Topic: FM & Online Radio Station Fundraiser Campaign || Listen Online Now! (Read 1755 times)

I also just updated the original post with both links.  The goo.gl one is simply to help some basic analytics of where traffic is coming from, etc.. nothing more than that.

It comes from Shoutcast, it's a .pls file.  I have already posted about it just above your post for some reason some A/V programs think it's a virus.  

Direct link to server: http://69.174.154.253:8010/

Shoutcast Link: http://www.shoutcast.com/Search?query=Spaced%20Out%20Radio

I have to ask what is that link to.  It downloaded some sort of file onto my system and then it was flagged by my virus software that it was bad.  I do not recognize the file it downloaded, so I will not open it until you clarify what it is.

Anyone had a chance to listen to the stream yet? Suggestions on music to be added?  Dj's wanting to be on the air?  Anything?

Still looking for advertisers so we can build funds to get better equipment and expand!


goo.gl/cDV8ni will take you to the direct source to stream the channel.  It's from Shoutcast.com  -- I've had one person say that Bit Defender said it was a trojan, please feel free to visit Shoutcast.com by yourself and search for "Spaced Out Radio" and you can stream directly from there, or download the .pls stream file. 

Short link updated to take you directly to stream! http://goo.gl/cDV8ni

Sorry about that.  Updated all other links for the stream.

Also I have updated the first post to show the link to our Shoutcast.com link.  Please click and listen!

If you're a DJ interested in joining us, please send me a PM with some information about yourself and what kind of content you might be interested in delivering and I'll talk with you about opening a spot!

I would definitely love to have some tech talk/interviews and such from members of the Bitcoin community!    (Yes, if you're a DJ and you're sponsored in someway by someone you can throw out their names during your session.  Just don't become overbearing with promotions.)

Likewise, if you'd like to advertise on our station, please let me know and I'd be happy to negotiate a price for advertisement placements!

Well, I have a station up right now running from my home connection, so please bare with the connection it's not 1Gbps upstream

http://goo.gl/cDV8ni

Takes you right to shoutcast to listen!

So, I've setup a spot in my garage, have put up insulation and some not the best insulator, but at least it helps with a smaller area of keeping heat in as it gets very cold this time of year.  People wanted some updates, so here is the current setup so far for my station.

It's nothing spectacular but it's a start to the final work area.



Once I clean it up some more, I have a nice large area rug that will be placed in there as well for local bands to play, but as of currently it is capable of sitting two people in there very comfortably!

It may not seem like a lot, but I've had to run power, network cable, insulate the garage and setup a small work area to keep warm in.  The left window you see, is where I would put the antenna mast as there is trees covering around and my antenna would pop up just above those tall trees, so would be very hard to find/catch the antenna.

Also posted on my Google+

https://goo.gl/YYceDJ

I think if we can get the server paid for, for a year ~$600 in BTC that would definitely get us some traction.  Though, I'd still like to broadcast over the FM to those who don't have the ability to listen via the internet.

Please everyone, I need your help, online radio needs you help, Bitcoin needs your help, those who DJ would appreciate the help since they will be allowed to DJ.  It's a win-win all over the board!

Still looking for help with this!  

https://www.databasebydesignllc.com/dedicated_server_hosting_complex_dedicated_hosting_solutions_and_virtual_server_hosting.html

That is a good company I know of that has a nice $25/mo plan with PLENTY to offer.  If someone would be willing to pick this up, I'd get it started as soon as it's operational and be sure to advertise for you too.

Does that make sense?  About bridging the gap of allowing streaming and FM at the same time with the same content?

I would need a server to do online streaming, which getting that can cost a lot of money going through a traditional provider, though, if I get a server that I can install say CentOS on, I could simply install my own streaming service for the price of a VPS or a dedicated system.  So, that's why I put in there a dedicated server that provided enough bandwidth.

If someone is willing to chip in on a VPS with enough bandwidth and at least a few GB of memory I could at least get the streaming up and running and always expand on the FM as I gain an audience.

I would highly disagree with you about radio being dead.  Especially in the format I plan on doing it in.  It allows you to listen to it on a FM radio along with that as well letting that same transmission be online as well.  It's covering both aspects with the same material.  

Here's just one link about radio (FM) that shows you that radio is not dead and is doing quite well.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2015/08/13/no-radio-isnt-dead-in-fact-its-doing-better-than-ever/

I think the problem with current FM stations is this practice of having an FM only so when you're in a car listening to the radio it's free, no data plan is required and when you do get done driving you can just tune right it with a data plan or at work or home and continue to listen.  I'm bridging the gap not re-inventing the wheel.  There is something to say with re-innovation of a current technology adapted to the digital world and embracing the best of both worlds.

I know you can have bluetooth in your car, but not everyone drives a car with bluetooth already built into the car or their CD players don't accept input jacks and buying equipment to stream music over an FM band costs money, etc..

I guess my response is that I see it as not re-inventing the wheel but as I've said bringing the gap of FM and Online broadcasting together.

Thanks for your input!

I have seen the post recommendation in a prior post and I have not seen an answer, so I will rephrase; Why are you not trying to stream online to boast this up?  I understand what you are trying to do, but you have to realize that the FM Radio is dying.  I personally have not listened to FM radio in over 3 years, since I got a Bluetooth device for my car and there are many others like me.  Try what is working now, streaming, and do not try to reinvent the wheel. 

You can also help up out by joining in on the Reddit conversation to gain interest outside of Bitcointalk here: https://redd.it/3uxl48

Even if you cannot help financially, help spread the information and let's get this rolling! I'd love to get us on the airwaves and online.

No company is interested in helping out?  You'd definitely be advertised and knowing that tech is in Detroit and having a way to spend Bitcoin is possible I thought by now I'd have some takers on this. 

Is the amount too much, should I go for one item at a time?

You guys let me know, I need feedback at the very least.  Just trying to make this all happen and be successful doing it.

Could really use the help from members of the community on this project.  Please also know I want to hear your thoughts and feedback about what it is exactly that we want to do with this.  I have MY own ideas from what I've taken in from talking to other people, but I most certainly would like to know your thoughts whether or not you donate.

Let's talk about this!

If 1,100 people donated 0.005 BTC to this, we could order the dedicated server along with the FM transmitter!


1L2frNMNH6rJCTJ7vRszEA2aepPpXgME57  <-- That address goes towards the fundraiser.

Still looking for some contributors.

Really just a few solid investors and we'll be rocking out in no time! 

That would be correct as well as a website and such.

Sounds like an interesting project you are doing.  I would be glad to keep reading on the updates as they come along.  Which will be the main form of music you will be entertaining us all with??  Good luck.

Okay so I've updated the original post, so it would include hardware equipment along with dedicated server hosting with plenty of bandwidth traffic and will allow us to run the shoutcast server to allow DJ's to login.  The hardware is approx $1,100, the dedicated server is $600/yr and to get miscellaneous items for a taller mast and cabling I added another $300 for things such as lightening arrestors for the antenna and equipment and any other things I might of missed.

That is a very good idea!

Thanks for your input.  I welcome them all!

Something that might gain interest in your radio station is partnering with streamers on websites such as twitch.tv or other sites. Assuming you also have a counterpart online streaming service, and since the overhead costs of the radio station will be lower than "legit" radio stations, you can manage to run fewer ads, causing more people to utilize your service, in turn creating more advertising revenue.

I'm tired and just writing stuff at this point, so you should probably take it with a grain of salt. But if you see anything stick out, feel free to use it.

The 80 watt 2U transmitter





The inputs into transmitter





The 1/2 wavelength FM antenna

Yes that has already been brought up..  Just because it may be easier for most people, or "better" doesn't mean it's a horrible idea doing both at the same time.  Both FM and Online Streaming Radio.

Gives a lot more flexibility and more people, regardless of what you might think do listen to the radio when they're in their cars, driving.

Having a lot less advertisements then regular radio is good.  People want to listen to music.  Having advertisements every now and again for a brief period of time is much better than after every other song for ten minutes.

Sorry, but this human doesn't always choose the path of least resistance and go the easiest route...  I'll have a larger listener base faster with FM than online, guaranteed.  But with both, who knows!

Thanks for your input however.

much better and much easier is Online Radio

Target market is both FM and as well as online broadcasting.  I'm not looking to profit to make a living from this as much as I'm more doing this for a chance to fill a gap of horrible music in the area and the constant playing of the 'Top 10' non-stop.  There is a demand for EDM, House, 90's Alternative, Tech Talk, etc..

I'm looking at acquiring the additional equipment to be able to go FM and take the online presence and allow for streaming online and to allow DJ's among the community to have a chance and patch directly into the stream and also the FM station.  That being said, being an FM presence there needs to be radio appropriate talk.  I wouldn't mind lowering the price; again I'm not a professional who does this for a living so I'm giving prices off the cuff..

I know that getting a professional transmitter and the 1/2 wave antenna will cost ~$1,000 -- most of the other equipment I already have.  So I'm open to having lower price points and being flexible with advertising space for the people who want to donate either for advertising space or to advertise for the sake of the idea. 

I'm by no means an expert FM radio DJ, just have a lot of experience in the wireless technologies and have a lot of insight to the music industry around here since being close to the Michigan area scene there are a lot of good local artists that would love to have a chance to spotlight to a potential large listener base on the radio as well as online.  While also playing music that is professional and better or well known artists.

I hope that answers more of your questions!

What is your target market?  I am also not understanding whether or not you are going to be transmitting online in addition to general radio.  Depending on the people you will be reaching will determine whether or not you will be able to profit from national advertising campaigns.  Also, this is radio, not television, cut down the advertising clip time and lower your price.  I can spend $5 and get mentioned a local radio station for an entire week 5 times a day. 

Well, I was going through some metal at a friends house.  He actually has some mounting brackets for 2" OD piping.  He also has a 20' mast that would sit on top of a 20 foot tall structure allowing the base to sit 40' above the ground along with the antenna which adds an additional 7 or 8' in height.  Giving it close to 50'.  I've already picked those up and will begin installation of the mast and making sure it's level.

The cable that comes with this transmitter is 60 feet from the base of the antenna so that will give me enough extra cable to run it down and inside the building and into the transmitter.

I've also raided some other gear from friends on used mixers and microphones and such that would allow multiple inputs.

So now it's just a matter of getting the transmitter and the antenna for the radio station.  I should be able to get about 35-40 miles with that height and the open channel availability we have on the upper end spectrum and also the choice of lower end spectrum as well.

Even more interesting there are pine trees that are so tall that you cannot see the antenna  even at that height from the ground without trespassing on my property where the antenna would be located.  The antenna is very small its a 1/2 wave antenna so there's not much to see that is a crazy setup or tower to give it away.  The transmitters I'm looking at fall into the FCC part 15 compliance so it seems they're made of quality construction and not broadcasting outside of that spectrum that the transmitter and antenna are setup to transmit on.

It'd be really awesome to get this going.   I am really begging at this point for some help!  I found an 80 Watt w/ Antenna for ~$1,000 which currently is 2.75 BTC so with a few people and a setup for advertising platform or potential payback with donations I think there is a great opportunity here. 

Interested?  Why not join in with me/us and help fund us!  We will be sure to give you advertising rights or allow pre-recorded / live broadcasts to the community that I'd be broadcasting to which is about 150k people on top of the online presence using Shoutcast.

Let's get together and do this!

Anyone want to help with this project?  I'll definitely give shout outs and if the station makes income in BTC I'll be happy to pay people back too.  I'm very pumped about this idea, and I think it has a lot of potential!

I hope someone is interested in this project as much as I am.  Any donation amount helps, it all will collectively add up to getting even a 25 watt transmitter.  I'd really appreciate the donations and again, if you have a website or something I'd be very happy to advertise it.

Maybe I should setup a reference to perhaps how much in donations explains how often your advertisement would run?

Maybe I'll setup a template for FM & online radio streaming advertisements which will be the same programming except the online stream would be a few seconds to a maybe a minute behind the FM broadcast.

So perhaps something like this?

BTC 0.05 would give you a 30 second advertisement slot 4 times a day.
BTC 0.10 would give you a 30 second advertisement slot 6 times a day.
BTC 0.25 would give you a 30 second advertisement slot 8 times a day.
BTC 0.50 would give you a 30-45 second advertisement slot 10 times a day.
BTC 0.75 would give you a 30-45 second advertisement slot 12 times a day.
BTC 1.00 would give you a full 60-90 second advertisement once per hour.

This would be a beginning template for advertisement that would run for each month?

I'm not sure exactly, but I'd like to offer something in return to anyone who is interested in helping with the idea and project!

Once this is up, if you'd like to DJ for the station I'd definitely be interested in having people have time slots available.  You will simply be able to stream through the out of country server into the FM feed/online station for experience and you'd be able to advertise a link to your Bitcoin address or something to try and bring revenue in for yourself.

Music, Interviews, Podcasts, etc.. I'd like to experiment with the whole layout and design of the show to see what's successful and what's not.  But keep it Bitcoin or technology related for sure and possibly have an off-topic every now and again.

Open to ideas and suggestions!

Yeah, I'm not sure either.  I don't have the extra income with holiday seasons coming up to afford it along with other expenses to live... which is why I'm asking for donations with advertising for those who want to... But I'm definitely willing to give it a solid try and have been building up radio edit music so if FCC is listening there is a less of a chance of them getting upset.  That's what I've noticed from the other pirate radio station is that they keep it clean.

Just trying to think outside the box, do something proactive for Bitcoin at the same time do something I've always wanted to do which is operate an FM station as it is an interest of mine since I have a lot of experience in wireless technology along with building custom antennas for 2.4 GHz antennas, such as a biquad antennas, yagi, biquad yagi's, parabolic dish antennas, high gain omni-directional, etc.. etc..

The whole wireless technology I'm always interested in and the FM part has always been an interest/hobby I'd like to actually delve into a bit more.

Thanks for the hopes or whatever  

Interesting, but I'm not sure how effectively it would play out. I hope it works out for you though.

25 Watt - $320
50 Watt - $735
150 Watt - $1,276.00

Though, I'm not expecting help with a huge transmitter that cost that much.. but perhaps if I get some people interested in this in helping me get a 25 watt for $320 and it shows good promise, always expand later on down the road.

Any amount to help the cause helps!

Thanks everyone in advance.


EDIT: There is also another pirate station around here too, which I would not be impeding on, and he/she has been operating it for almost 5 years now.

Also $320 is the price needed to get the transmitter and antenna, unless I wanted to move to the 50 watt or 150 watt.  150 watt would be the most I'd be interested in doing since the antenna can go to 100 watt and wouldn't paint a huge bulls eye on my location by have this antenna mounted outside.

The power used for the radio is 72 watts, the netbook that will be running the operation will maybe put us up to a few hundred watts.  So the cost to run the operation will not be anything too much and the server to stream the radio station I can pay for by myself eventually.

So I'd be doing both FM and online streaming from a out of country server.  I could see this not working if you have a lot of congestion on the FM channels.   However, I know of some channels perfect for this and have the genre of music that would attract listeners.   There has been a demand for better rock music along with some house music.  It would be tailored to my audience from the feedback I have received from a lot of people in my area in general chit-chat that wouldn't expose myself.

I'm not a professional by ANY means but I have a good understanding of wireless technologies along with figuring out FM transmission.   There's a good chance I'll have to replace the coax that comes with this GP antenna however, it seems to be a decent antenna for the price point that is worth doing some simple modifications to minimize the loss and possibly increase the range a few more miles if possible.

I'm always open to suggestions in terms of FM transmission and even looking down the line possibly even having a stream from other DJ's here in the community that I can patch in from the internet into the feed so it's just not me and we all can take turns!

I just think Bitcoin needs a place to have constant good advertising to a good potential of a population of about 100-150k people (would have to take a drive after installation and really see how far it gets out) but with the open channels I always have a chance to make something of this. 

We started on a project like this years ago and ended up doing online radio.  It was just better and easier and had lower costs in the long run.

Also this is a 25 Watt transmitter with a 3.3dBi 1/4 wave general purpose FM antenna that will be used on it's center frequency band that it can be adjusted for.

Everyone has radios in their cars not everyone listens to online radio streams.  I'm looking at it as an opportunity because everyone (more often than not) have FM receivers in their car and I have a better chance at catching that audience than to advertise over and over for online.

Though, I have the capacity to eventually take that FM transmission and divert it to a server out of the US which I can then share the stream link which may be a few seconds behind because of the latency.. but everyone could then listen to it from a server located out of country..

Why don't you simply stream online, instead of risking getting busted and paying fines?

Update:

So, I've setup a fundraiser for the following:

FM Transmitter
Antenna
Cabling
Mixer
Mast
Dedicated Server for Online Streaming Radio (same content as what plays on FM) -- Pay in full for 1 year
Domain Name

The population where I live is near Detroit, Michigan and there's a good 150-200k people who would love to have a FM radio station who plays different types of music and have the tech talk too.  The scene out here is very versatile and having a nice range of music and talk shows would be huge in this area as well as the online audience too.





Adaryian