Thursday, 9 August 2007
Quoting Richard Sharpe :
The following was posted by Chris Cary on his own board in answer to the
question, Is he interested in taking over 675?Yes its quite true I would very much like to rent the 675am from Arrow
rock
At a price that is sensible (cheap) big L is also in the running
Caroline as well one would Hope. You could buy a small house for the
cost
Its about £20k per week isn't it for 675? there's every chance I just made that up but I'm sure I read that figure somewhere. I would have thought that cost would rule Big L and Caroline out, but not sure about Nova. Thanks for the info- all interesting stuff. Incidentally Peter Moore was on the Today Programme this morning, (R4) they didn't ask him about the use of 675- I dunno, what's hapened to invesigative journalism?! He did say something that made me chuckle though, talking about the MOA Act coming in 40 years ago, it went something along the lines of 'I'd always thought in a democracy people vote for politicians to do what the people want. The politicians then closed down the pirates so I clearly got that one wrong!'
Regards
Giles.
Richard Sharpe said:
in reply to Trevor Mcilveen saying:
Dont forget Pirate BBC Essex on air from 6am.
................................................
As if we could and from the line up advertised it will be even better than 2004,
I will definitely be going to Harwich on the 14th so i may see some of you there.
Richard
.................................................
Well Richard quickly they seem to be getting an early good response and listeners saying they should stay around!! – now they say watch out for a Special Announcement Tuesday!
Jay BS wrote:
listeners saying they should stay around!! – now they say watch out for
a Special Announcement Tuesday!
Part of its popularity is that it is trying to recreating the sounds of the offshore radio era. It is okay for a week, or maybe two, but after awhile the "novelty" will wear off and people will probably return to their usual radio station(s), probably on FM or DAB.
I reckon, at best, they may do say a weekly programme from the Essex studios (too expensive to keep a boat out at sea!), similar to Pirate Radio Skues on BBC Eastern Counties (Norfolk).
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Christopher England said:
I stepped by the Radio Nova stream on Friday night. It was very good. A bright mixture of modern up-tempo tunes, a few classics, but a nice mix in touch with today, I thought.
But, sigh. I was wrong. This was obviously a Friday night thing. People in radio have this weird idea that Friday nights must be programmed with up-beat dancing tunes, and so it was only Nova following the same trend and copying everybody else.
I step by Nova again this morning and I could be listening to Gold – except Gold plays a larger rotation of songs and they are not all as predictable as the Nova playlist.
Listening to Nova today is like going to your grand-parents golden anniversary party and just being able to shuffle from foot to foot whilst holding a fish-paste sandwich. Surely Nova was never this bad?
I mean, swaying gently from foot to foot to the predictable and highly overplayed sounds.
It's very sad that the name Nova that apparently used to impress and motivate da yoof of Ireland, is now doing everything it was supposedly set-up to rebel against.
Hey Ho. —
* Christopher England just said that *
............................................................
Chris,
I'm sure you also have been involved in many "test broadcasts" and this is clearly only a "streaming test" – I think it is more the "old anorak attitude" critics that appear with the "Glass Half Empty" attitude that is out dated.
I remember our test broadcast tape at "CITY" and it ended up nothing like the station music format ended up sounding!
So just please give "NOVA" an opportunity to get the stream working and what other platforms may be used, let them move onto using presenters and then let's see and judge what they sound like.
"NOVA" gave us at "CITY" a run for our money and I feel CC is "astute" enough for "NOVA" to move with the times.
John
Well Richard quickly they seem to be getting an early good response and
listeners saying they should stay around!! – now they say watch out for
a Special Announcement Tuesday!
Hi John, Yes i heard that on the Dave Cash show, I wonder it it has anything to do with the ship story on the UK On Air Forum?
Richard
In article <...>, ... (Trevor Mcilveen) wrote:
Dont forget Pirate BBC Essex on air from 6am.
Judging by the frenzy taking place in my inbox, not your average anorak sources either, the next week or so will be very offshore in the media.
Eric
In article <...>, ... (Eric Wiltsher) wrote:
Judging by the frenzy taking place in my inbox, not your average
anorak sources either, the next week or so will be very offshore in
the media.Eric
PS What with Radio4 as well today, then the Chairman called to say he was watching a piece on breakfast TV and we should.......
Pirate BBC Essex will feature on the local BBC news (Look East)at 630 this evening, For those of us outside the area it is on Sky channel 981.
Richard
Richard Sharpe <...> said:
Pirate BBC Essex will feature on the local BBC news (Look East)at 630
this evening, For those of us outside the area it is on Sky channel 981.Richard
Hi Richard,
Just happens to be my day off today so I am enjoying listening to the first day. Looks as though this one is going to be even better than the last time (and that was good) judging by the line up of DJ`s. What with all the speculation about 675Khz and also a boat off Essex we are certainly experiencing a buzz of offshore related activity at the moment. Regards
Andrew
Quoting andrew pearce
Just happens to be my day off today so I am enjoying listening to the
first day. Looks as though this one is going to be even better than the
last time (and that was good) judging by the line up of DJ`s. What with
all the speculation about 675Khz and also a boat off Essex we are
certainly experiencing a buzz of offshore related activity at the
moment.
Isn't today also the 24th anniversary of the first Caroline transmissions from the Ross Revenge on 963Khz?
Regards,
Giles.
gloworm558 . <...> said:
Isn't today also the 24th anniversary of the first Caroline
transmissions from the Ross Revenge on 963Khz?
You are right,On 8th August the Ross Revenge anchored in the Kentish Knock. The next day, a short early morning test was made on 963 Khz. Later on the 9th August the Ross Revenge moved anchorage to the Knock Deep.
Richard
andrew pearce <...> said:
Hi Richard,
Just happens to be my day off today so I am enjoying listening to the
first day. Looks as though this one is going to be even better than the
last time (and that was good) judging by the line up of DJ`s. What with
all the speculation about 675Khz and also a boat off Essex we are
certainly experiencing a buzz of offshore related activity at the
moment.
Hi Andrew, Yes i think it is very good and in my humble opinion the radio event of the year, I am particuly looking forward to the JW show in the evenings and i would imagine it will be as good as i remember and i bet he starts with the old He's In jingle,
As far as i am aware Robbie Dale is not part of it which is a shame as to hear him on the radio again would be great,
With reference to what they are saying on the station about continuing in some form or other and these rumours about a ship which may or may not be owned by Ray Anderson, I dont honestly think they related because the Beeb would not condone presenters on the station talking about anything illegal.
Richard
Trevor Mcilveen <...> said:
Dont forget Pirate BBC Essex on air from 6am.
I already listen to this, but there are rumours that Pirate BBC Essex also transmits op the 1332 kHz AM. Who of you will (shortly) listen to this frequency? Greetings of Nico from Gouda, the Netherlands.
That's pretty radical. At the moment we hear "Gold" on
1.332 which, as I understand it, is a bunch of very
old men playing a load of very old records to a teeny
tiny audience. Whereas if BBC Pirate Essex blocks it
we will hear instead a bunch of very old men playing a
load of very old records to a teeny tiny audience.
Myself, I prefer to listen to 1.395 where I can groove
along to a bunch of very old men playing a load of
very old records to a teeny tiny audience.
--- Q_1_2_3_4_5_6 <...> wrote:I
already listen to this, but there are rumours that
Pirate BBC Essex also transmits op the 1332 kHz AM.
Who of you will (shortly) listen to this frequency?
Greetings of Nico from Gouda, the Netherlands.
Q_1_2_3_4_5_6 <...> said:
Hallo everyone. Both radiostations are still on air this afternoon on
the First of August. It is now really unknown if and when the 675 kHz
will be silent, and on the 1008 kHz "Grootnieuwsradio" can be heard
instead of Radio 10 Gold.
Greetings of Nico from Gouda, the Netherlands.
From the First of August till today nothing is changed on both mentioned frequencies. In a Dutch newsgroup I have read in a certain message that the Dutch Agentschap Telecom (= equal as the English Ofcom) yet must give its permission to GrootNieuwsRadio for to broadcast on the 1008 kHz. It is expected that this permission will granted after a few weeks. Till that time: or Radio 10 Gold will stay on the 1008 kHz, or the 1008 kHz will temporarely be silent till the granting of the license of the 1008 kHz by the Dutch A.T. to GrootNieuwsRadio B.V.
About the 675 kHz of Arrow it is unknown what the futural plans of the owner of Arrow Ad Ossendrijver are about this frequency: to silent it or to change "Arrow AM" into another radiostation, or to sell the license of this frequency to not yet known other radiostations. Greetings of Nico from Gouda, the Netherlands.
Shame Red Sands isn't on, then you could have had one very old man playing a load of very old records to virtually nobody.
The ageing masses must be beside themselves with excitement, still nurse will be around soon to adminster the drugs and confiscate the radio and then we can all have some peace again.
I do think that all these dreary elderly tribute
stations – "Caroline", "Big L", and the ludicrous
notion that there is something piratical about a BBC
outside broadcast cheapen the memory of the real
offshore stations. If in some alternate universe the
pirate stations are still broadcasting from the Essex
coast we can be pretty sure that they won't be
employing the likes of Skues and the rest of the
pensioners, and they certainly won't sound like the
music radio equivalent of "Last of the summer wine".
It pisses me off quite a bit, actually.
--- dimitri konstantine
<...> wrote:Shame Red Sands
isn't on, then you could have had one very old man
playing a load of very old records to virtually
nobody.
The ageing masses must be beside themselves with
excitement, still nurse will be around soon to
adminster the drugs and confiscate the radio and then
we can all have some peace again.
Hi Anorakkers – here's an interesting article that was in todays paper.
--- start ---
Small internet radio stations face being wiped out by a change in the way royalties are calculated. But stay tuned – the fight is far from over.
ROSS Wilson has stopped buying CDs. On that score, he's hardly Robinson Crusoe. But last year, the local rock legend was back to buying 10 albums a month, just like he did in the good old days.
It was Pandora.com that rekindled his enthusiasm. The US-based net radio station encouraged him to discover new music based on an ingenious model called the Music Genome Project, a program that custom-built his own personalised radio station.
Pandora would play him a song based on his own selection criteria and then, depending on whether he thumbed it up or down, gradually finetuned its appreciation of his musical taste. When he heard something he really liked, he'd click on the album cover, learn more about it and often end up buying it there and then. Both as a professional musician and as a consumer, Wilson thought he might just be witnessing a glimmer of the rebirth the music industry so desperately needs.
That was until May 3, when he logged on to find a message from Pandora founder Tim Westergren. "Dear Pandora Visitor," it read, "we are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the US."
"It's a bit of a drag," the Daddy Cool singer says. "For a while it was fantastic. I was hearing all this great new shit! You'd just click on the link to Amazon and it would arrive in the mail a week later.
"I bought more CDs in six months than in the previous three or four years put together. So it was actually very good for business."
But not good enough, apparently, for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Today, Mr Westergren and about 30,000 other US net radio stations are facing drastically revised licensing restraints that, according to US industry analysts, will put 90 per cent of them out of business.
A recent ruling by the US Copyright Royalty Board has meant royalties that Pandora and other net radio stations are required to pay have skyrocketed. And the ruling applies retrospectively from January last year.
Under the ruling, the rate will rise each year until 2010. But Pandora could be gone long before that as Mr Westergren's site and a host of others collapse under the weight of unpaid record label royalties owed to royalty collection agency SoundExchange.
"In the face of those rates, we can't carry on," Mr Westergren says.
Even so, SoundExchange has conceded that companies such as Pandora "aren't likely to be charged immediately".
The effective stay of execution allows time for webcasters to try to push their Internet Radio Equality Act through the US Congress. This would fix royalties at a more affordable level.
Music has two copyright holders. The publisher or composer holds the rights to the lyrics and the melody, while the record label or performer holds the rights to the sound recording.
In the US, radio stations have historically paid royalties for the musical work to the publishers, but not for performance rights. This was a sore point for the record labels, which finally won the right to charge for performance rights over internet radio in 1998.
IN THE rest of the world, radio stations have always paid royalties for performance rights. In Australia, it's usually done through a blanket licence administered by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA).
While scores of Australian radio stations simulcast their content online, there are very few dedicated net radio stations and, so far, no blanket licence is available to them. But all that is about to change.
The PPCA is about to negotiate internet broadcasting fees on behalf of about 650 record labels Australia-wide. "It's very much up in the air," PPCA chairman Stephen Peach says. "Our plan is to offer licences on a relatively nominal basis and then to spend some time to properly look at the sector and develop, in consultation with economists and others, a licence scheme that is fair and equitable for all sides that takes account of the differing business models."
One of the big problems dogging this area is that net radio covers everything from a one-man hobby operation such as as netFM in Sydney to stations that offer personalised playlists such as Pandora to umbrella services such as the US-based Live365, which offers thousands of stations to listeners.
Finding a system to fit all of these models is what the US Copyright Royalty Board has failed to do. Apart from a steadily increasing royalty rate per song/per listener until 2010, the board's recent ruling also approved a minimum charge of $US500 ($A588) per radio station.
This is a disastrous move for stations such as Pandora and Live365. Each time a listener like Ross Wilson creates a personalised "channel" on a station like Pandora – and many listeners have more than one – the station has to pay another $US500.
"One theory is that there is just a misunderstanding about how much money there is in internet radio right now," says a perplexed Mr Westergren. "It's a fast-growing sector in terms of consumers participating but it's not very profitable. Maybe the RIAA thought we were all making a lot of money and hiding it from them."
The other theory he offers is a little more sinister. If stations can't afford the SoundExchange fees, which must be distributed 50/50 between labels and artists, then they can negotiate direct deals with the record labels, which have no legal obligation to share the money with the artist.
Some of the smaller webcasters, such as Kurt Hanson, of US-based Accu-Radio, fear other compromises to this kind of freewheeling deal. The labels would offer cheaper licences, he says, but those could come with a caveat: encroaching control of the stations' playlists.
The widespread distrust of the record companies' motives stems from a single overriding fact: falling CD sales. And it's the reason why record labels are pushing so hard for revenue from play services rather than product sales, according to US radio analyst New Radio Star owner Bob Hamilton.
"SoundExchange brought in a proposal so high and ridiculous believing they'd have to negotiate," he says. "I think they were shocked at what they got."
This might explain why SoundExchange swiftly offered several compromises to the industry in the weeks following its surprising ruling. One extended the conditions of the 2002 Small Webcaster Settlement Act until 2010, which effectively means no increased royalty payments for net stations with revenues under $US1.2 million a year.
SoundExchange also offered to cap per-station fees. But that offer applies only if the stations work to stop listeners recording the music. This would mean stations policing the music they broadcast using encryption or other Digital Rights Management methods.
"It's all about control," says musician Ross Wilson, with the amused resignation of someone who has watched the music business evolve from every conceivable angle over five decades. "It's a power struggle: 'First we let these (technologies) happen, and if they work we'll muscle in on it'."
CERTAINLY, Wilson's big-spending response to the joys of Pandora.com would suggest that SoundExchange, and the Australian music industry, should just butt out of the equation and let net radio steer CD sales back through the roof.
"Net radio is one of the few good things the record industry has going for it," says Accu-Radio's Kurt Hanson. "It's giving airplay to thousands of artists that have never been able to get airplay before."
If only that paid the bills, says the PPCA's Stephen Peach. "The constant refrain is 'We're advertising your music', as though our one and only business line is selling CDs," he says. "I mean, we have let that go, as an industry, a long time ago.
"There is a change going on here. With the Pandora-styled services and the Live365s, there are many people for whom having to buy music is really a bit of an antiquated concept.
"They can actually get the music they want when they want it, practically for free, and in pristine quality."
Mr Peach is tired of being told that record companies are "mired in the past" for attempting to protect CD revenue. He says the industry understands that while net radio may be boosting CD sales, it may also be making them redundant by providing free music. But either way, he is adamant that royalties must be paid.
Mr Peach acknowledges that he is watching the SoundExchange v net radio tussle in the US with keen interest.
And he's not the only one. "The rates that are being asked for are potentially gonna kill an industry before it starts," says Brian Boys, of Yahoo!, Australia's biggest net radio station.
At the other end of the spectrum, Scott Truman has been operating Sydney-based station Net FM as a labour of love for nine years. "It's of great concern because this has the potential to wipe us out overnight."
Pandora's Tim Westergren is equally anxious. "Whatever happens in the US will set something of a precedent for similar frameworks in other countries," he warns. "I hope – and I believe – that once this thing all gets ironed out it will form a template that other countries can follow to take advantage of all the bloodletting that's been done to reach this point."
However, for reborn radio listeners like Ross Wilson, the day Pandora ceased operation in Australia was the day the music died.
– With GUARDIAN
Who listens to the radio?
"Listen to thousands of free online radio stations." That's the invitation from Live365 (www.live365.com), just one of about 30,000 net radio stations operating out of the US alone. "Create your own station" with Yahoo! (music.launch.yahoo.com) or AOL Radio (music.aol.com/radioguide/bb), or learn the joys of "scrobbling" with British-based Last.fm (www.last.fm), which builds a profile of your personal taste with each song you "tag", "love" or "block".
Thousands of conventional radio stations that simulcast their content online are listed at http://www.web-radio.fm, although the number of dead links is an indication of the volatility of associated technical and copyright issues.
In Australia, the field is tiny and nebulous, from the local Yahoo server (au.launch.yahoo.com) and ABC's Dig Radio streams (www.abc.net.au/dig) to virtual hobby operations such as nine-year-old netFM (www.netfm.net) and AABN (www.abbn.fm), which likes to boast that "There are currently five listeners tuned in to this station!"
All options considered, that's probably worth some kind of medal.
