I am thinking of closing my station because of no listeners

esukradio

New Member
hi

I am considering closing down my radio station because im not getting the listeners in at all. I have used adwords, forums, facebook, twitter and mailing lists and even autosurf websites but no one is interested in my radio, its also on tune in radio and submitted to many directories. Im thinking just close it down as i feel like im wasting my life on it. Please could someone give me some advice??
 

Support

Level 1 Support
Staff member
We are sorry that this does not seem to be working out for you. :(

We presume that you have already read over this following guide: http://forum.internet-radio.com/guides/15-radio-station-promotion.html

What kind of music are you playing? Are you labelling your genres correctly, as this can really make a difference: http://forum.internet-radio.com/guides/33-choosing-your-radio-genres-wisely.html

Just let us know upon whatever you decide is the future for your station. It would be a shame though if you did just decide to throw in the towel as such. Stations can take some time to establish themselves and build upon a fanbase. :)
 

IAAM Radio

New Member
It takes time, get your friends, family and close associates to tune in, the word will get out. Do you have a portal page for your station, is it easy to navigate and not cluttered with ads? You want all your tune in options very clear and easy to find on your station page.

Most important, if it's not fun then yes hang it up but if you have have fun even if it's just you then enjoy it. Record your shows, re-air them give them away as holiday disks all and all if you love music and you're having fun being live then keep at it. Even if no one is tuned in, you are live and if you're recording then you are the listener so make sure you treat yourself like a listener.

Good luck
IAAM Radio
 

General Lighting

Super Moderator
Staff member
sadly by the time I found this it seems the lad has already closed down the station, which was a pity as I was actually looking for shows/DJ's playing those genres of dance music as I am less familiar with them being older!

it is hard work even if it can be fun, I'm a former broadcast engineer who saw the paid career evaporate due to Internet radio and "free for all" stuff but luckily got a day job in ICT and (until I had to move to a zero tolerance town) had many fun years raving so rather than be bitter about it decided to work with a station associated with a popular dance music forum.

this has now become one of Europe's most popular EDM stations and we still have difficulty filling the live shows as a lot of our DJ's/presenters got older and became parents or moved area (the upheaval associated with this shouldn't be overlooked as in England it can result in a broadband circuit being off for weeks or months as they are not commercially backed music studio lines)

(apologies to those elsewhere for being UK centric and biased towards EDM at this point but I've got the most experience with the scene in my country)

I've discussed this on the forum associated with the station I am most involved with (and TBH I only recently got involved more with it myself) but paradoxically I think that its much harder to fill slots if you are in a city like London or Manchester where there are still many pirate FM broadcasters and legal community stations offering safer slots on "real radio" to DJ's (provided they can speak more than two syllables in either English or a language recognised by the community).

Added to that its also easy enough to get a set at a EDM event playing to a real live crowd (or at least a semi concious one, depending how much of the horse-powder has been doing the rounds).

Outside the cities though there should be more interest but I'm sorry to say it appears that peopel give up easily or don't think of radio as a way of keeping the scene going when their town goes zero tolerance for EDM events like mine did a few years ago.

perhaps its because "online radio" seems like "too normal and geeky" than pirate stations though it doesn't make sense to me, as many of the same listeners play complex computer games I don't understand - and now it is possible to tune into it on various mobile devices which wasn't as easy before...

but as an older chap one thing I do think is important is ease of tuning in.

I like "normal" radios too (whether it is my hi fi receiver, my bearcat scanner or my HF receiver) all I need to do is tune in the frequency and seconds later I hear either music, or the harbourmaster and local shipping, or the squalling noise that I can convert into a useful weathermap (I live very near the North Sea so these things are of interest to me, I can understand if they are less so in Coventry :D)

Sometimes (especially on HF) there is bad interference but what I do not get is 40 pages of some random unrelated item or folk trying to sell me stuff. Even on band II (though I tend to only listen to the community station ICR-FM the ads are limited due to Ofcom).

Using places like Facebook,"free" forums etc to get a cheap platform means a great deal of this crap is inserted into over and above your "signal" (the image of your station you are trying to put across) as these advertisers are the paying customers, not yourself/ I know younger people with less cash tend to use these but they can dilute your "brand" somewhat, you don't get anything for free..

important difference : you will not get the folk "stumbling across your frequency" like on a normal radio station. because of all the different players etc. You really do need to go out there and keep promoting your station, and also making sure it is "on air" as much as possible using recorded shows if there are no live ones but making sure genre tags are correct - after all its not as if you have to stop other stations robbing your TX kit or dodge Ofcom/Agentschap Telecom or any other "feds" like the old pirate days..

I think its possible to turn the corner but it can be and should be done (incidentally our station has become popular in spite of the relative lack of live UK shows as the recorded ones remain popular with listeners in a variety of far away foreign countries, don't forget that your stream is usually not limited by national borders, even some nations I thought would defo block us because of the forum don't!)

Alex
 
Last edited:

sojic

Member
When we start our Amazing Smooth and Jazz Radio | Amazing Smooth and Jazz Radio we'd start with Internet Radio Stations competition. We had no more then 20 listeners. Suddenly, I'd found Internet Radio Stations and get "pay as you go" service. Internet Radio Stations has huge number of potential listeners and instantly drive to our radio huge number of listeners.

After following http://forum.internet-radio.com/guid...promotion.html and subscribing our radio to iTunes, our number of listeners rapidly increased. Just in 1 week we'd upgraded our package.

Now, because we still do not have income we stuck at max 50 listeners package and last 3-4 months we are in Top 10 Radio Stations - July 2012. Once we generate some income, for sure we will upgrade our package.
 

MykeH

New Member
With regard to earning some income - I am not sure if things have changed but it would be great if Internet Radio supported the ability for listeners to buy music from Amazon or iTunes

The last time I asked the answer was - "The Computer Says no":D

Has this changed?
 

Support

Level 1 Support
Staff member
With regard to earning some income - I am not sure if things have changed but it would be great if Internet Radio supported the ability for listeners to buy music from Amazon or iTunes

The last time I asked the answer was - "The Computer Says no":D

Has this changed?

You can enter an "Amazon Affiliate" ID in your control panel settings if you have one. This feature has always been there. ;)
 

David Barone

New Member
Ran into the same thing...

sadly by the time I found this it seems the lad has already closed down the station, which was a pity as I was actually looking for shows/DJ's playing those genres of dance music as I am less familiar with them being older!

it is hard work even if it can be fun, I'm a former broadcast engineer who saw the paid career evaporate due to Internet radio and "free for all" stuff but luckily got a day job in ICT and (until I had to move to a zero tolerance town) had many fun years raving so rather than be bitter about it decided to work with a station associated with a popular dance music forum.

this has now become one of Europe's most popular EDM stations and we still have difficulty filling the live shows as a lot of our DJ's/presenters got older and became parents or moved area (the upheaval associated with this shouldn't be overlooked as in England it can result in a broadband circuit being off for weeks or months as they are not commercially backed music studio lines)

(apologies to those elsewhere for being UK centric and biased towards EDM at this point but I've got the most experience with the scene in my country)

I've discussed this on the forum associated with the station I am most involved with (and TBH I only recently got involved more with it myself) but paradoxically I think that its much harder to fill slots if you are in a city like London or Manchester where there are still many pirate FM broadcasters and legal community stations offering safer slots on "real radio" to DJ's (provided they can speak more than two syllables in either English or a language recognised by the community).

Added to that its also easy enough to get a set at a EDM event playing to a real live crowd (or at least a semi concious one, depending how much of the horse-powder has been doing the rounds).

Outside the cities though there should be more interest but I'm sorry to say it appears that peopel give up easily or don't think of radio as a way of keeping the scene going when their town goes zero tolerance for EDM events like mine did a few years ago.

perhaps its because "online radio" seems like "too normal and geeky" than pirate stations though it doesn't make sense to me, as many of the same listeners play complex computer games I don't understand - and now it is possible to tune into it on various mobile devices which wasn't as easy before...

but as an older chap one thing I do think is important is ease of tuning in.

I like "normal" radios too (whether it is my hi fi receiver, my bearcat scanner or my HF receiver) all I need to do is tune in the frequency and seconds later I hear either music, or the harbourmaster and local shipping, or the squalling noise that I can convert into a useful weathermap (I live very near the North Sea so these things are of interest to me, I can understand if they are less so in Coventry :D)

Sometimes (especially on HF) there is bad interference but what I do not get is 40 pages of some random unrelated item or folk trying to sell me stuff. Even on band II (though I tend to only listen to the community station ICR-FM the ads are limited due to Ofcom).

Using places like Facebook,"free" forums etc to get a cheap platform means a great deal of this crap is inserted into over and above your "signal" (the image of your station you are trying to put across) as these advertisers are the paying customers, not yourself/ I know younger people with less cash tend to use these but they can dilute your "brand" somewhat, you don't get anything for free..

important difference : you will not get the folk "stumbling across your frequency" like on a normal radio station. because of all the different players etc. You really do need to go out there and keep promoting your station, and also making sure it is "on air" as much as possible using recorded shows if there are no live ones but making sure genre tags are correct - after all its not as if you have to stop other stations robbing your TX kit or dodge Ofcom/Agentschap Telecom or any other "feds" like the old pirate days..

I think its possible to turn the corner but it can be and should be done (incidentally our station has become popular in spite of the relative lack of live UK shows as the recorded ones remain popular with listeners in a variety of far away foreign countries, don't forget that your stream is usually not limited by national borders, even some nations I thought would defo block us because of the forum don't!)

Alex
Old thread, I know, but still relevant to many, I'll assume. I dealt with few to no listeners. Was using Live365. Branched out to Windows Media directory, iTunes, TuneIn, etc. Getting a good, consistent number of listeners now. Aside from a smart format (not too many album cuts or train wrecking), the mentioned directories will give the operator a running chance at building a solid base. As mentioned, takes time and patience.
 

General Lighting

Super Moderator
Staff member
Party Vibe Radio was around in the late 1990s; although it was then the forum (used to find raves) which was more popular; the online listening only took off in the 2000s when broadband circuits became more widely available in Europe. The other experimental stream I run (VFR Europe) isn't as well promoted as it should be (as I'm still ironing out bugs with playout software); but still gets listeners and contributors of recorded shows from across the world; even if only a handful; and it doesn't bother me one bit if the listeners are well off student hipsters or someone in a mud hut in some faraway land playing music to their cats (if the cats like it, I know I haven;t let through clipped audio or overdone the compression :D). I'm not interested in making money, just sharing decent music. I'd have only otherwise spent the money I rent servers with on cigarettes instead (stopped with tobacco since 2009). if you look at running a station that way it saves you a great deal of angst and trouble.

There have been two important developments (at least in Europe) recently; firstly it now appears popular to have a radio stream in the background when playing some immersive computer games (I guess it is those ones where you do not have to shoot monsters / fight WW III all the time); also it is easier to listen with mobile devices and AAC encoded streams and for a couple of hours each day (for instance if you cycle to work / college or walk there) doesn't take too much of a bite from a UK data bundle from some prepaid providers or contract phones.

I've mentioned this before but also don't get too disheartened by simply monitoring "listener figures". How did people running Band II community stations and pirates work out their listener figures before online streaming? You might not get loads of shouts/texts like the old days but feedback can be spread out more across many different timezones, countries, languages and timescales.

Even with all these high tech streaming services; I believe people still want a radio service that works like a linear radio - i.e you start it up; music or other content comes out of the loudspeakers at decent sound quality.

Although the service may know what country you are in it doesn't try to aggressively target you to sell other stuff (this is a rabbit hole some folk are falling down). I still believe that whatever happens with technology; a good radio service will always be popular. By all means try and put up the DJ name or track lists or other useful info on the display but don't get caught up in some contaminated ecosystem of ads which fill up the device screen with all sorts of rubbish - if folk wanted to look at that stuff they'd watch television instead ;)

Alex
 

Lozenets

New Member
Hi! To everybody!
It is easy for people which are situated in very big markets like USA,UK to speak about domination of the market since there are always available audience.
The fact is that nobody else apart of yourself will ever help or assist a new web radio to grown up, just they want to use you rather to help.
The only way to increase audience is always giving free gifts irrelevant cost and real advertising campaigns in everything exist.
Good Luck to new fighters!!!
 

DJ Bounce

New Member
I know this is an old thread, but a great read. Although Im still working on my station and have far to go with my vision, I enjoy the time I put into it. Thanks to all the members and staff that help with the experience, tips and tricks. A newcomer like me really appreciates it!

DJ Bounce
http://www.626radio.com/
 
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