Hi everyone

when i first began broadcasting at viking radio i think i was full of enthusiasm. Purchasing sam broadcaster, learning to use it professionally. Spending unlimited hours preparing music, jingles. now on itunes, tunes.com and just about everywere theres room to advertise vikingradio. After 7 weeks i only see at least 3-4 listeners. i think we have a pretty good website at vikingradio.net and yet more people visit our website than listen to our radio. Maybe theres too much internet radio to choose from or we need to keep advertising. can anyone offer good sound advice?

ron

What makes your station or Genre unique among the hundreds of other stations that are getting listeners? And quite frankly, it takes YEARS to build an audience and you have been at it for 3 or 4 weeks? I've been at it for 8 years now don't expect immediate results "just because" you opened the doors. It takes time.

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- Rob Oyler, SVS

thanks very much for the good advice. now i understand more and frankly i see alot more work to get there. thanks again DJ cassio

Moved this to general.
The SpacialNet Forum is about the stream hosting stuff offered by spacial.

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Benedikt Bauer - SVS (Spacial Volunteer Support)

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I'll just chime in that it really doesn't take that long to build listeners if you use some simple tactics. I built a very popular radio station in very short order.

First, What are you playing and why? Do you play music or create content for you or for an audience? If you are doing this to create a station that caters to your taste you are unlikely to create a very successful station. Many people seem to think they can just throw their favorite songs on a stream and poof thousands of listeners will show up to listen. This is wrong.

Second, What kind of marketing are you putting into your station? Why should a listener engage with you over someone else? Does your website look professional and does it function for listener engagement. If it is just a simple html website with a forum then you are unlikely to have much success. People want to feel like they are a part of the experience, not separated from it. This problem is killing traditional radio because for a long time it wasn't about the listener's experience, it was about the money.

I built a station that ran a mix of music for over 10 years. It wasn't until I started engineering the station to the listener after 5 years that my traffic and listenership increased 5 or 6 fold in the course of 3 short months. So yes, time is important but only so long as you are evolving your techniques as a broadcaster and marketeer.

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-Jay | Spacial.com

I hope I'm not bursting any bubbles here, but you've pretty much hit the nail right on the knocker. The internet radio space has become very crowded. This is why after eight years I've decided to move from net radio, and currently applying to go terrestrial. My listeners won't have to navigate the dogs breakfast that google has become. But sticking with internet radio, jay above has noted some good pointers to get started, good luck.

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thanks for your reply. I agree the vast number of radio stations certainly makes small radio stations difficult to compete. I have worked in radio at forces radio many years ago. Viking Radio Gold was launched on the 18th May 2012 so i can honestly say i get about 6-7 listeners a day possibly more as this figure is only viewers in realtime as im sure the average listener will listen 10 minutes or so.

Im still hopeful and slowly analysing my playlist. Listening to other stations. Still its very early days.

I have come up with a great idea? Im willing to share this becuase i belive it can work.

Viking radio gold now broadcasts on other radio stations . Call it live link ups and vice versa. i think this should increase the average audience and can only bring publicity. Again i belive that more stations should join up and merge with other stations for 2-3 hours that way this can be a bigger share of the market.

Commercial radio is truly dead . The same music and voice that says "the better music mix" they all say it......Thats why i know internet radio broadcasting is the future and i would say commercial radio are scared of that.

Thats all for now. hope more people will contribute there thoughts on all this

thanks for your reply. I agree the vast number of radio stations certainly makes small radio stations difficult to compete. I have worked in radio at forces radio many years ago. Viking Radio Gold was launched on the 18th May 2012 so i can honestly say i get about 6-7 listeners a day possibly more as this figure is only viewers in realtime as im sure the average listener will listen 10 minutes or so.

Im still hopeful and slowly analysing my playlist. Listening to other stations. Still its very early days.

I have come up with a great idea? Im willing to share this becuase i belive it can work.

Viking radio gold now broadcasts on other radio stations . Call it live link ups and vice versa. i think this should increase the average audience and can only bring publicity. Again i belive that more stations should join up and merge with other stations for 2-3 hours that way this can be a bigger share of the market.

Commercial radio is truly dead . The same music and voice that says "the better music mix" they all say it......Thats why i know internet radio broadcasting is the future and i would say commercial radio are scared of that.

Thats all for now. hope more people will contribute there thoughts on all this.


My website www.vikingradio.net
email info@vikingradio.net

radiowayne notes that if you are getting 3-4 listeners then you are probably doing better than most internet webcasters.

But, then again, he could be wrong.

Wayne G. aka radiowayne

thanks for your message. im trying extra hard to make a better website. i think thats best start efore they even listen to the station. On a good day i can get 3-4 listeners . Weekends can give me 7 listeners for 2-3 hours then back to 2-3., Will give more updates as i go on with this great project.

i was speaking to a bbc guy and he admitted commercial radio and bbc dont really cater for the bigger audience. He told me its all down to money and red tape from above. Radio as it wAS in the 70s 80s as gone . lets hope that internet radio will get this break and get more freedom of choice on medium wave. After all the bandwidth on medium wave is empty so hope one day the government will bring this to change. Internet radio deserves a new home

ron

vikingradio.net
info@vikingradio.net

On my site i am to place a balot box for changes to internet radio hope u all agree

I agree! 6-7 listeners a day since May and you posted that in June. You basically started off on a great level. Now take what you did to get those 6-7 listeners and expand your marketing. Anywhere and everywhere you can put your station on some site that will be crawled with SE Bots, tag it!

Yes the internet radio space is very crowded now. EVERYONE is doing it. it's no longer a special venture, as it was say 10 years ago.
The basic thing to remember is be different and make your station sound as professional as possible. There are too many station doing the same thing and sounding alike. With the exception of the name of the station.
There are too many so-called broadcasters throwing music into a folder, and making their stations juke boxes, with no personal input. Like Pandora and all these other fake radio sites.
The majority of listeners will go for that set up. Because they are @ work and/or rip the stream to put on their ipods.
Only true, quality broadcasters who put real emphasis on their stations, will have some time, pulling together a huge listener base, because it is different.
Remember, it takes time, and the MORE TIME you put into your station, the better you will get. There is no overnight pill.
You can ask those stations who pull in thousands of listeners if they can pull a donation out of those thousands of listeners, and you will get a big fat no. Don't be fooled and in a hurry to get 1000-2500 listeners so fast.

The best thing I can give you, is to find a genre and work it. Stick to it like a leech! Understand the people who listen to your station. Find out why they are listening. Don't stray too much unless that's the kind of thing you like. In that case, you'll have a very SMALL window to work with. Concentrate on how LONG they stay tuned in. Not how many click listen. Once you understand what they like, PROGRAM the hell out of it and build on that.

Play what people know and find a way to slip in some different stuff. Everything in between is up to you.
You know your music, and I know that to be successful, one has to know the music in which they are playing. Doing what the next station does will not work.

If you plan on making money in the long run, you'll need to be some kind of different. People remember the stations that stand out. Don't just be another preset that can be turned off for the next station. Don't name your station anything FM or with a frequency. You are not terrestrial. Those listeners are not dedicated.

Be different, put 65% of your time into your station, and be patient. And remember, you don't need 1000 listeners to be a great station.

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While we do have an "Auto DJ", "he" tends to not get alot of listeners, when we have a "LIVE" DJ on the air, that is usually when we get our listeners. Mostly our followers for the past 7 years, and some new ones float on in from iTunes and such.

But in the day time with no live DJ, just music, its pretty dead. When the weekend hits, Friday & Saturday, its pretty lively and jumping with listeners and requests.

Everyone's different, if you try to copy someone else, it just makes you look bad, so you can only be unique to you and your listeners, if they like what they "see" and hear, they will come back again and revisit. Eventually you will get some "regulars" that will be there all the time.

Some usually say, the best type of advertising is "Word of mouth". Its Free and it helps bring in the listeners.

And as for what Jay said..



(What kind of engineering would that be?) (listens real carefully) (snicker)

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Mark L. - SVS (Spacial Volunteer Support)
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DJ Fire - CEO
http://www.crossfire-radio.com