RadioSpiral is on the air!
It gives me great pride and pleasure to announce the official launch of RadioSpiral, a new internet radio station hosting an eclectic and inspiring variety of electronica... everything from deep drone ambient to upbeat rhythmic and even humorous selections, including rare tracks you won't hear anywhere else on the net. You can go to our new website at radiospiral.net, one of many sites under the mrspiral.com umbrella, and stream this music free 24/7 anywhere on this lovely blue planet of ours.
While we have sprinkled in a few Creative Commons tracks (and will add more in the weeks to come, including the entire archived library of the old Earth Mantra netlabel), our library as of launch primarily consists of thousands of hours of music from dozens of different electronic artists, all of whom submitted their work at our request for no other reason than that they believed in us, and in what we were trying to do. That's an incredible confidence booster and gives us a lot of hope for the coming years.
The stream has actually been up and running without a break for over a month now, and a few enterprising listeners have already found it... but today we officially cut the ribbon, even as we ask for your patience as we add bells and whistles around a very solid core system.
Oh, and by the way: once we're settled and things are proven to be solid, we have five more DJs already in the wings, waiting to start shows in both US and European time slots, and are open for more contributors, whether for weekly shows or for occasional spontaneous DJ sets or live shows. Please contact me for details, and expect me to be contacting you as well if we've worked together in the past.
There are a lot of people to thank in a situation like this. I have to start with Diana Smethurst, my trusty factotum and partner in crime, the web designer responsible for our beautiful new set of websites, a tireless worker (and amazingly effective nag) who was largely responsible for our early steps forward using a temporary server for two live shows a week, and unquestionably the beating heart of RadioSpiral.
Next on the list is Paul Harriman, who turned a vague idea into a fully functioning and optimized radio stream with a cloud-based server structure, easy to use and solid software to access it, and all the trappings one never thinks about until one pushes the Big Red Button. Paul has invested hundreds of hours already in getting RadioSpiral up and running, on top of his already insane work schedule, and we can say literally rather than metaphorically that this 24/7 streaming station would not exist if not for him.
Next up is Joe McMahon, who has quietly done miracles for us in the realm of online chat services and widgets and has been an invaluable help to Paul in torture-testing the server software. Joe doesn't get nearly the credit he deserves for all the work he does (and is largely if not entirely responsible for the friendly and featureladen Slack chat that supports RadioSpiral), and this is a great opportunity for us to sing his praises.
Next are our contributing artists: as we begin our broadcasting life, that is (in no particular order) Allen Goodman (Desert Mystic), Darrell Burgan (Palancar), Sean McCarthy (Altocirrus), Hannah Shapero aka Pyracantha (Altocumulus), Mike Carss (Altus), Antara AnneMarie Borg, Bryan Burnett (Auroric Dreams), Nick Rothwell (CASSIEL), Brett Smith (Caul), Chris Russell, Paul Vnuk Jr and Christopher Short (as solo artists and as Ma Ja Le), Cousin Silas, Michael Jobborn (Head Joint), Tony Gerber (soloist, Cypress Rosewood, Auroric Dreams, SPACECRAFT and more), Dan Pound, John Duval and Dave Fulton (soloists and members of Dweller At The Threshold), Dennis Moser (usr/sbin), Harry Sklar (Har), Kim Bjorn (Dreamhub), David Herpich (Emerald Adrift), Giles Reaves, Greg Hurley, Gregg Plummer (try the stream now, Gregg!), Danny Budts (Syndromeda), Jack Hertz (soloist and label head of Aural Films, whose artists we hope to add en masse in the coming weeks), Joe Frawley, Kuutana (The Color Of Sleep), Jess Waters (Magnetic Wind), Mark Mahoney and Michael Peck (alone and together), Max Corbacho, Jesse Sola (Numina), Otso Pakarinen (Ozone Player), Paul Nagle (who doesn't know I've added some incredibly rare early and live tracks to our library!), Rebekkah Hilgraves, Michael Carlson (remst8), Scott Lawlor, Jim Combs (Sensitive Chaos and TouchXtone), Tim Walters (solo, Shalmaneser, and Slaw (!)), John Goff and Will Goff (SSI and the Silver Wizard), Lee Ellen Shoemaker (The Tunnel Singer), Helen Mutzner (vaerna), all the musicians of Different Skies and mindSpiral... and our beloved dead: Kevin Haller (Burning Artist(s) Sale and Killer Haven), Kevin Fletcher Tweedy, Lucette Bourdin, and Douglas JP Lee (Lily Pond Orchestra).
We also have pledges of music from Fred Becker, Tonal Alchemy, Rinse Repeat, Dave Lovelace (Parallax), and many more to come. (Fill out a waiver on our website and PM me for details on getting us tracks -- we're working on a publicly available sandboxed upload system but it's not ready to go yet!)
And last but certainly not least: our audience of incredibly loyal music fans in the real world and on Second Life (where our parcel in Fellin Hill is already streaming RadioSpiral 24/7), who didn't let us quit when we found ourselves without a radio station this past summer, attended our shows faithfully every Sunday and Wednesday even though our stream had nothing else to listen to for the rest of the week, showed up in chat with lots of wonderful things to say, and poured their kindness and support over us like healing balm during the weeks and months of uncertainty. We love you all.
Tonight we will celebrate the launch of RadioSpiral with a huge show with lots of music from as many of these artists as we can squeeze in. I may be starting early and going late, just to fit everyone in. I'll post details in a few hours. In the meantime, tune in and let's see how our server likes a real listener load!
Our listener widget now works, but is not yet providing metadata on artist and track information. If you tune in using a streaming app like VLC using our direct stream address (http://radio.radiospiral.net:8000/stream.mp3), then you'll get playlist name (currently the day of the week), artist and track names.
If you have issues connecting or seeing metadata, please email me with details and we'll see if we can get you sorted out. Don't forget to sign up for our Slack chat, and thank you for being patient as we iron out the problems that are inevitable when something like this goes live.
We salute you all. Thank you for your support in the past and in the future, and welcome home. --mike
