I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve tried this before… Been thinking about starting an online radio station, and thought that one built by/for this community could be something cool and fun to get off the ground. Know there’s a few of us here that do that sort of thing anyway and with all the creative and knowledgeable folk it could actually be at least decent?
It wouldn’t be an actual Drowned in Sound station obvs (I know Sean had an actual DiS show a little while ago), just DiS adjacent in the same way the Disintegration State label is. Also I’ve posted this on the music board not sure if it would be strictly music or if it could be broader than that (political, comedy, etc…)
Maybe more work than it’s worth and maybe people don’t give a shit about radio these days, but wanted to guage interest anyway!
I would be interested in contributing content for the station
0voters
I would listen to this station
0voters
Anon poll - from some really basic preliminary research I think there would be at least a small amount of set up/running costs to do something like this, so…
I would back/support the station financially, e.g. via Patreon or a Kickstarter style campaign
Also could probably provide artists for guest mixes etc. I’m sure there a few people active in their local scenes who could do similar. Just an idea for the music content side of things.
I do a couple of hours a month on https://www.purple-radio.co.uk/ so I could easily leverage off of that, and also share technical know how, etc.
Most of the (engaged) audience are DJs too - it’s kind of matured that way after about fifteen years - so everyone chips in a few quid every month which goes on server costs and PRS fees. I DJed right at the beginning for a few years, then stopped about ten years ago (I was doing 2 hours a week every week which was too much), then started again about a year ago
Have done a home radio station of themed shows intermittently for years and really enjoy it (website is down but shows are at Mixcloud), would definitely be up for taking part in this as it’s been quite a while since I’ve done any!
Thanks for the replies / interest everyone! Was expecting this to get like 2 or 3 people interested and then fade away… actually feels like there might be something to this!
Yeah for sure - the more content and variety the better! Guess we’ll get into it as we get further down the line but I imagined some regular weekly/fortnightly shows interspersed with one-off specials like mixes
Any technical tips appreciated! Or tips in general! Had a really really brief look at platforms to run this on and this was the first one that came up, looked pretty sophisticated and not outrageously expensive https://radio.co/ But need to look at other options and look into the PRS side of things as well
Open for discussion I guess but the way I’d imagined it was that it would be promoted as being of the forum and the community, but not branded as like an official Drowned in Sound radio. I guess primarily because the brand doesn’t belong to us, but in my head I was thinking similar to Disintegration State, so there’s a clear link between the station and the community but not tying them directly together if that makes sense? I imagine we’ll be able to come up with a suitably hilarious DiS based pun for the station name.
This sort of thing would be amazing If this progresses will probably put a call out for various bits and pieces like this to see if anyone can help out. Hoping if the right level of support is there it won’t all need to be done out of good will too, but we’ll see how it goes I suppose!
Ours is done through shoutcast, but it has been for 15 odd years so there may well be much better ways of doing things these days. Technically you could probably broadcast to one or two of your mates through your own bandwidth, but more than that you’ll need hosting.
To broadcast I still use Winamp - has that cone back into fashion again with the whole Indie Sleaze trend?