Too many radio stations?
". . .Many listeners especially younger ones do not want to hear excessive sweepers and jingles or branding' line above: Imaging can help to distinguish yourself from the about 4303580330 other internet stations with a similar music style. Something which is even more difficult when it's a non-stop station. . ."
Here is a point to ponder. Having visited these forums for some time I see the same thing happening again and again. That is - loads of stations desperate for DJs! It gets easier (and cheaper) to launch a station but filling them with live content is hard as there seem to be only a limited amount of DJs looking for stations. It amuses me when I see stations on here grab ANY DJ that says they are looking for a slot. Often with the line "you seem to suit our station really well". No I am in the same boat as everyone else in that I am always looking to increase the amount of DJs on my station but part of me thinks there are too many stations with too few DJs. When I look into a lot of stations I see 2 best friends doing 2 shows a week trying to get more people desperately. Now I do not want to stand in the way of people's dreams/plans but I see so many stations fold because they just can't get enough interest. I wonder if syndication is the way forward for people starting out. Get enough followers who are interested in what you do then try and build them up into DJs themselves. When there are enough of you then formulate a station. Anyway, enough of my ramblings. What do you think? Please feel free to disagree with me.
thanks, Edd - Owner of A1Radio.co.uk
Its quite ironic that you started this topic as I posted a similar topic on another forum some time ago, I did read your original post some time ago but did not have the time to reply when I initially read it.
Below you can read the topic that I posted on the other forum but incidentally my views have slightly changed since posting it and I also sympathise with you in trying to get quality DJs for your station.
We recently posted asking for DJs but in a different manner to some of the other stations, we asked for prospective DJs to get in touch if they felt that they had something that they could offer our station as we are quite unique in our target audience who are Taxi Drivers! Some of the demo's that I listened to were OKish and I tried to offer advice to those who sent the demos in so that they could improve their demo but I felt that from some of the replies that we received when we offered feedback that the DJs were getting upset!
When listening to internet radio stations I have come across some very professional presenters and some who are excellent and also some who are truly appalling but the thing that strikes me about all of them, good or bad, is that they all take pride in what they do and they all enjoy what they are doing so to that end, who am I to criticise.
Just imagine if all of the good presenters got together and formed an internet radio station then we might be able to put something together that could actually rival traditional commercial radio.
But anyway enough of my ranting, here was the topic that I posted some time ago:
Internet Radio Stations asking for DJs sometimes make me laugh?
It appears to me that nearly every single internet radio station struggles to attract DJs/Presenters judging by the posts on other forums and yet when prospective DJs/Presenters reply to the thread they are directed to "apply online" and sent of to a webpage or asked to send a CV to a given email address as though the station owner is doing the DJ/Presenter some sort of favour by condescending to allow the DJ to broadcast on their hallowed radio station!
Well lets be totally frank here, their station cant be that good otherwise they would not be posting every week asking for DJs would they?
Also when prospective DJs do reply to a thread they are very rarely responded to by some of the people running these stations!
If you are running a radio station and want to fill up your schedule and a DJ expresses an interest in broadcasting on your station then basically you should do all the chasing, after all you are not offering any payment for their services but rather they are offering their services on a voluntary basis to help you with the promotion of your station and to enable you to attract more listeners to your station.
I get the impression that when some people start up an internet radio station they get a bit above themselves and think they are something better than they are, well when you start paying DJs lots of money then I would personally allow you that stance, but when you are asking for volunteers you need to be humble and thank them for their interest and their help with your station. Please don't forget that most DJs will also bring along their own listeners with them who will tune into your station.
Running a radio station can be very time consuming with chasing after DJs and programming in pre recorded shows, setting up radio imaging and other stuff, it can also get quite expensive the more you get into it.
Where some are concerned it would be better to DJ on someone else's station rather than set up another radio station that will be short of DJs and keep posting asking for Presenters?
Well I have had my moan, what do you think......lol
Well it was some time ago that I posted my thoughts and I see by looking in the volunteering section that exactly the same things are happening. I say good luck to us all in getting DJs etc but my my its going to be tough. Since posting I have added a couple of great DJs to my station but its very tough out there! Often once approached when I look into the quality of the persons applying it is very low! Now I feel a bit mean and don't intend to sound elitest (my own technique needs lots of work) but its very rare that a £5 tesco headset mic and a hooky copy of SAM is going to result in a slick (ish) show/DJ. I am very fortunate in that I built myself a radio studio and that many of my DJ's have a very strong technical ability which usually results in a half decent output. Good luck to all out there and may your stations be successful.
I agree to some extent but I think the real issues are with the operational methods/quality control of some stations. I come from a former pirate background but also work with licensed FM community stations in the UK (BTW I would say A1 radio is equal to the best of these).
firstly there are definitely different types of stations and listener demographic - for instance many EDM fans are perfectly happy with a "non linear" form of listening to radio (such as pre recorded mixes or a repeat of a live show) with non stop beat mixed music and minimal chat / jingles (this varies on genres, some shows do have MC's and rappers who are equally popular). Often this is because they are spread across the entire world so what might be prime time evening in England is the early morning in Singapore and vice versa!
Other stations clearly want to emulate the popular "zoo format" radio of the 1980s, or talk formats or specialist documentary content. All these, done well, are as good as and often even better than the national or local broadcasters - they do not have the technical limitations of FM audio transmission or the obsolete encoding formats used in DAB, nor the politics and bureaucracy, nor the Communications Ministry breathing down your neck like a normal broadcast station (or even have to hide from them like a pirate must!)
But there are a great deal of less good stations. I see many where the websites are half done, in barely intelligible English (or the local language) and the audio content (when actually present) is grossly distorted to the point of being unlistenable (a particularly bad practice is to stream above 0dBFS audio level, just because your soundcard might allow it without everything sounding rough doesn't mean the distant listeners equipment will tolerate this), or the stations output is often erratic.
In some cases the people running the stations are very young indeed, still in their teens and high school age so this can be forgiven. Its after all better than what happened when I was a teen - which usually involved building a stentor or similar low budget FM transmitter or worse getting involved with some pirate stations which in my country (UK) were also linked to drugs dealing and crime (to replace confiscated equipment) or just provide courage to the operators as well as illegal broadcasting!
I admit I did all of these things once and I did have fun but some close calls and and now at age 40 feel a bit sheepish about some of it, and lucky I did not get in too much bother!
But for these young people I would also still suggest they team up in a bigger group and work together, and that they do it for a fun pastime or because they genuinely like their music or content, not simply to be "cool" As that is one of the good aspects of what we did as pirates (albeit often because the cost of equipment was too much for just one person alone).
Last edited by General Lighting; 27th February 2013 at 10:42 AM.
Hmmmm, a little intrigued with the previous post, what part of the UK are you from? You make it sound awful, pirate radio stations linked to drugs and crime. Theres none of that where I am from, pirate fm stations were like 20 - 30 years ago.
Yes there may be too many online radio stations, however many of these are auto-dj systems on servers, and this shines through, auto dj systems are nowhere near as good as a proper playout system, theres no such seg's, no sweepers and pretty poor rotation. The stations with a good sound, good rotations and a good online presence shine through online today.
Originally London though lived in SE England and now in East Anglia.
It definitely happened and still happens to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the stations and who was involved. Drugs and crime are always in the shadows of any music scene, even mainstream pop, hence why the Councils and Police put what might seem like heavy restrictions and controls on gigs, raves and festivals. all it is is that young people seek new experiences and sometimes get into bad situations doing so, thankfully we have various social structures in place to protect them (such as Ofcom licensing community broadcasters and the rise of internet broadcasting)
Even more recently a pirate in my region (across the border in North Essex) closed not because Ofcom got to them (in spite of their TX antenna being infiltrated into an Arqiva site!!!) but because the "station manager" was funding it by the sales of home grown weed and imported cocaine, for which he received 10 years imprisonment (his running of the pirate was only mentioned as a side issue in Court).
Last edited by General Lighting; 14th April 2013 at 01:07 PM.
On this note it depends how the auto-DJ is used, I agree that it is not the best thing for playing out sequential tracks/short content and there are affordable or even free playout systems around (radiodj.ro is promising though requires some tech skills to deploy), and charliedavy in Essex UK makes some other affordable software).
That does of course mean you need to leave a PC switched on 24/7 in your home studio, though hardware is cheap these days, and even a second hand one that would not play todays computer games will suffice.
But with the auto DJ software provided here there is no reason why it cannot be used to play out larger blocks of audio content like a pre-recorded show which can have any kind of imaging that you want. it is well suited to the style of EDM shows where a DJ spends more time on beat mixing than talking/interviews, and can be set up to schedule shows well (there seem to be no more gaps than you would get if you actualy had a bank of analogue tape carts and reel to reel machines like the old days!)
Also many listeners especially younger ones do not want to hear excessive sweepers and jingles or branding.
Its not like a normal analogue station where these are used to distinguish between competing stations in a packed frequency allocation (especially if users still have analogue tuning radios) or only the RDS display shows the branding (and it is illegal to make it dynamically change in most EU countries as its viewed as a traffic safety risk).
Those listeners know what they have tuned into as they selected it from a website or mobile phone app - so interaction is as well served via websites, forums etc and real humans behind them who act as part of a community...
I make use of Radionomy's Online Radio Manager, a kind of a auto-dj system, and you can do everything you want with it. In fact, I play lots of jingles, compared to many other non-stop stations.
And the rotation depends on yourself, how you fill music folders/build the clocks/etcetera.
About the 'Also many listeners especially younger ones do not want to hear excessive sweepers and jingles or branding' line above: Imaging can help to distinguish yourself from the about 4303580330 other internet stations with a similar music style. Something which is even more difficult when it's a non-stop station.
Last edited by Female81; 15th April 2013 at 10:29 AM.
This is true, but I think its a manner of getting the right balance and also the format.
For instance I think for our local community radio station that also transmits on FM there is not enough imaging, (which I am working on sorting out) but with the specialist dance music online station I help out (there are streams for each genre) some prefer non stop music (they know who the DJ's are) and jingles only before and after each show.
I know that in NL even the pirates put a lot of effort into imaging, I heard one from EPC (a seasonal pirate) where they trying to sound like a SLAM FM type jingle, with all the sound/voice effects and then the voiceover hesitates and forgets what he means to say, then a girl reminds him they are broadcasting from the potato storage barn
Last edited by General Lighting; 15th April 2013 at 02:40 PM.
