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Renaming A Station- Pros And Cons?

C

Captainfirst

I'm considering a name change for my Live365 station and some format tweaks. Has anyone
out there renamed a station while keeping its basic format? And does anyone have advice
for or against? My total listener hours have totally cratered on me, from 102 in June to only seven hours for the first eight days of July. If anyone here has listened to the station and has input to share, please do. Constructive criticism is always welcomed.
 
I wanted to take a listen, but I can't find your station anywhere. Because I put my first station online March 2011, I don't know everything about making radio (read my topic about my 00s stations; I've got also questions). I'm still in the phase of finding out how making a good station works. But maybe, there are things wrong even I can hear.

Anyway, renaming the station means submitting your station everywhere again. If you are on many sites, it's quite difficult to mail the webmaster that the name of your station name has been changed.

I have personally thought about transforming my 2000s station into a 1997-2006 dance station (in addition to my more successful oldschool dance station), recently. But I don't do that because then, all fuss will start again. It wouldn't have been only a name change, though, but also a chance of the exact m3u adress.

About the cratering of your listening hours: What can be the reason? What happened exactly?
 
I actually did this many many years ago. I had be online for about a year and a half and had gone dark for several months (long story). When I relaunched under a new name and an updated format it took awhile before I got my audience back to pre-dark levels. I wouldn't let this deter you if you think your format tweaks are for the better.

Granted, you may have to change your station listings be sure to do enough co-branding to let your audience know you're "still the same, but different" - meaning imaging announcements like "You enjoyed Sunny 102 before, now enjoy an even bigger music variety right here on Moonlight 101.9" - Letting your audience know will (hopefully) prevent tune-outs if their hear different music or a different station name.
 
If anyone wants to give a listen, this is the link for the station.

http://www.live365.com/stations/5_mile_point

I can not begin to fathom why the listener hours have dropped so far, so fast. The sound quality is good, I've not changed the type of music nor how I present it, essentially the station is the same as it was a month ago. But over the last ten days, the TLH has just absolutely bottomed out. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve the station or how to promote it better, please, feel free to share. As I said before, constructive criticism is always welcomed, and to the two of you who have replied so far, your input is appreciated.
 
O.k., I tuned in, and the first track I heard (Simon & Garfunkel - A little town) is a track in an extremely poor sound quality, even worse than a lot of the mono recorded songs from the 50s/60s/early 70s. I can't imagine that track sounding so bad naturally.

And the track after that sounded a lot better. If you have much tracks in the database with a different sound quality, then I advice you to replace the ones sounding worse than necessary.

Edit: then a long story, and then an organ song??? I don't like TOO strict formats (my own stations are formatted but still quite varied, with at least 950 tracks in the database), but there are limits. And I experienced the story as annoying, was waiting for music. :)

Besides a constantly changing sound quality, I also noticed different sound volumes in the quarter I listened to the station.

Was this quarter representative for the station? Maybe I tuned at a wrong moment.

And do you have a website??? Can help to promote your station!

I don't mean to insult you, btw. :)
 
No offense taken. All the songs are normalized at 88 dB, so sound volume shouldn't be an issue.
As far as sound quality goes, I am always trying to upgrade source material. Most of the tracks I used are either 256k or 320k, ripped from compact disks; as regards the one track you mentioned I'll check it later today and see what the issue might be. I am redoing the website and will advise when finished. Oh, and I've just begun using a software plugin that restores some of the sound problems from clipped and over compressed music, which is a real problem with many remastered tracks, that should up sound quality a bit.

Again, no offense taken. Your criticism was constructive and politely stated. :)
 
I noticed you're on Live365. Hopefully they have gotten better than they were when I was on there (2000 - 2008).

I can't tell if your stream consists of hosted files or a live stream but your audio levels are all over the place. This is guaranteed to drive people away in droves if they have to keep fiddling with the volume. If you're a live stream you'll need a compressor (audio processor) to give you consistent levels. If your stream consists of hosted audio files you would have to apply some sort of audio processing with an audio program (i.e, Audacity, Adobe Audition, etc), save the files and then reload them onto their server. That will give you a more consistent audio level. The other thing is does your normalizing reference peak or rms (average) level? If it makes all your averages around the same that should be fine, otherwise your average level will be hit and miss.

You have quite a bit of popping on your microphone. This may get on some people as well - it detracts from the presentation. A pop screen or foam wind screen will help there.

I only sampled your stream for a short time but noticed the large swing in format. Unless it's done strategically you'll bound to have a lower TSL. When I ran my oldies stream I ran 50's - 70's with a tweak 18 months later with 60's - 80's with the 50's appearing only on the weekends. The big thing was my stream was live so I had total control of the format and with more than 10,000 songs I was able to control how often things repeat. You may want to play with format specific dayparts to see what attracts the best audience. It may be the older 50's sound may not be your niche audience when compared to your 60's - 80's content.
 
Captainfirst said:
No offense taken. All the songs are normalized at 88 dB, so sound volume shouldn't be an issue.
Click to expand...

There are two ways of normalising:
-All in fact with the same amount of decibels, but that you still will hear differences because some tracks are way more overproduced than others. The fuller produced ones will sound louder, even if (in fact) they aren't.
-With - in fact - different decibels, but that they will SOUND all alike. If you don't know about this, and when I hear your station, I'm afraid this is a problem: you can manage that with the program Mp3Gain.

On my own stations, every track has been edited with Mp3gain (92 db). When you take a look in Cooledit or Audacity, the tracks will look totally different from eachother. The fuller produced tracks will have larger peak levels. But every track sóunds like 92 db.
 
Here's an update:

I've taken the whole process apart, step-by-step, rebuilt the air chain, and tested as many times as I can stand to. Though I've no idea where things were falling apart on me, I think I have it all fixed now. I do know one mistake I was making, which was to use "album gain" in MP3Gain instead of "track gain". There can be phasing issues with older recordings as well, so I'm mixing all tracks down to mono, which should help. 56K is going to be the new bit rate for the station, but that's still at 44 khz, so sound quality of the hosted files (I've not yet attempted to stream live) should still be good.

And my microphone...god, my microphone. It needs replacing, I know. Staring at price tags of new ones make me want to cry, though. So, I'm keeping my eyes open for a good used one.

In closing, I once again want to thank everyone who has offered constructive criticism. I've yet to have so much as a single person here be anything but courteous and helpful. I should have a playlist of music only up by the end of the day tomorrow, July 14.
 
Bill DeFelice said:
I noticed you're on Live365. Hopefully they have gotten better than they were when I was on there (2000 - 2008).
Click to expand...
They have. One improvement is you can broadcast at 128K whereas before you could go as high as 64K (And even that is if you were using the antiquated mp3PRO codec which smartphones don't even support in the first place)
If you're a live stream you'll need a compressor (audio processor) to give you consistent levels.
Click to expand...
A simple program called MP3Gain can address this just as easily

BTW, I plan on relaunching both of my OTR stations (One will also include music from the 1930s thru 1950s) as well as launching an Oldies station (1960s thru 1980s) & a relaunching my AC station (1990s thru Today's Hottest Mainstream & Indie Hits) on Live365 but right now with all the uncertainty that's beyond my control & is mostly political, I'm busy working on my TV stations & virtual Drive-In Theater on Livestream until then :)

Cheers :D
 
Pat Cook said:
If you're a live stream you'll need a compressor (audio processor) to give you consistent levels.
Click to expand...
A simple program called MP3Gain can address this just as easily
Click to expand...

It's not the same process nor will it give you the same outcome.

MP3Gain, from how I understand it, simply changes the gain of the audio so that it's level can be referenced and set to a certain value so it will appear as a similar level with other audio files. It doesn't affect the dynamic range of audio that has less audio processing (compression as in audio level processing, not bitrate compression).

If you want your audio to sound like a commercial radio station you'll need to apply audio level conditioning via audio processing (such as compression, leveling, controlled clipping and equalization). MP3Gain from what I can tell will not perform any of those functions so while it may make the audio levels less jarring to the listener it won't have provide the polish that processed audio can.

When I ran my live Oldies webstream on Live365 I started out with two DBX Quantum four band compressors, then graduating to an Aphex FM 2020 MKI which I upgraded to a MKIII and for the last 3 years of the station I moved to a digital Optimod 6200 DAB processor. I was not only able to process the audio for consistency but it allowed me to have a distinct signature sound that others didn't have. There is no reason these same principals could not be applied to a hosted stream with the exception of the time consuming chore of applying audio processing to each individual audio file and saving the updated files.

Pat Cook said:
BTW, I plan on relaunching both of my OTR stations (One will also include music from the 1930s thru 1950s) as well as launching an Oldies station (1960s thru 1980s) & a relaunching my AC station (1990s thru Today's Hottest Mainstream & Indie Hits) on Live365 but right now with all the uncertainty that's beyond my control & is mostly political, I'm busy working on my TV stations & virtual Drive-In Theater on Livestream until then
Click to expand...

Your Livestream TV projects sound interesting, Pat. Can you elaborate?
 
I had the same problem with Live365 many years ago. I used their live
streaming platform before I started sing SAM. It has processing built in
and presets for formats to click and go.

BTW - you talked about growing your audience. Facebook ads worked for
me when I launched. One thing that was killing me on was apps and how
listeners had to subscribe to use them.

I went with loudcaster and got added to Tunein. That app is free for listeners
unless they want to record, then it's a one time fee of 99 cents and they are
in.


Chris
www.radiookc.com
 
ChargeRadio.com became Grey FM Heartland (Christian CHR to Mainstream Country/Christian AC), at which time Grey FM became Grey FM Downtown (name change only). The format change has put Heartland's listenership slightly ahead of Charge, and the name change had no discernable effect on Downtown. One thing that did help is that it did allow us to mention both stations in press releases, which got both stations out there. Grey FM Downtown's listening usually goes up in the summer, not down, so seasonality does have a large effect on people's listening habits.
 
Just an update: I have the first new show finished and will be reactivating the station today or tomorrow. And for the record, I use MP3Gain before processing songs. The sound processing is done with Breakaway's basic version. I can say with certainty that the sound of the station has improved, I spent a lot of time making sure of that.

And time consuming? Whoever said that got it right. Every hour of finished show takes 3-4 hours of work, easily.
 
i don't understand why you do it this way ..OTS audio has software with compression,eq,agc...and more for free..or a better version for less than 100 dollars..and you can stream it live on any number of LIVE streaming servers for free with or without the camera app..been doing it for over two years..sorry i just don't understand ..not dissing you..just curious why more people don't get away from live 365,shoutcast..etc..good luck
 
Captainfirst said:
And my microphone...god, my microphone. It needs replacing, I know. Staring at price tags of new ones make me want to cry, though. So, I'm keeping my eyes open for a good used one.
Click to expand...

I don't know what you are looking for your microphone budget, but you can get a decent Electrovoice for about 150 or less. The model I'm thinking about is the N/D767a. I have one, and it has a decent sound, though the RE20 from Electrovoice is a broadcast standard, but several hundred more. This is my next mic purchase when funds come in. In the meantime, I have several mics I use, from old Groovetube models and also from AT, all condenser mics that sound great. I like the EV 767 for the brighter sound it produces when I need it, and it is dynamic, so no need for phantom power.
 
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