What a day, what a night! Starting as a concept, an idea, somewhere around February, yesterday was a day that dreams came true! Twenty-four hours in, this might be a nice moment to reflect a little…
Once upon a time, in a small, flat little country, two friends met eachother in a music based scene. Having had some experience with working in radio, but being “between projects” at the time, we started talking about starting a radio station ourselves. And as it turned out, our thoughts matched to a point where we started to shorten “Great Minds Think Alike” into “GMTA”, just to save time!
After having found out that our ideas would easily combine to make a station that we would want, it was time to start spreading the idea a bit. Maybe our ideas were just that, only our ideas. But upon spreading the word we discovered that many others were enthusiastic about the concept. Starting with a select group of friends, more and more people heard our ideas and gave their own thoughts on the matter. This led to the design of the format we have now created.
The concept of “community” was a strong base from which we wanted to build, so we contacted bands, artists, photographers, and basically “the scene” itself, as we wanted to create a station that would be a hub to help bands find listeners, and listeners find bands. Building a solid community was and is our goal, and it’s a lot of fun to do.
After this came a time of serious business planning. Building a website, with which we have had some amazing help, finding the right streaming provider, contacting the copyrights organizations, conforming with their rules and regulations, all of this had to be done. Sometimes fun, sometimes boring, sometimes annoying, but we made it!
The key to any good radio station is the music of course. We already had lots of great music, but when you start to plan a continuous radio stream you find out just how much you actually need. Fortunately we operate in a scene where just about everybody is nice and sweet, and the bands gladly helped out by donating their amazing work and ideas! We can’t thank you all enough for your music and your thoughts!
A station also needs listeners. People who are interested in what we do. How do you reach them? Well, an internet radio station uses the internet, obviously. Our friends of Omnia had donated an amazing package, a signed album and a T-shirt, that we could use to get a promotion going and to get the word around. Oh, and did that work!!!
And then came “the week”. The last week before the start of the broadcast. Categorizing music that almost all is a category on it’s own. Making playlists. Final touches on the website. We still hadn’t found the player we really wanted. The theme for this week could easily be “sleep is for the weak!” But again, we made it. Our stream started, exactly on time, with a jingle, followed by amazing music.
And then there was the reception. You, the bands and artists, the listeners, the fans, the Community, made us feel so welcome! Not an hour and a half into our broadcast and the streaming server crashed!!! Fortunately it was only a small hiccup and the stream started up where it had left off. But from the start you all responded. And those responses were all so warm and beautiful that they really touched us! Within minutes all the troubles we had faced getting to this point washed away and the beauty of the modern folk scene showed itself in full glory! If only we could thank all of you individually in this post… But even attempting that would undoubtedly lead to us forgetting half, or exceeding the tagging limitations of Facebook.
So to all of you who have spoken such kind and loving words, who have shared our posts or our website, who have helped in any minor or major way to create such amazing energy, we would like to say: Thank you!!! You have no idea how you have moved us!!!
But, that is the past, let’s look at the future. Right now we are working on more awesome stuff, mostly having to do with the website. We are constantly trying to improve the look, feel and functionality of the website, but expect the “under construction” message to disappear soon . We are working on getting a new player, with more functions, more in the style of what we as a station want to be. We are working on creating a list of recently played tracks, so that if you hear a song that you want to know more about you can find the artist and track names, even if you’re a bit too late to catch them on the player. We are working to get more ways to listen to us, mainly on mobile devices. (Did you know you can already use the app made by RadioTuna?) So lots left to do, lots of changes and exciting stuff to come! Be sure to keep your eyes peeled and stay tuned!