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Showing posts from September, 2021

Internet Radio Listeners Can Be So FICKLE

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When it comes to Internet radio the hardest thing a radio station owner can do is try and attract listeners to their stream. I found in the past when I was streaming that most listeners only tended to tune in for 1 maybe 2 songs. I would play 2 Classic 80s songs together and then I'd lose a few listeners If those listeners heard those two songs played together on mainstream 80s radio those people would think the DJ was amazing. There is no DJ on most mainstream radio stations most of its Voice tracked, Computerised & Networked from remote Studios. Sadly it seems despite Internetradio station owners promoting their stations people only want to hear what they want to HEAR. Internet radio is losing out big style to Streaming services such as Spotify Spotify wants to KILL Internet Radio as we know it! Yes its nice when you do get listeners sticking around bu

If Only RadioDJ Had Been Around In 2002

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I've been into Internet radio and streaming for years now. It started out with me tuning into a LIVE365 Station in 1999. In that time I've spent a lot of time using and testing various radio automation solutions. Although my interest in Internet radio had started in 1999 it was 2002 before I had a Broadband connection. Radio automation software offerings back in 2002 were PANTS. You didn't have a great deal of choice. I tried Winamp with DSP plugins to try and stream but I ended up with large gaps of silence between songs so that wasn't ideal. Winamp would casually crash when you least wanted it to. An unstable DSP Plugin was usually to blame for that. Badly written Plugins were common back in Winamp's heyday! A lot of the DSP and General plugins from the Winamp website either wouldn't work or they would cause Winamp to freeze. You also had to change playlists manually and

Can I Transfer A SAM Broadcaster Pro Licence To A New Email?

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This was a question posed by someone on the Spacial Audio SAM Broadcaster forums after their station manager left the radio station. How do I go about transferring our SAM Broadcaster Pro 2021.4 license from our old station manager to a new email account? AFAIK: You cannot swap someone elses registered email address for yours. Its not as simple as that. This is the KICKER! Spacial Audio will most likely tell this user that they need to purchase a whole new SAM Broadcaster licence. Which means paying out $$$ just so they can broadcast with SAM Broadcaster If this user switched their station and DJ's over to RadioDJ then they wouldn't need to pay any money. Reasons to Use RadioDJ: Once installed it's stable and works for days/weeks without needing to keep an eye on it Great Music library support add as many categories & subcategories yo

Blogging For Over 10 Years

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Looking at my old website on Wayback Machine its made me realise its over 10 years since I started blogging. I started my blog in 2011 to get a few things off my chest that I couldn't say on forums. Mainly about software malfunctioning and other general annoyances in the world of Online Radio. I've been into Internet radio since I first tuned into a LIVE365 Station way back in 1999. In all those years I've been shocked by just how awful MOST of the paid for radio automation playout solutions actually are. I've had no end of headaches when I've paid for radio automation software in the past. Getting support for paid for software was an absolute nightmare with some online radio software companies. Some pieces of software were easy to use and others were downright awkward/difficult to use. I never got great uptime from software such as SAM Broadcaster or Zararadio they would crash when I lea

When The Buffering Starts Its NOT Your Computer (SAM Broadcaster Pro)

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A station owner apologising because the SAM Broadcaster Encoders have taken his station off air with the BUFFERING problem. I have SAM Broadcaster and it will not stream because of buffering errors I know from past frustrations how awful it is when the encoders in SAM Broadcaster decide to start buffering during a live show. I tested an old version of SAM v2.7.9 on a XP virtual machine and I had buffering within 10-15 minutes of firing up the encoder. Buffering happened with many Shoutcast/Icecast hosts & ISP connections The Issue extends to over 28 pages of posts on the SAM Broadcaster Forums Users have been told its THEIR connection at fault when its the software Its another (BUG) that the developers of SAM Broadcaster Pro don't appear to be in a hurry to fix. The SAM (Streaming Audio Manager) encoders have been like this for 20+ YEARS. It's NOT the user's Broadband or Shoutcast/Icecast server at fault