930 Forums
=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: Bags on February 08, 2006, 01:14:00 pm
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$10 a month is too much for me, I don't listen often enough (and it's about the same as satellite radio with hundreds of stations). I wish they had more support scenarios -- I'd happily throw some money their way to keep the music streaming. Should be an interesting test for internet radio generally....
Listener Supported WOXY.com â?? The Future of The Future of Rock and Roll
Grab a cup of coffee, friends. This isnâ??t gonna be your average update. This past Monday, WOXY.com became a listener-supported operation. While it means change for us, we hope it means a change for the better, and that we can all keep listening to the best music for a long time to come.
Why are we doing this?
Internet radio is a tricky business. It's in its infancy and people are still figuring out the business model. Technology hasnâ??t quite bridged the gap to allow easy access to internet radio in your car and other remote locations. Satellite radio is portable and nifty except that we're not on it. While it's technically possible to receive Internet radio on certain mobile phones today, the process is far from being user friendly or widely available. But we have no doubts that easy Internet radio in your car, iPod or phone is just around the corner. We just need to figure out how to stick around until that time comes.
Mom always taught us to do right and keep it honest, so that means paying music royalties to all kinds of folks (royalties that are probably going even higher this year), handling the costs of reliable streaming, providing health insurance for our employees and filing our taxes. We like to run a clean business. But at the end of the day, this is a business, and that means finding a way to pay the bills.
Unfortunately, at the moment, advertisers just donâ??t know what to think about us. Are we a website or a radio station? Is our audience local or (inter)national? How do we track whoâ??s listening? Everyone is intrigued by what we're doing, but advertisers are not quite ready to throw enough ad dollars our way to make it work.
We have always prided ourselves on being a free radio station. No matter who you are, whether youâ??re a starving student or multi-millionaire, each day we bring you the best music we can find on the planet, and serve it up with live DJs to boot. We think weâ??re doing something pretty special, and donâ??t want anyone to miss out on the party. Unfortunately, until technology catches up and advertisers know how to quantify us, we have to find a way to sustain ourselves. For that reason weâ??ve decided to make the move to being a listener-supported operation.
So what does it mean?
This past Monday, we began offering our premium service. For the bargain price of $9.95/month we will be offering 24-hour, true broadband, CD-quality streams to subscribers. We also have some other super-cool perks for members planned for the near future. And for those of you who just canâ??t afford to pay one more bill each month, weâ??re keeping a low bandwidth stream. It may not be the best quality, but you can still tune in for free. But just because you canâ??t pay a monthly fee, we hope youâ??ll find a way to make a smaller financial contribution to keep us up and running. To ease the transition weâ??ll leave our 64 kbps streams running until February 13th.
When we made the announcement that the FM radio station, 97X, was closing up shop, we received an outpouring of support. People asked how they could help and what they could do to keep things running. Well, folks, itâ??s time, and weâ??re asking for your help. Trust us when we say that we need you to support what we do or weâ??re going to be history.
What's next [the long term outlook]?
Our goal is to keep this ship afloat until we can find a business model which allows us to go back to being free, but in the meantime, we need you to come on board. On March 6th weâ??re going to evaluate how things are going, running the numbers to see if we have enough supporters to keep us afloat. If youâ??re going to sign up, please do so by this date â?? the sooner the better so we can see if this thing is a go. We hope weâ??re a valuable enough part of your life that you choose to stick around and take the ride with us, because we hope itâ??s going to be a long, long trip.
The future of The Future of Rock and Roll is in your hands. Just sign up(at BitPass), donate, or learn more so we can take off our financial hats and get back to doing what we do best.
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I am just happy it is not switching over before the High Strung show Friday at 4PM EST
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I've been waiting for somebody to try it...
It's a very interesting test case. I'd rather see them try the PBS model with pledge drives then a subscription based model, but we'll see.
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Originally posted by pdx pollard:
I am just happy it is not switching over before the High Strung show Friday at 4PM EST
And the Morning After Girls @ 11:30AM on Friday.
I signed up. I listen to WOXY all day at work. I didn't find a decent substitutue when they were off the air for a few months last year.
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Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
I signed up. I listen to WOXY all day at work. I didn't find a decent substitutue when they were off the air for a few months last year.
I am on the fence about whether I should, I often listen to it from around 6am to 10am when I feel it is not appropriate to have my stereo on too loud in an apartment building, I would if they would agree to play less Arctic Monkeys
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I would if they would agree to play less Arctic Monkeys
hehehe.
i joined. i listen to nothing but internet radio at work and they're one of my favorite stations. $10 for no budweiser commercials is justified.
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I'd try streaming the Minnesota Public Radio station The Current before signing up WOXY. It's basically the same format as WOXY, with instudio performances, live recordings, and a very diverse catalog of music. They do rely on pledge drives which do get annoying.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/the_current/ (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/the_current/)
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It will greatly improve their programming and if you listen, you should support it.
I donate regularly to KEXP...it's a bargain for what they offer.
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Listen to it now!
H I G H S T R U N G !!
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Speaking of which, does anyone know a woman with a personalized KEPX ORG license plate in Virginia
Originally posted by JohnnyBaconbitz:
It will greatly improve their programming and if you listen, you should support it.
I donate regularly to KEXP...it's a bargain for what they offer.
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Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
Originally posted by pdx pollard:
I am just happy it is not switching over before the High Strung show Friday at 4PM EST
And the Morning After Girls @ 11:30AM on Friday.
I signed up. I listen to WOXY all day at work. I didn't find a decent substitutue when they were off the air for a few months last year. [/b]
Damn it! I kept trying to remember to listen to this and remembered it at about 1PM. This always happens to me.
Did anyone hear it? If so, how was it? Do you think it will be archieved?
I never, ever listen to WOXY and am not rolling in money so becoming a supporter isn't worth it for me; however, I believe that anyone who listens to this station on a regular basis should sign up. Personally, I listen to a lot of other stations, some of which run with the subscribing option, and it very much scares me that so many of these stations have such a hard time surviving. Of course, WOXY has a real studio and is run as a business, unlike some of the internet stations which are purely unpaid staff supporting sans a real studio, etc.. It's going to take them a lot more money to survive.
The biggest shame is that Clear Crap and Infinity don't ever seem to run into any of these problems! :mad:
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Originally posted by Jaguar:
Damn it! I kept trying to remember to listen to this and remembered it at about 1PM. This always happens to me.
Did anyone hear it? If so, how was it? Do you think it will be archieved?
I never, ever listen to WOXY and am not rolling in money so becoming a supporter isn't worth it for me; however, I believe that anyone who listens to this station on a regular basis should sign up. Personally, I listen to a lot of other stations, some of which run with the subscribing option, and it very much scares me that so many of these stations have such a hard time surviving. Of course, WOXY has a real studio and is run as a business, unlike some of the internet stations which are purely unpaid staff supporting sans a real studio, etc.. It's going to take them a lot more money to survive.
The biggest shame is that Clear Crap and Infinity don't ever seem to run into any of these problems! :mad:
I heard it, it was pretty good, I wasnt familiar with their material so I wasnt blown away or anything. They probably will archive it.
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I wonder how much she had to pay their pledge drive for that?
My wife picked up a KEXP t-shirt at a thrift store for $3. I don't think the money went to KEXP.
Originally posted by nkotb:
Speaking of which, does anyone know a woman with a personalized KEPX ORG license plate in Virginia
Originally posted by JohnnyBaconbitz:
It will greatly improve their programming and if you listen, you should support it.
I donate regularly to KEXP...it's a bargain for what they offer.
[/b]
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Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
My wife picked up a KEXP t-shirt at a thrift store for $3. I don't think the money went to KEXP.
And there lies the catch.
I've got a 3WK.com t-shirt and every penny, short of their overhead, went to 3WK.com.
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What's the catch?
Someone donated money to get the t-shirt originally.
I've donated money to KEXP, and received no prize. So finding one at a thrift shop was just karma working.
Originally posted by Jaguar:
Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
My wife picked up a KEXP t-shirt at a thrift store for $3. I don't think the money went to KEXP.
And there lies the catch.
I've got a 3WK.com t-shirt and every penny, short of their overhead, went to 3WK.com. [/b]
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Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
What's the catch?
Someone donated money to get the t-shirt originally.
I've donated money to KEXP, and received no prize. So finding one at a thrift shop was just karma working.
Okay, that works out. But you got what I was getting at.
It's good advertising for the station too.
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It was funny, the white hipster dude manning the register commented that he liked the cartoon on the t-shirt. He had never heard of the radio station.
Originally posted by Jaguar:
Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
What's the catch?
Someone donated money to get the t-shirt originally.
I've donated money to KEXP, and received no prize. So finding one at a thrift shop was just karma working.
Okay, that works out. But you got what I was getting at.
It's good advertising for the station too. [/b]
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Originally posted by Jaguar:
Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
Originally posted by pdx pollard:
I am just happy it is not switching over before the High Strung show Friday at 4PM EST
And the Morning After Girls @ 11:30AM on Friday.
I signed up. I listen to WOXY all day at work. I didn't find a decent substitutue when they were off the air for a few months last year. [/b]
Damn it! I kept trying to remember to listen to this and remembered it at about 1PM. This always happens to me.
Did anyone hear it? If so, how was it? Do you think it will be archieved?
[/b]
It was good. Mellower than the tracks I've heard from the album. Very BJM-ish.
They said that the two in-studios from today (Morning After Girls and the High Strung) will be the last two podcasts available for free.
They also said the Morning After Girls are heading to Portland to party with Pollard. And to record with the Dandy Warhols also.
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Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
It was funny, the white hipster dude manning the register commented that he liked the cartoon on the t-shirt. He had never heard of the radio station.
For shame!
He just lost half his hipster cred for that. ;)
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Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
Originally posted by Jaguar:
Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
Originally posted by pdx pollard:
I am just happy it is not switching over before the High Strung show Friday at 4PM EST
And the Morning After Girls @ 11:30AM on Friday.
I signed up. I listen to WOXY all day at work. I didn't find a decent substitutue when they were off the air for a few months last year. [/b]
Damn it! I kept trying to remember to listen to this and remembered it at about 1PM. This always happens to me.
Did anyone hear it? If so, how was it? Do you think it will be archieved?
[/b]
It was good. Mellower than the tracks I've heard from the album. Very BJM-ish.
They said that the two in-studios from today (Morning After Girls and the High Strung) will be the last two podcasts available for free.
They also said the Morning After Girls are heading to Portland to party with Pollard. And to record with the Dandy Warhols also. [/b]
Phew! Just under the wire. Thanks for the info.
Damn you Pollard! Move over because I'm moving in with you. :D
The Morning After Girls (who are skipping Baltimore/DC ;)
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Morning After girls - http://xalt.vo.llnwd.net/o2/loungeact/morningafter-20060210.mp3 (http://xalt.vo.llnwd.net/o2/loungeact/morningafter-20060210.mp3)
High Strung - http://xalt.vo.llnwd.net/o2/loungeact/highstrung-20060210.mp3 (http://xalt.vo.llnwd.net/o2/loungeact/highstrung-20060210.mp3)
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Originally posted by Jaguar:
The High Violets
they had a cd release show recently here, I probably should have gone
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Originally posted by pdx pollard:
Originally posted by Jaguar:
The High Violets
they had a cd release show recently here, I probably should have gone [/b]
Yeah, I knew about that. Guess I should have mentioned it in here. Don't remember but I think my friend's band opened for them, unless that was their previous show. I've played their music on my show but now I can't wait to get my paws on their new CD.
Thanks for the links above.
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Depeche Mode, The Judybats, Pearl Jam album track on WOXY Vintage over the last 15 minutes. They just earned this month's fee. ;)
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Seriously, if any of you haven't had a chance to tune in, give them a try.
And spread the word! :D
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We put this up on our website www.cedarsmusic.com (http://www.cedarsmusic.com) ...hopefully people who are unaware of WOXY might give it a look:
As some of you may know, WOXY.com announced last week that it was switching to a listener supported format for financial reasons. WOXY.com has been extremely gracious in helping support and promote not only Cedars, but new music throughout the world -- signed or unsigned. It has provided an outlet for independent musicians to be heard all over the world, for new bands to be discovered, and for the general dissemination of quality music.
It is for these reasons and many others that we hope fans, listeners, and the general public sign up for their monthly subscription service. Both WOXY.com and their staff represent everything that is to be admired in independent music and independent radio. To sign up, click through the link below:
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fuck this shit (http://www.break.com/index/fucktheshit.html)!