind of station or does it just not exist?

Starting an Online Radio Stataion

daHIFI — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 08:10:56 -0800

A friend of mine has a very large reggae collection of stuff that's unreleased and wants to start an online radio station. He swears it will be big and wants me to help him pull it off. He's talking thousands of listeners. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing who can tell me what the monthly bandwith expenses associated with streaming 128kbps to around 3000 listeners. The math I did comes out to about 384Mbps, which means we will need somewhere between an OC3 and and OC12. I can't get pricing without contacting a bunch of sales people that I really don't want to talk to yet, so if anyone knows what a monthly port charge for something like that with a petabyte of bandwidth each month would run please let me know. Also any advice from others that are doing such things currently would be great.

Tell me what you know about this music

vraxoin — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:11:44 -0800

I was switching stations in Dallas the other day and came across one of the most magnificent pieces of music--where can I hear more? [more inside] The subgenre of music is one that I'm not that familiar with. It was doubtless from the seventies, with funky horns playing both as a section and in crazy jazz riffs. There was some sort of shouted vocal. The whole thing was beautifully improvisational but at the same time tight as all hell. At the end of the piece it sort of trainwrecked, with laughter and hoots and hollers at the end. All in all, a stunning blend of funk, soul, and jazz the likes of which I've never encountered. And of course, no DJ came on to tell me who it was. I know I haven't provided anywhere near enough information to peg the tune or even the band, but can anyone tell me where on the musical map this music fits? (It seems, as near as I can tell, to be the kind of music that Prince was listening to when he recorded his Lovesexy album.)