Radio Me (plus update on 14 July 2022)

For years, I had pondered the idea of an Internet radio station playing My Music by Me Music, but my understanding of how such a thing might be done hadn't corresponded with the economic feasibility of it. One thing restraining me was having to have a spare computer from which to broadcast to the streaming server, and for a long time a second computer was too much of an extravagance for me, not to mention that the Internet service chez moi can be unacceptably inconsistent at times (i.e., evenings, when everyone in the neighborhood is at home). However, I recently found Zeno.fm*, which is an absolutely-for-free broadcast platform. Not only can one broadcast remotely, but one can do so directly from its server, with up to 500 audio files uploaded to it. I found a great, also for-free, cross-platform DJ application called Mixxx, which has a broadcast encoder built into it. After over a week of experimentation, I've decided to let the Zeno server handle the load with its "shuffle" algorithm, and to use Mixxx or some other software for sporadic live broadcasts.

My Music by Me Music Radio is up and running here*.

This really is the optimal medium for presenting My Music by Me Music. For one thing, it requires that the listener pay attention to it, sit with it and let it happen on its own terms, without skimming or skipping, and wait for what might come next. Another thing I like about it is that it presents the whole stylistic gamut in one random menagerie. The moments of gratification and discomfort are jammed up against one another, like people from all walks of life and parts of the world riding the New York Subway. The listener is forced to reconcile the differences and disparities; to seek order out of the chaos.

Another benefit to this situation is that, thanks to Zeno's worldwide reach (with stations representing places all over the world), what I am broadcasting has the potential to be discovered by people who want to discover music from elsewhere. Expressly-commercial venues, such as Spitofy, Pandora, Iheartradio, Soundcloud, and even Bandcamp, impose contexts and conditions which are driven by maximizing revenues, and we all know what happens to music under such constraints. Not only this, but I don't have to wrestle with inept and persnickety functionaries and 'bots associated with digital-distribution services – I just uploaded the stuff and got it goin' on, myself.

Last year, a musician-friend of mine sternly advised me, "You gotta get your music out there," but I had hit a wall of dismay and disgust with what I'd been through with the monkeys running that circus. Finally, these recordings are out there in the world, available to the ears of people in Tanzania, Latvia, Indonesia, Grand Cayman Island, North Korea (ya never know), and Ohio.

(*) Update, 14 July 2022:

Some time last year, I discovered that Zeno had deleted the hours of music that I had uploaded to it. Shocked and dismayed, I contacted Zeno's customer support a few times until I got the explanation that users have to own the copyrights to the music they upload. (No, genius, this ". . . by me" thing signifies nothing whatsoever.) With no further explanation, I had to assume that they had presumed that all the different "artists" whose music I'd uploaded weren't music that I had composed and produced. Neither did they provide any explanation as to why they had failed to inform me of the action, as I'd had no idea of how long my station had been defunct. I told them to do something disgusting; it took repeated iterations of my request that they perform this disgusting act before they honored my request to cancel my account. (They'd deleted my music in a heartbeat, but it took months to delete my account?)

This echoed an experience I'd had with a sales platform that, I discovered months after the fact, had deleted my music by me en bloc. Although I now forget (for the better) exactly what the situation had entailed, the administrator hadn't informed me of the action nor its impending intention of it. I got only the excuse that since I'd not logged-in to my account in a while, he assumed that I had abandoned the account. (No, genius, I'd not had anything to add to it in a while.) When this happens, I have to go chase-down and kill the defunct links on every platform and page where I've posted it (as with this blog post, at least a year belatedly). Anyone who tells me that I "have to get my music out there" should dare to get me to have a nervous breakdown from recounting all the fuckery that the clueless, art-hating techies running the musical monkey-show for a while have put me through. I've narrowed it down to Bandcamp and Soundcloud, which piss me off, but not enough to get on a plane and stop off to buy a baseball bat en route to their offices. And that's a compliment.