Vinyl Voyage Radio

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....

As I posted the other day, the Copyright Royalties Board stuck a knife in small, microcaster radio stations by removing the special royalty rates granted to non-commercial webcasters.   In the last two weeks, thousands of radio stations have gone silent. One of the largest providers for stations like mine, Live365 , was forced to shut down as a result of this decision. But it doesn't have to be this way. Please help internet radio by signing some petitions and visiting Save Internet Radio.net . This petition, in particular, is important:  SaveNet Radio Petition Here's the thing: FM and AM radio stations are exempt from paying most of the royalties that internet broadcasters must pay. Spotify and Pandora have to pay the higher rate, but they can absorb the cost due to their huge operations and the millions they make in advertising. Frankly, they like the fact that small broadcasters who were once rivals and competitors are now shutting down their streams. It is a win for ...

It appears that this radio station will no longer be operating after January 31, 2016. I started Vinyl Voyage Radio almost exactly five years ago after re-discovering a bunch of my old records in the basement. My K-Tel collection stood out. Oh, how I loved my K-Tel albums back in the 70s. The impetus for Vinyl Voyage came because I wanted to share those albums. And share them I did. Nearly every month for the last five years I have recorded episodes of Adventures in Vinyl to play those K-Tel records again. And I spent countless hours digitizing my other albums as well. As a result, the playlist for this radio station has grown to thousands of songs easily spanning 60 or more years. We have been playing vinyl music 24 hours a day for the last 5 years, with a much more diverse and deep playlist than any commercial station on terrestrial radio. There are Vinyl Voyage listeners all over the world. From Finland to Israel, from Papua New Guinea to Slovakia, from Brazil to Taiwan and ma...

We recently cut the cable cord.  That's right: goodbye Comcast! Instead of cable, I installed a large antenna in our attic and we bought a Roku 3 streaming player. We've gone back to watching network TV (I get about 50 digital channels over-air) and stream our shows via Netflix and Hulu Plus. All for more than half of what cable costs. The cool thing about Roku is that I can stream Vinyl Voyage.  This was great at Christmas as I was able to saturate the house with a vinyl Christmas.  And it was easy. On the Roku player, you add "channels."  And Live365 has a channel for Roku. In fact, it is now easier than ever to stream Vinyl Voyage Radio .  In addition to Roku,  Live365 is supported by the following devices: SONOS PLAYER TiVo LOGITECH SQUEEZEBOX There are many more option available.  Visit the Live365 site for a complete list of supported devices. Not only that, but there are Live365 apps available for your ...

About two weeks ago, the local radio station here in Chicago flipped to all Christmas music all the time.  Now, for me, that is way too early. I don't necessarily like Christmas music before Thanksgiving.  I happen to really like Thanksgiving and don't like the fact that Christmas is overshadowing this equally important holiday.  Plus, my wife's birthday falls around this time, so the Christmas encroachment is pretty nefarious. I do like Christmas music, however.  But good Christmas music, not the kind played on the radio-station-that-shall-not-be named (For those of you who live in the Chicago area, you know what I am talking about.  This station literally sucks the life out of Christmas.)  How many times a day can a person hear Wham's " Last Christmas " before wanting to harm himself or others? Some of my best memories of Christmas as a kid involves music.  Good music. My parents had a rather large collection of Christmas albums.  They too...

Daily Listening Hours February, so far, has been a good month for Vinyl Voyage Radio.  And it's thanks to those of you who have tuned in.  Over the last 30 days, we have now clocked over 200 hours of listening time.  That's the first time we have gone to 200 hours in any given 30 day period over the last year.  And on February 8th, there was over 24 hours of listening clocked! And February is shaping up to be a good month.  The total listening hours for just February is over 112 hours.  In January, it was 162 hours, so we are set to go beyond that this month. Plus, only half of our listeners are coming from the United States.  We have many listeners in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Sweden as well. Thank you for listening. If you like Vinyl Voyage radio, please use the rating form our Live365 page .  Like us on Facebook as well. And...continue to live your life at 33 rpm. Don't forget..Manic Mondays tomorrow....

A year ago, I started this radio station.  During the holidays back in 2010,  I started going through my old record collection, fixed a turntable and rediscovered the joy of vinyl.  One thing was for sure:  I have a lot of old K-Tel albums.  These albums not only represented formative years of my childhood, they also were interesting musical time capsules of the 1970s and 80s. As a result, Vinyl Voyage Radio was born in February 2011 and I started hosting the K-Tel-themed show, Adventures in Vinyl , which featured a different K-Tel album every month.  It's been fun hosting the show and becoming reacquainted with the music, history and memories.  We've been on the air now for just about a year.  Over the year people from all over the world have listened.  Recently, the station has clocked hours from Israel, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Belgium, Ukraine and Mexico.  Total listening hours is relatively small, however.  Just under 1000 hours ...

Tonight, we will be an encore broadcast of Mix Tape Memories, Episode 1.  This mix is called "Many Songs #4" from 1986 and includes such 80s bands as Oingo Boingo, Tones on Tail and R.E.M. Broadcast begins at 8 pm CT. Join us for this nostalgic trip back to the mid-80s--commercial free.

Each month on the Vinyl Voyage , we highlight a rare and often strange oddity from the world of vinyl. This month, it is Leonard Nimoy's debut album (yes, he had more) from 1967, Mr. Spock's Music from Outer Space .  Riding on the popularity of Star Trek at the time, the album features instrumentals, poetry and songs---all with a space theme. There was even a single from the album released.  It contained the strange reading, "A Visit to a Sad Planet" with the "Theme from Star Trek" on the B side. Excerpt:  " A Visit to a Sad Planet " Excerpt:  " Theme from Star Trek " There are some very sixties-type instrumentals, such as "Music to Watch Space Girls By" and a spaced-out version of "Mission Impossible."  Also, Leonard Nimoy takes his turn  singing with "Where is Love?" from the musical Oliver and a sad tune entitled "Lost in the Stars" Leonard Nimoy had five releases from Dot records, the...