Friday, August 28, 2009

Internet Radio - A marvel of our times


My first brush with Internet Radio happened sometime during the late 90s. I had heard "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls in one of our usual hangouts and was desperate to get a copy of the song. Unfortunately there wasn't a soul that I knew who had that song. Around the same time one of my buddies introduced me to an "internet radio station" website. Needless to say my entire outlook towards accessing music changed post that. Of course my source of internet was a cybercafe near my college and the cafe owner used to stare down on you if he saw you doing anything outside of sending e-mails or chatting on those public forums (if only looks could kill). Although I can understand his problem - bandwidth was at a premium at those times. Needless to say my tryst had ended abruptly with Internet Radio.
However my first experience had left quite a lasting impression for when I had an internet connection of my own the first thing I did was to look for the various internet radio stations over the web. That is when I discovered SHOUTcast. For anyone remotely interested in broadcasting, SHOUTcast offers you end to end solutions with regards to the broadcasting tools. Perhaps my curiosity for Internet Radio was partly because of my love for music, I don't know, but it did not take me much time to conclude that Internet Radio was a marvel in itself.
It was not just the music, but also the fact that you could reach out to the entire world with anything that you wanted to, simultaneously / concurrently and instantaneously. The concept is simple. You keep "pushing" (broadcasting) what you want onto a centralized location and then listeners can keep "pulling" (streaming) from there. Internet Radio like many things internet is still evolving and it will be sometime before firm ground is established with regards to working standards and addressing mass bandwidth concerns when it comes to extremely large set of audiences. But with the Internet world evolving at the pace it has been I see that gap closing very fast.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

RhythmFish Radio 21.5 FM

You know what they say about coming up with good relevant names for anything? You first try to understand the essence of the object that you want to name. It could be your children, your cat, your business, your house etc. You then make an exhaustive list of names, chew over them, edit the list, make the list smaller, take an opinion poll and then choose one. Well, I did not do anything like that. All I did was ask this super smart friend of mine of what she thought could be a good name for a radio station and she said "rhythmfish". It fit. I added my 2 cents to it and made it "RhythmFish Radio 21.5 RF". So much for originality.

The station would host events, take dedications, cater to requests. That's Rhythm. And given that we admire the "radio star" so much we will also seek and promote obscure bands. That's Fish. And we will try to keep doing both in perfect harmony.

If you are wondering what 21.5 FM... - well you got to figure that one out yourself.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The Radio Star Shines - and how!


I am quite certain that The Buggles would be proud to see the radio star not only surviving the biggest homicide attempt towards it by Video, but actually doing pretty well for itself. When I first heard Video Killed the Radio Star I was still in school and did not quite get it. Much later it dawned upon me that even I who quite liked the song was as much part of this homicide attempt. The irony was it took MTV to air the video of this song for it to really take wings....

I sometimes wonder what actually happened to the radio star though.

I have since then moved on from The Buggles to The Beatles and The Nirvanas and The Perl Jams and The Doors and The Hendrixes et all. And with technology on my side thanks to Internet Radio or Online Radio as you wish to call it I decided to setup my own radio station as a dedication to all my favorite stars who did not need TV to let themselves be heard. And yes that includes the now forgotten radio star too.