 First off, let me say how good it feels to be back home writing for SP Radio! I've come a long way since 2012 and have done so much...it's hard to keep up with, sometimes! Everything used to emanate from this web space, now I have a radio site, a news site, a site about me and a site for my books. That'll make your head spin and keeps mine on a swivel...yet, here I am. I'm back in the radio space because I had to start all over again! Yep, you heard that right..I had to start ALL OVER AGAIN! Following a dispute with my stream host, my station was deleted from their server with no backup! Yep, five years of service with a stream host gone in mere seconds! I wouldn't have known had I not seen the message come through on my phone as I was walking through my bedroom. I glanced at it and went into immediate panic! I logged in and everything was gone as if it was never there! I couldn't believe it...to top it off, this is how I spent the first moments of my 38th birthday...chasing the ghost of my station! Because the hosting company is in England, I was able to reach out to them before going to bed. As it turns out, they didn't like the way I handled my gripe about an ongoing billing issue! In fact, they hated it so much that they deleted my station "per my request" in the email. Oh, and did I mention that the stream that powered my app was also lost when my station was deleted. I would have to completely rebuild the app to replace what I had. Remember when I told artists to make sure that their songs were tagged when I got them? Well, as a professional courtesy, I tagged the music to make sure that they got royalty payments for when the song played but that is gone, too! As I reload all this wonderful music, there's a great deal that many of the songs won't make the cut because frankly, I don't want to do that again! Even worse, there are so many songs in the library that come in without cover art...we're not running a sham operation here and I cringe each time I see a song play without cover art...yuck! The problems were many and I'm still wading through about eight years of submissions that I'll decided whether they make it to the "new" station. To prevent this from happening again, I'm going to save all my playlists regularly...that would have been a snap to rebuild the station playlist by playlist instead of song by song. This is like individually planting seeds for a Chia Pet...painstaking and somewhat an exercise in futility! I feel defeated, but I've got work to do! Lord knows I wanted to punch somebody but there was nobody to blame but myself! The first lesson of my 38th year alive was one that I have long grappled with...my words have power. It's not like the old "watch what you say" kind of stuff...for some reason, when I voice my disdain or call something/someone out, it gets the worse reaction out of people. I don't know why but I'm trying to harness the power of my words so I don't lose anything else... So yeah, day one of 38 was sitting stuck at the computer trying to wrap my head around exactly how I would proceed. I even prayed and asked the Lord about quitting...it was perfect! There was nothing left to do except spend my energy on something else. There was nothing to shut down, nothing to delete, nothing to email and stop...it was all gone within minutes. That was, until I thought the people whose shows run each week on the station and the wonderful people that choose to listen. I thought about all of you and decided to build...AGAIN!
See the first picture? This was the happiest time of broadcasting, I was in the running for Internet Radio Station of the Year and thanks to all of your support, we made it to the final preliminary round. You see that second picture? That was the same year...I actually won the Prayzefactor Broadcaster of the Year Award. So, there's a lot that goes into the work I do at SP Radio and I can't let it be erased. Not for me...not for you! This work is not for naught! I see it each week when broadcasters from all over and from all experience levels make sure I have their shows in time to air for you! I can't let you down and I won't! That being said, I picked up and song by song, playlist by playlist, I began to rebuild. I wasn't completely satisfied with the other options out there and in a matter of a few weeks, I tried more than a few. I wasn't happy so I did some sleuthing and found a stream host I'm satisfied with enough to call home (again)! We're back up and running fully...some of my favorite tracks are not even on my hard drives and I'll have to spend the time to re-upload them, but that's ok. It's all part of the goodness of this journey. The rebuild was a good time to re-brand, too. Not a complete re-brand but to switch things up a little...no more hanging out in the middle of the pack. We're rewarding our listeners with an even better experience than before! It's been a challenging month of changes and truth be told, we're not completely back to where we were before we lost our station, but we learned so much more about hosting since August 13th and we're in a much better place of programming because of it. So...tell everybody you know that we're new and improved! SP Radio JAMZ is here for the long haul and we're playing all the music you love!
Got new music we need to hear? Send it to: submissions@spradioshow.com. |
MusingMusicianIn this blog, you will hear from Fred directly about a broad variety of subjects. Though Fred normally expresses his thoughts in his columns, he has created this space to share his most intimate thoughts concerning everyday life! Archives
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