the blog page
10/7/07
Well, hello! I'm not dead! Just lazy! but only as far as maintaining the web page goes. I've been busy with every thing else in my life, as well as slowly adding to the library here at the spot. The best news is, I was so relieved at the 11th hour reprieve of huge royalty rate increases that I celebrated by increasing my live365 file storage from 300 to 500 mb. I am only up to about 326 full right now, but I am spending lots of time looking for only the best, most unique, coolest, most rockin, and/or craziest examples of the genres available! I've said it before, and I'll say it again.... it would be so easy to just upload 3 or 4 tracks from every surf/rbilly/lounge/exotica recording I ever came across... but I insist on quality before quantity. And patience IS a virtue!
I have asked for submissions from bands in the past and gotten some great stuff, but one thing I don't like is when bands spam me looking for any play at all, without even checking me out first. Obviously I don't play hip-hop, commercial alternative, country, top 40, or any of the terrestrial radio-friendly formats, so why waste my time? This is a FRINGE, FREEFORM Station, people, c'mon!
Which is why my listenership is in the toilet I guess... I listen to a lot of the single genre stations that play what I like, ie. Devlar Surf Sessions, Motorbilly Radio, Vegas Vic's Tiki Lounge and others, and they are all good to great, and they all have 4 times the numbers I do. I guess if I specialized in just one genre it could be different... But I DON'T CARE! This is MY WAY, MY STATION! HA HAHA HA!
Thanks for listening. ;>
7/30/06:
y'know, you guys who aren't VIP members, listen up.
VIP is worth the money because...
... you don't get all the ads
... you get the Radio 365 player at no extra charge which makes this station sound GREAT, as in, CD quality, without it it sounds, well, less than great/CD quality
... it's really not very expensive. $5.95 per month, less if you pay quarterly/biannually/annually. I pay $26.70 every 6 months
... if you sign up from the icons on the home page and the last played page, I get $1.50 off my monthly bill. This hasn't happened yet.... c'mon guys, help out the spot!
7/30/06:
If you are wondering where I get most of my music, here are the answers.
1. My own huge cd collection. I own over 2000 cd's, filling an entire wall of a walk in closet, alphabetized and ready to pull at any time. Once my storage capacity became large enough, I started to rip the entire collection to mp3. Started 9/05, I am now up to the G's.... a ways to go. This collection was acquired over the past 24 years from the usual retail outlets and quite a few mailorder and online stores too.
2. Emusic. This website is great! It features mostly independent labels so you won't find most of your big stars here, but that's not what I listen to or play is it? I pay $10/month for 40 downloads, so that is 25 cents per track... and that track could be a 2 minute punk song or an hour long symphony... same price. Such a deal! If you are looking for music from here, I would check there first.
3. Rhapsody. This service, run by real networks, is an all you can stream thing, you pay 15$ a month and can listen online to as much cd quality music as you want. If you want to keep a song it costs 80 cents, or $7.99 per album (you have to burn it to cd), and they have over 2 MILLION songs, from big name artists to the less well known.
4. New artists looking for promotion/airplay. See my links page for artists who have sent me mp3s or cds. I love this! Makes me feel like a real radio station! If I like it and it fits the format, I'll play it! So contact me if you have a recording!
4/14/06:
So, you are probably all asking, what's up with SSS? Why do I play the stuff I do? Why don't I play other stuff?
I will try to answer that here.
The music that I play here, that is Surf, Instrumental, Rockabilly, Lounge, Exotica, Movie and TV Themes, Garage, and Novelties, all originally came from the 50's and 60's, the era in which I was born and grew up in. The mid nineties saw a number of revivals of these genres, and although they have crested, there is still a tremendous interest in these kinds of music. And they sort of became the soundtrack of my life by the turn of the millenium.
When the opportunity came to start a radio station with live365, I jumped at the chance. In march of 2000, secret surfin spot was on the air. Originally I had a broadband only stream at 56k, with probably only about 100 or so songs to start. live365 was free then too, totally advertising supported. For a while I had a dialup stream too. When live365 began charging for broadcasting, I stopped. However, they kept playing the broadcast. You couldn't hear it unless you had a VIP membership. So finally I got one, and I was appalled that the playlists weren't being updated or new songs added. Finally in September of 2004 I gave in and resumed the broadcast. First I changed it to mp3PRO at 32k, which would enable dialup people to hear the show, allow more songs into my allocated file space at l365, and it sounded nearly as good as 56k (even better if you have a VIP membership and use the radio 365 player; it really does sound like cd quality). Since then I have grown to over 400 songs, added IDs, and use a music scheduler to arrange playlists. Just 3 months ago I started the website. I now have a number of happy listeners and the station is growing.
Anyway, back to the point.... why do I play what I play? well, these things just sound good together. A recent entry to my guestbook put it very well when he said it all sounds like a surf tiki hotrod party. Yeah, that's it. Imagine it's 1962, you're surfin at the inlet, NASA down the beach a ways has just launched Telstar, Eric Von Zipper and his gang are roaring down the beach, over at that modern house on the dunes some guy is having a cocktail party and Ursula Andress is rising out of the water with a knife and a white bikini...
yeah.... you know what I'm talking about. So why don't I play more songs? well, two reasons... one, this station is mostly here to please me. If I don't REALLY love it, it doesn't get on. I still have 40 MB to fill out of 300 at live365, and I want to get it filled as soon as possible, but I won't add a song that don't like. And that 300 MB limit is going to stay; I could add more but I am already paying $50 a month in station costs. I have been adding steadily for months now, probably 30 MB worth in the last 6 months. At this rate I should be full by the end of the year, then I can start weeding out the less popular ones! (Keep those votes coming, yea or nay)