March 2014 update: Weve spent the last few weeks tweaking our content just a little bit. Were in the process of going a little deeper into our classic rock artists album collections and adding many of the songs we didnt initially include when we started broadcasting again early last year. To get the station going we picked songs based on popularity charts, personal knowledge, and some help from allmusics reviews. Going through over 1,500 albums that way inevitably left some great music behind, so well continue to work on these additions. Weve also removed some songs. In our effort to include some newer music we realized we were falling into the trap thats taking so much life out of current music: Autotune. We received the new album from The Fray on its release date and were very disappointed to hear them sound just like every other band or artist with perfectly pitched vocals. There may be no getting around it these days, but the almost robotic vocal sound isnt a direction we want to go (unless maybe its done strictly for effect). A couple of our favorite current artists have decided to go this route lately, and were debating whether to continue broadcasting their songs from albums using this awful technology. Were leaning toward no. Another thing weve been paying attention to is too light and too heavy. If youre a regular listener you probably know we play everything from light pop to hard rock. Our feeling is that its all great music, and we try very hard to separate extreme styles with lots of more moderate stuff in-between. But sometimes the light end can be a little too sappy and the heavy end can be a little too overpowering (both in the context of the rest of our music). Its hard to draw the line sometimes; the best way weve found is to take our broadcaster hat off for a few hours and just listen to whats being streamed. Theres a certain feel were trying to accomplish, and when something plays that takes away from it theres a good chance well remove it from our song library. We apologize if any of these songs or artists are ones you enjoy, but hopefully the rest of our content is strong enough to still be a great listening experience. Even though weve removed some songs, our additions have pushed us past the 15,000 milestone. Besides a lot of great additions from albums we already had, weve picked up several CDs since our last update. Some of the more notable include full studio releases from 10,000 Maniacs (vs. the compilation albums weve been playing from) and a couple of Natalie Merchants best solo albums. The same goes for Toto. We went an entire year playing only from their greatist hits album, but now theres a bunch of music from whats probably their best 8 studio albums. There are also a few one-off additions we hope youll enjoy. Listenership has been very steady at around 1,500 hours for a rolling 30 days. Based on our geographic stats it appears that we may have lost some listeners due to the techical problems we were having. But weve gained some new regular listeners, and a few of them are international. Its always a great feeling to know that our broadcast is being heard beyond the U.S. borders. As always, thanks for listening!
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:16:14 +0000