Super 91.7 WMPH has become the first radio station in the country to take a stand against the Music First Coalition.  Hopefully, this is the start of something much larger.

From the WMPH website:

The National Association of Broadcasters is fighting efforts by musicFirst, a new coalition of recording artists, including Christina Aguilera, Rihanna, and Natasha Bedingfield, demanding performance royalties from radio stations. "Congress has long recognized that radio airplay of music generates millions of dollars in revenue for record labels and artists," said Dennis Wharton, NAB spokesman. "Were it not for radio's free promotional airplay of music on stations all over America, most successful recording artists would still be playing in a garage."

WMPH and many other stations across the country are saying NO to this insatiable greed. The musicFirst coalition of artists is attempting to hurt the radio stations, disc jockeys, and fans that have always been their greatest ally. Radio has done so much to promote their careers by playing their music frequently, interviewing them, and mentioning their concerts and events on the air. Artists make their money by record sales and performing at concerts. Without radio's free publicity for over 60 years, most artists would likely be neither rich nor famous.

Hopefully this will open up airplay for smaller artists who appreciate what radio gives them.  Most people aren't aware of this, but musicians do not pay to get their music on the air.  It's all done for free.  The radio station doesn't receive any payment for promoting the artists.  These lobbying groups need to be stopped.  These are the same people who sponsored the Feinstein-Graham PERFORM act (to gouge satellite providers) and the recent changed by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) that will put an end legal internet radio though massive royalty rate increases (see www.SaveNetRadio.org).

Here's the good news:  WMPH may be a small station, but their big action is getting some big attention.  I'm keeping a list of sites that pick up the story.

06/20/2007

• The Infinite Dial: From The First State, A First Shot Against Music First
• Midnight Blue Says: Gotta Get That Dough, Sista's

06/21/2007

• Rusty On Radio: Non-comm WMPH Boycotts Music First Coalition Artists

I've just updated the Audio Streaming page with lots of new stuff.  I've rewritten and simplified the ASP.Net mp3 streaming code.

I've got new examples, and a working online demos of the streamer in action:

• Winamp / iTunes Demo (PLS)
• Windows Media Player Demo (ASX)

The sample track is "Always Believe" by Sapphirecut.  She's a good friend of mine.  You can buy her stuff at CDBaby and iTunes.

(I shot this photo back at her Videohouselive show)

We've been busy at the radio station planning for this year's DANCEfest event.

For those of you that aren't familiar, I volunteer with the local school district's student radio station, WMPH. I maintain the website and streaming. I also do most of the artwork and photography for their events. I visited Capital Pride this summer. Now we're planning our own event for November 18th.

Here are the current revisions of the postcards we'll be printing:



I'm not handling the logistics of the event, just the artwork and the photos. However, here's what I know:

It's happening on November 18th at Baxter's in Wilmington. We may have some additional acts that have not yet committed. I'll be on site doing whatever needs done, along with the rest of the crew.

We have just returned from a trip to Atlantic City with the radio station. Every year, DJ Times has their annual expo at the Atlantic City Convention Center. They provided the whole station with tickets, so we decided to take a trip to the expo.



The DJ Times expo is primarily targeted at the mobile and club DJ audience, but there is also a lot of radio activity at the event. Kris was invited to speak at the radio panel, but due to time constraints he didn't say much.



I caught quite a few good pictures at the expo. We ended up spending most of the day on the boardwalk. The Blue Angels were performing above the boardwalk for most of the day. We got some great pictures.

Personally, I think that the Tropicana is the nicest casino. "The Quarter" is wonderful. We ate lunch at the restaurant "Cuba Libre". Although it might sound simplistic, we both ate Cuban sandwiches. They really did a good job with them. They were excellent.

After lunch we visited a few other casinos, bought Jessawick a new hat, and then returned to the expo for the radio panel. After the panel, we made dinner reservations and went to the beach for a bit.



We had dinner at "Red Square" within "The Quarter" at Tropicana. It was exceptional. We had calamari and Russian sangria. Jessawick ordered the Roquefort filet mignon. I had the kulebakya (Russian-style salmon). Both dishes were beyond good. They were the best food that we have ever had. The desert (Strawberry Romanoff) was amazing also. Wonderful place. Exceptional food and atmosphere.

We made a quick trip to Caesar's Palace, then returned home for the night.

So, obviously I've been fairly busy lately.  That's understandable though.

I've been spending quite a lot of time working on wmph.org.  I've got full On-Demand going for both the top songs and several special selections.  It's actually a pretty interesting system.

The webserver gets updates each night in the form of logs from the station.  I have scripts that import these logs into a database located in the webserver.  The database serves as the source for all of the "what have we played" or "top songs" type information.

I can use this information to say what the top songs were for any given time period.  I can also use the logs to find the location of these songs at the station.  Each night the webserver figures out which songs it has and does not have.  It retreives the ones that it doesn't have.  It then converts them into the right format for streaming and makes them available on the site.

Nothing is more useful than a website that keeps itself current.  I've put a lot of work into making wmph.org self-maintaining.

The website itself uses several RSS feeds (that are reformatted to look smooth); continuing log uploads; and several other tricks to appear current with a minimum of upkeep.

For example, I use the Apple iTunes feed to show new releases on a daily basis.  I use the database to constantly show the top songs.  These keep themselves current, so I don't have to work quite as much.

Also, I recently converted the site to use iTunes for the Buy Links.  Hopefully this will bring some cash to the station.

I've put together some interesting tech to make the station work. 

• The webserver runs on ASP.NET with an Access MDB behind the scenes.  This allows me to do interesting things with the logs that I import.
• I syndicate a bunch of RSS's through ASP.NET to keep things looking fresh, and give us more news coverage than we could otherwise.
• The On-Demand keeps itself current for the most part, through a series of scripts.  Each week I need to provide the new show content though.
• I ended up making a special "parsing redirector" to make use of the iTunes referrals.  It is given a parameter of which artist you want.  It takes this, finds the "deep link" for iTunes, and then redirects you to it.  Simple, but very helpful.  This also allows me to add our referral info into the link.
• We have just started a new "concept show".  The idea is that listeners can vote on our website, and the show is based entirely on their selections.  For the moment, the working title is 'Command And Control', but it may change we come up with a better title.
  

So, what's the news this week?

Tomorrow, I fight the evil traffic mongers to keep my $$$.  JP Court #13, 2:00 PM.  Game On.

The photographer has posted a gallery of all our wedding pictures.  I have included some of them into the BarnyardBBS album; but the whole set (nearly 500) can be seen on his site.

I covered the VideoHouseLive event for WMPH.  Take a look at wmph.org to see what happened.

For those of you who are interested, I have been doing a lot of work with a local high-school radio station lately.

91.7 WMPH (Wilmington) is a non-commercial station owned by the Brandywine School District.  It is run by a fellow named Clint Dantinne.

I've started working with them, primarily on website stuff.  Take a look at their page, if you're interested.

Here's what the page looks like today:

Care to take a guess at my feelings towards the Kahunaville nightclub?

Recently, the fine fellows from WMPH (www.wmph.org) held the DanceFest 2005 event at the Kahunaville club.  They had scheduled to have the "Red Room" (the upscale part of the club) from 6PM until 1AM.

On the day of the show, Kahunaville changed the deal.  Our event was cut short at 10PM.  This left us with a disappointed crowd and several upset performers.

Never trust a nightclub.  Always get your contract in writing.

Want to hear the really funny part?  Several of us were "asked to leave" after 10PM.  Not because we had done anything wrong; but because the club had decided to put a "dress code" in place.  Shorts were no longer allowed, so neither were we.  Very cute.