This is a shitty day to make this announcement. Please understand: THIS IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE. I swear. I promise. I’m not kidding, I’m not fucking with you.
First off, so none of you panic: RDA IS NOT GOING OFF THE AIR. Not in the forseeable future, at any rate.
We have good and bad news.
Live365 has had to change its rates based on the rulings regarding copyright and internet streaming royalties. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s way too long to sum up; check here for all the relevant information. This is not Live365′s fault. They’ve fought hard and they’ve done their best on this one; I can’t fault them one single bit. But here’s the lowdown . . . we’ll get to the bad news first.
Up until now, RDA has been able to stream to about 80 individual listeners at a single time. Because of the rate changes, my package was downgraded to 20 listeners at once. And even then, the rate went up from about $34 to $47. Keep in mind, because I’ve been with Live365 from the beginning, I get a 20% discount on my service. Imagine how much this is hurting other broadcasters.
In order to keep a moderate amount of listeners – about 40 simultaneously – I’ve had to move up a tier on the subscription service. The cost from now on for me to broadcast is going to be $67 a month. That’s almost twice as much as before. That is starting to hurt. Combine that with the $15 a month it costs me to keep the website up, it’s nearly the $100 mark monthly for me to broadcast.
I’m having to cancel EVE Online and any other MMO’s I was playing. Fast food just went bye-bye (though that’s probably a good thing). I’m going to have to make other cuts where I can. It sucks, but folks, there it is. There’s just no way around it. Some of you might say, “Well, why don’t you go to another service?” Honestly, no one offers as much as Live365, even at these rates. I’ve looked. The biggest draw of Live365 is that it gives me royalty coverage on what I do. I could go to a basic streaming service somewhere, but in order to play the same stuff I play now, I’d have to shell out upwards of $5000 a year. That’s essentially impossible; RDA comes out of my own pocket. I couldn’t afford that. Even at the higher rate, Live365 is the only sensible solution. My other option would be to only play royalty-free music available out there, and while there’s great stuff, there’s not a lot of choice available.
So what does this mean? It means I’m going to need donations. Even a paltry $50 a month would put me back on solid ground. I hate hitting you up for money, but there it is. And I’m not going to threaten you and say, “I’ll have to stop broadcasting.” I won’t do that. But if worse comes to worse, I may have to throttle back my listeners to around 20 or so. I won’t have any other option. It’s just a matter of being able to pay for all this. I hope you guys can pitch in a little bit, and maybe the good news will be an incentive:
The good news is, Live365 raised my streaming bitrate. In laymen’s terms? RDA can now broadcast in near-CD quality sound, no special software required. You can use the web player, or WinAmp, or iTunes, or whatever. No more having to deal with the MP3pro plugin to get FM quality. All of it, both live and steaming, will sound much clearer and just as good as anything you play from your own MP3 collection at home.
Now, how are we going to offset this? Here’s some things:
Become a VIP listener – At $8.00 a month, you can become a VIP listener on Live365, and when you listen to RDA, you don’t count toward my listener totals. VIP listeners are never blocked from hearing any broadcast, regardless of what many listeners I have currently. I also get a small discount on my fees if you become a VIP listener through one of the ad banners on my player window. In addition, you can use the Live365 radio software, and software that lets you play Live365 through your cell phone. That means you can take RDA on the road. It might not be the best option for you, but it’s an option.
Listener’s Choice Playlists – We tried this before when I put in my fund drive for the backup hard drive, but there was never a feasible way to get it to work. There might be now. I’m going to check the copyright requirements, but it may be possible to give doners something special: your own playlist. It’ll be randomized and such, but you can give me, say, a two-hour window on a given day, and I can program a playlist with stuff you want to hear. I may have to limit it to artists only; specific songs might not be legal under my terms of service. But it’s something I can try to do. It’s something you can take to work, or when you’re not home.
Any other ideas would be appreciated. And no, because of how the royalty structure works and how Live365 has to do things, I can’t solicit my own advertisers.
I don’t have prizes I can give away; I don’t have much material stuff and that would just raise costs. But I can tell you now: I will not make requests for money above operating costs. Anything donated will be for the purpose of keeping RDA on the air. If it covers part of a month, cool; if it covers the whole month, awesome. But it only goes to paying my cost to be on Live365.
I’ve put eight years into this and I ain’t stopping now. Hopefully the improved quality will help encourage more listeners; after all, if it sounds better than some crappy RealAudio stream, then it’s exactly what you want. We had a good night tonight, more listeners than usual. Find more for me. I’ve already been producing new content for RDA in terms of the Crosswire segments. If everyone who listens right now can chip in about $2.00 or so a month, it’ll cover us without a problem.
And finally, fuck the RIAA, fuck the royalties board, and fuck the fucking Congress, all of whom saw fit to charge broadcasters 300 to 1200 percent royalty fees, retroactively. Live365 is millions in the red overnight because of this, hence the rate hike. They’re doing their best. We’ll just have to adapt.
I’ll work on a donation link later this week. HTML coders (this means you, Erica) . . . if I could beg for some help in updating the website to accomidate the changes, I would be very grateful.
Addendum:
Here’s the deal.
If you guys can help me raise $500 over the next few weeks . . . that’ll pay for RDA for a year. Flat. Done. We won’t have to worry about it until next June.
I’m thinking of offering something neat . . . about $30 or so, and you can either phone-in a co-DJ spot with me, or if you feel like coming to Georgia, I’ll put you up for the weekend and you can be on air with me live. The whole night. I’ll let you be in charge of the playlist (within Live365 guidelines, of course), and I’ll let you decide how it goes. It’ll be your night, running the show.
Sound like an idea?
