Totally FREE WEB based Radio Station Playlist for Unsigned bands.

So, a few months ago, we set up a web based radio station called RadioUn dotcom.

It's aims were simple;
To provide a FREE worldwide platform for new musical talent to get their music heard.
To provide the listening public with a FREE source of original new music before anyone else had heard it,
and To provide a FREE one-stop-shop for music publishers, promoters, venues, management etc to hear the latest new unsigned talent, and to get in touch with them DIRECTLY if they wished to do so.

Well, our first year is nearly up, and it's decision time.
Do we keep it going or not?

It has cost us several hundred pounds to set up and run.
We don't make (or seek to make) ANY money from this whatsoever.
We don't charge bands, fans or the music industry anything to use our services.
We are musicians ourselves, and thought that we had hit upon a GREAT way of providing a "leg up" to new unsigned talent who wanted to showcase their work. But take-up has been disappointing, despite reasonably good PR, and a double page centre spread in a national newspaper in Scotland. (Thank you - Evening Times!)

So why haven't more people used our service?
Why haven't YOU used our service?
Tell us! Because I am baffled!!

We have to decide in the next couple of weeks whether to persevere or call it a day.
What say YOU?
Let us know!

Many Thanks,
Gordi The Drummer
(Gordi Smith, RadioUn)

originally posted by: Gordi The Drummer
So, a few months ago, we set up a web based radio station called RadioUn dotcom.

It's aims were simple;
To provide a FREE worldwide platform for new musical talent to get their music heard.
To provide the listening public with a FREE source of original new music before anyone else had heard it,
and To provide a FREE one-stop-shop for music publishers, promoters, venues, management etc to hear the latest new unsigned talent, and to get in touch with them DIRECTLY if they wished to do so.

Well, our first year is nearly up, and it's decision time.
Do we keep it going or not?

It has cost us several hundred pounds to set up and run.
We don't make (or seek to make) ANY money from this whatsoever.
We don't charge bands, fans or the music industry anything to use our services.
We are musicians ourselves, and thought that we had hit upon a GREAT way of providing a "leg up" to new unsigned talent who wanted to showcase their work. But take-up has been disappointing, despite reasonably good PR, and a double page centre spread in a national newspaper in Scotland. (Thank you - Evening Times!)

So why haven't more people used our service?
Why haven't YOU used our service?
Tell us! Because I am baffled!!

We have to decide in the next couple of weeks whether to persevere or call it a day.
What say YOU?
Let us know!

Many Thanks,
Gordi The Drummer
(Gordi Smith, RadioUn)

Definitely keep it!, I had no idea such a thing existed, and now I read whether or not you should call it a day or preserve it! Keep going strong, GoodLuck!!

I take it being a web based radio station it is available globally?
That being the case I will let the musos I know here in Australia that it is available.
Def keep this going imo.
S&F

a reply to: Gordi The Drummer

Awesome! Keep it! I have never heard of this site, but i just sent the link off to a few friends that are in a band, and that know a few unsigned musicians/bands. This is great! Thanks for posting!

Cool site! Is there a RadioUn Twitter account? if so I would happily follow and help promote it via Retweets and the like. I'm not on Facebook, but a lot of people are obviously. I would at least try to promote the site with the free, popular social media before I throw in the towel. Link them to your site and vice versa.

a reply to: Compressor35

Hi, we're not on twitter, but we have promoted it among our associates on facebook and the likes.
Can't for the life of me figure out why it hasn't gone massive!

Thanks for the encouraging words anyway!

Gordi

a reply to: keenasbro

It is indeed available globally, and we are happy to host unsigned talent from ANYWHERE!
regards,
Gordi

a reply to: Gordi The Drummer

Keep it going! What is the link? I'll send you tracks to play!
I also think you should get a twitter account - you can reach a lot of people that way. More so than Facebook.

Edit: Okay, duh, I see your link. I'll send you some tracks to use soon!

What you gong there is a great idea...

Please add links to your station and how to access it....

Is the link there but I am missing it?

I have unsigned bands and solo musicians that have recordings and would gladly send you tracks to play to an audience that may appreciate new unsigned music...

Please keep it going......

Thanks to everyone for the supportive messages.

I haven't linked directly to the site because I didn't want to breach T&C's here!
I'm not promoting the site as such, just trying to figure out why it hasn't taken off the way we had hoped and figure out why so few people have taken up our offer?? (...and whether we should persevere!!)

Finding us is very simple btw!!!
It's RadioUn dotcom. LOL

kindest regards,
Gordi

Couldn't you perhaps charge a small fee for the new artists to have their music played? It is certainly costing you guys money to have this service available. Musicians would gladly pay a small sum to be heard.

a reply to: Night Star

Hi Night,
Charging money kind of goes against the ethos of why we set it up in the first place, but I am now wondering if people are suspicious of getting "something for nothing" - There's no such thing as a free lunch and all that??

Is it because it's totally FREE that people don't see any value in it?? I really don't want to charge for it though.

I had a look at the website, very impressed and very easy to understand...

Some of the tracks I have listened to are pretty good...

I have spread the word around and added to numerous websites for people to contact you and send in their tracks...

Keep up the work...

Cheers...

a reply to: davethebear

Cheers Dave!
Much appreciated my friend.

G

IMO, more exposure is what you need. Indeed, it sounds like a great idea, but like others, I had no idea it existed!

If you're against charging, are you against donations? Combined with more exposure, some kind of crowd funding might be viable, or at least lessen the blow.

a reply to: BombDefined

Thanks Bomb,
That's a possible option I suppose.
I'm actually trying to negotiate a reduced fee or free hosting from our site provider (They say in their publicity blurb that FREE accounts are available to non-profits and charities, but when I enquired about a free account they replied we had to be a charity, with 100% profits going back into the charity??? So I explained that they SAY IN THEIR OWN WORDS "free accounts are available for Non-Profits and charities" and that we don't charge ANYTHING so there are NO proceeds or profits, and we are not a registered charity. They haven't replied back yet...
Problem is, if we accepted donations then that might be seen as "proceeds or profit"??

It's turning into a catch22!

Thanks for your suggestions though, much appreciated and we might go down the "donations" route if we decide to fund it ourselves for another year.

kindest regards
Gordi

PS - Just got an email from them, no FREE account is available for us, as we are not a "registered" non-profit organisation?
But they're offering us 3 months free as a goodwill gesture.

If anyone is interested in hearing more about RadioUn dotcom...

I have just been in conversation (via Skype) with Druid42, who kindly offered to do an interview with me for ATS Out Of The Box radio!

The show will air on monday night, and if my interview segment "makes the cut" you will hear me rabbiting on about the concept of RadioUn, what it's all about and where we are with it right now!

Many thanks to Druid and to Signalfire who assisted with the interview!
I am now a nervous wreck!!! LOL

Cheers!

Gordi

There are thousands of internet radio stations. Unless its playing in some physical location or associate with another website such as a music forum or have your own it would be hard to find or hear and people know this. People seem to mostly use MySpace, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, YouTube and sometimes LastFm when they have a band and none of these are internet stations because you have the ability to either pick what you want to hear or skip what you dont like and a like or dislike system is in use as well as a commenting system. Also you might wanna do some band of the week thing or something. Also if your station has a website you need to be sure its indexable by google.

originally posted by: Aural
There are thousands of internet radio stations. Unless its playing in some physical location or associate with another website such as a music forum or have your own it would be hard to find or hear and people know this. People seem to mostly use MySpace, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, YouTube and sometimes LastFm when they have a band and none of these are internet stations because you have the ability to either pick what you want to hear or skip what you dont like and a like or dislike system is in use as well as a commenting system. Also you might wanna do some band of the week thing or something. Also if your station has a website you need to be sure its indexable by google.

Hi Aural,
Just out of curiosity - did you visit radioun.com?
In answer to your points - yes, there are thousands of internet radio stations, but how many do you know of which are specifically used for showcasing unsigned artists?
Almost all are used for promoting already signed acts, and they are funded by the record companies to promote their own wares.
With Myspace, Soundcloud, LastFM, Youtube etc you have to individually search/find/visit and play any one artists track(s), and then do the same again if you haven't found what you're looking for.
One of the benefits of RadioUn is that you can hear LOTS of new, original unsigned talent in ONE PLACE.
Each new band is just one mouse click away - you don't have to search through a myspace/soundcloud type environment to find an artist that you might like and drill down into their pages to hear them.

We do also use social media to promote the website (we use the name radio un there).

Our "Radio Station" takes the form of a simple website with a music playlist.
You CAN skip any tracks that you don't like instantly.
Or you can leave it running in the background (like leaving your radio on!)
It has the best of both worlds!

We deliberately don't have a rating system, like/dislike or comments, because that's not what we're there for.
I don't care whether one band is more popular than another at all, I am just trying to give them ALL a platform to get their music heard by a wider audience.

By allowing like/dislike, comments etc you are;
a) Promoting some acts to the detriment of others (Hi scorers will attract even more hits/plays, and the low scorers will lose out)
and,
b) Leaving your site open to "fake" comments, likes/dislikes etc.
(It's not unheard of for certain artists to "persuade" or even blatantly "hire" people to boost their own stats by visiting their pages and commenting on their tracks etc.) So it's self defeating.

And, don't forget that music venues, promoters, publishers, agents etc. can visit RadioUn and hear dozens of new unsigned bands at the click of a mouse WITHOUT having to search for, locate and individually visit dozens of seperate Myspace/soundcloud type sites and pages. That could be the difference between getting "discovered" or not.

Many thanks for taking the trouble to comment,
It's much appreciated.
G

a reply to: Gordi The Drummer

I could not get the radio part to play on my tablet. Not sure if its the site or firefox or my settings on ghostery. Makes me think though although not necisary maybe you could consider a mobile app to play the station. Lots of people download apps these days whether they need them or not.

Im unsure if you should or should not consider dividing by genre or categories since not everyone has eclectic tastes and wont listen if a lot of genres they dont like come up. You say its for bands but would you take for example electronic music or avant garde stuff?

Think you could figure out a way to make band info come up with the songs beyond the non functional link method you seem to be using? Something more like what lastfm has. Having non clickable links is a hassle compaired to breifly glancing something or just clicking a link.

Another thing to consider is a way to save bands a person likes that they heard at a click of a button so they could look them up later instead of having to write it down. This would require accounts and login though but would be useful. The saving or bookmarking or whatever doesnt have to be viewable beyond the persons own account.