Sunday, March 6, 2016

K-Tel's "Together" Next on AiV



This month on Adventures in Vinyl, we will be taking a trip back to 1979 for K-Tel Records' Together. This collection of soft rock hits features Firefall, Ambrosia, Melissa Manchester, Heatwave and many more!

Plus, as always, we'll go through the major events of the year and list the top 10 songs of 1979.  Movie clip Madness features a great movie from 1979 about a horse.

Here is the commercial for the album which was played on television back in 1979:


The new episode Adventures in Vinyl can be heard on at the following times (central):

Saturday 1:00 pm
Sunday 4:00 pm
Wednesday 2:00 am

Retro Repeat episodes can be heard at 1:30 pm on Tuesdays and 10:00 am on Thursdays.

Don't forget, you can always listen to every episode on MixCloud.






Friday, March 4, 2016

HERC's K-Tel Albums and the K-Tel Scale

A K-Tel aficionado who goes by the name of HERC runs a site called K-Tel Kollection 1973-1983. On this site he evaluates K-Tel albums based on his proprietary "K-Tel Scale." This scale is pretty cool and it produces a score that measures how good a K-Tel album was. The scale is based on numerous charts and each song is evaluated based on its chart placement and the formula then kicks out a number. The higher the number, the better the K-Tel album.

I've been reading his site for awhile now. It is truly fascinating and it is very apparent that HERC knows his K-Tel.

I recently mentioned his site in a post about the K-Tel album, Horizons.

Back in January, I posited the question: If you could put together the best of K-Tel in one limited edition collector's vinyl, what would you include?

My choice would be an album I called Time Machine. This album features 14 of my favorite songs from previous K-Tel albums.  I even designed a cover:


A couple of weeks ago, HERC decided to run my K-Tel album through his K-Tel scale in a post entitled, "Another Long Lost K-Tel Album?" The result:  31.21. Not a bad score, actually. Are you listening, K-Tel?

Not only that, HERC put this album of mine up on Spotify. Now you can actually listen to my dream K-Tel album.  Thanks, HERC!



Don't forget to jump on over to HERC's site. You will not be disappointed.


Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Exclusive Vinyl Voyage Apps are here! Take Vinyl Voyage on the Go!

You may not be able to carry your record player with you, but now you can take Vinyl Voyage wherever you go!

We are pleased to announce that Vinyl Voyage has a new app for your smartphone. Now you can listen in the car, on a walk, at the gym--wherever life takes you.

Go to your favorite app store and download now!  These apps are completely free.


 Open up the iOS App Store!





Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Is Radionomy Next?

Since Live365 closed its doors, we switched over to Radionomy, which offers streaming services and
pays royalties much the same way that Live365 operated. Located in Belgium, this service seemed to be what we needed here at Vinyl Voyage, as paying for royalties ourselves would be too cost prohibitive.

For the last 23 days, we have been doing quite well, actually. We've had listeners all over the world and have boosted our average daily listening hours to just around 100--something we never achieved with Live365. Not bad for three weeks. Commercials, inserted by Radionomy, have been regularly playing twice every hour. Things seemed good.

Too good, it appears.

Today, all of the Radionomy servers went down worldwide. Technical problems or something more?

It just so happens that Radionomy was sued today by Sony Music and other labels for copyright infringement. According to the lawsuit, Radionomy has not been paying the necessary royalties.

No word from Radionomy, however. So all of us who stream via the Radionomy service--and there are upwards of 50,000 stations all over the world using Radionomy--now do not have a platform.

How long this will go on, we are not sure.  But, after going through everything with Live365, I am not too optimistic.

If Radionomy has not been paying royalties as promised, that is a problem. But, on the other hand, getting rid of small radio stations run by hobbyists like myself has been a goal of record labels for the past few years.

And in the end, everybody loses.