FA New Year’s Eve Dance Party

Join us on New Year’s Eve starting at 8pm (ET) for our annual Flashback Alternatives New Year’s Eve Dance Party!

Eight hours of Classic Alternative Dance Music brought to you by your favorite Flashback Alternative DJ’s plus a few guest DJ surprises!

All shows will repeat on New Year’s Day!

That’s the FA New Year’s Eve Dance Party – Starting at 8:00pm ET on Thursday, 12/31!

#fa-news, #flashback-alternatives-2, #new-years-eve-dance-party

FA News – December 29, 2015

Radionomy Migration

Our migration over to Radionomy is just about complete.  We have requests in to convert our iTunes and Tunein.com links to point to our Radionomy stream.  I am hopeful these changes will be made in the next day or two.

If you normally tune in to Flashback Alternatives via iTunes and Tunein please visit the flashbackalternatives.com website to tune in.  You can also tune in directly using the following links:

Winamp/iTunes/Other Players:

http://listen.radionomy.com/flashbackalternatives.m3u

Windows Media Player:

http://listen.radionomy.com/flashbackalternatives.asx

Our Radionomy Station page (has built in player):

http://listen.radionomy.com/flashbackalternatives

I encourage everyone to use the Radionomy streams as soon as possible.  The sooner we reach an average of 130 listening hours per day, the sooner the 64kb AAC+ stream will become available to us.   130 listening hour per day is a fraction of the number of listening hours per day we normally average.

Live365 Update

With only a few days left until major changes come to Live365, Live365 has been very silent.  There have been no public announcements about the future of Live365.  (Update: Live365 Press Release) From what has been posted in the Live365 Broadcaster forums by other broadcasters, starting on January 1, 2016 at 3am (ET) / December 31, 2015 at Midnight (PT) all stations will be moved to their Pro platform.

Their Pro platform is not very cost effective – Prices start at $39.95 per month on a one year contact.  That price only includes 1000 free listening streaming hours.   We use considerably more than that each month.  Even their top tier Pro package at $199 per month wouldn’t include enough free hours.   If we continued with Live365 we would be looking at a monthly bill in excess of $1000 per month at our current listening rates.

The other option with Live365 is to limit the number of free listening slots and have listeners subscribe to the Live365 VIP program ($5.95 per month / $59.95 per year).  At the $39.95 Pro Package that would mean we could offer one free listener slot – essentially requiring anyone who wanted to listen to purchase a VIP subscription.  Depending on how Live365 handles the transition, we may continue to broadcast to Live365 but in VIP mode only.  They would have to allow stations to continue to broadcast Live (as Flashback Alternatives has done pretty much since day one) in VIP mode for us to consider staying.   The likelihood of that happening is small.

Live365 has been a major player in internet radio since its infancy and it is sad to see things have to end this way.

To that end, please consider signing the below petition that is attempting to bring attention to the situation small and hobbyist are now facing:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/opposition-to-copyright-royalty-boards-decision-on-hr-1733.html

Your support is appreciated!

Thanks

DJ Ed

#crb, #fa-news, #flashback-alternatives-2, #live365, #radionomy, #small-webcasters-agreement

FA News – December 20, 2015

Happy Holidays!

Last week the new webcasting licensing rates were released by the CRB.  While they were favorable to the larger webcasters, such as Pandora, they were not as favorable to smaller operations, such as Live365 – which is the service Flashback Alternatives uses to broadcast.

Of equal importance to the webcast rates is the renewal of the Small Webcaster Agreement.  This is a separate agreement offered by SoundExchange that makes webcasting affordable for Small / Hobbyist Webcasters.  This is a key foundation to the broadcast package Flashback Alternatives is part of on Live365.  This agreement expires on 12/31/15.

According to various sources, on Monday, 12/21/15, SoundExchange is going to make an announcement on the fate of the SWA.   Without the SWA many internet radio stations will go silent as they will not be able to afford to broadcast.

Small Webcasters are an important part of radio as they serve niche musical tastes that aren’t accommodated by the larger players.   They also are important to artists who may not get airtime anywhere else.  Small / hobbyist webcasters broadcast for the love of the music – not to make money.  In many cases small/hobbyist broadcasters spend more to run their operations than what they may receive in the form of listener contributions.  This is not a business for us – and hopefully SoundExchange continues to recognize that by renewing the SWA.

You can follow along with what is going on with the process on R.A.I.N.

With that said, I am actively looking at other options, and I have identified two that should work for Flashback Alternatives.  In both cases some advertising would need to be inserted into the stream (2 – 2 min blocks), and some modifications would need to be made to the specialty shows to accommodate this requirement.  Other than that and a few changes to the listen links, we should be able to continue to broadcast as is regardless whether the SWA is renewed.

I will update everyone as soon as I have more news.

As always, thanks for listening to Flashback Alternatives!

DJ Ed

 

 

#crb, #fa-news, #flashback-alternatives-2, #live365, #rain, #small-webcasters-agreement, #soundexchange, #swa