More Internet Radio Explorations


aNONradio Downtime:

Coming back from an anniversary trip with my wife I found aNONradio
offline and had been for a few days.  I was getting ready to do Chips
'n Dip and now wondering if there would be no show this week or if I
could find a way to do it anyway.

aNONradio's problems were interesting, a DJ could connect to their
mount point and stream but no one could tune in.  The end result
would be that their stream would get picked up by the aNONradio
archive recorder and show up in the archives so worth doing even
though it would feel weird doing a show with no one listening.  If
you listen to the show recorded (https://chips-n-dip.com or here on
this gopher server) then you are missing out on the banter and
back-and-forth that is going on in chat (COM) on SDF.  I've thought
about doing what other DJs sometimes do and talk back with the
audience verbally on the show, responding to the chats, but a) I
don't want to talk over the music and b) there is a delay of up to 30
seconds between live chat and the audio coming back from the stream.
So my audience interaction is done with typing instead of speaking.
This works well but it does leave the recorded show feeling more like
a Spottify playlist than a live event.


Divarin Radio:

One thing I've found and have been thinking about using is a
commercial (paid) audio streaming service.  The web site
internet-radio.com has some interesting features and I decided to do
a free 7-day trial to check them out.  I was planning on streaming
Chips 'n Dip over this but then aNONradio got up and running an hour
or so before showtime, which is good because the internet-radio free
trial is limited to 5 listeners.

Even though I didn't end up using it I think I might.  You can do
live streams and also upload content for their Auto-DJ to run
through, you can also have it pull from your aNONradio mount so I can
stream to aNONradio and be up on both streams.  My plan was to do
that so that aNONradio would pick up the archive but also could have
live listeners on internet-radio without me needing to upload to two
servers at once.

As for pricing you can buy bandwidth for like $5.  This isn't $5 a
month, just $5.  Then you have some amount of bandwidth which can be
used whenever, and when it's used up you can buy more.  If you get a
lot of listeners it's more cost effective to do a monthly flat rate
but for starting it's nice to know you don't have to pay monthly for
something you'll only use occasionally and possibly have no listeners.

This phlog post is becoming dangerously close to sounding like an
advertisement :(  This is not my intention.

So I am thinking of starting up a station on there and putting some
content in the Auto-DJ queue: Chips 'n Dip Episodes, Yesterday's
Tomorrow content, KRAB-FM content, and some other interesting things.
Except for Chips 'n Dip, I'd probably mostly limit it to talk.


Chips 'n Dip:

With all this (above) going on the biggest issue is that the URL a
listener would use to tune into the show was a moving target:  If
aNONradio is operating normally then it would be A, if not one could
tune into my mount point directly at B however too many people doing
that will cause trouble for that stream apparently because it's
intended for anonradio itself to tune in (or a remote server such as
internet-radio) so I abandoned that idea.  If I was streaming
directly to internet-radio it would be C and if I was relaying from
aNONradio to internet-radio it would be D.  Actual URLs replaced
with A,B,C,D for brevity.

So to accommodate this uncertainty I've added a "Listen Live" button
on https://chips-n-dip.com.  A few technical gotchas:  If the
internet-radio stream isn't going that link is broken (404) and if
there's dead air for more than a few moments (not sure how long
exactly) the stream auto-shuts off.  I want people to be able to
start tuning in before the show starts so that they don't miss
anything so the Listen Live button is disabled by JavaScript until 5
minutes before the show.  It's not hard to get around, the target for
the button is clearly visible, it's not a security thing it's just a
convenience thing.  But that means I need to have my stream going
with some audible sound to keep it from auto-shutdown.

This time I used a loop of a sound effect of an audience murmuring,
and turning that down and stopping it a few seconds before the show.
In the future I might expand that to 15 minutes before the show and
put something more interesting there: other music, me yammering on
about whatever happens to be on my mind.  So if you wanted to tune
into the Chips 'n Dip "pre-show" you could.  Of course that would
mean you'd miss the end of DGC with Tob and usually I'm listening to
that right up until 10 seconds before Chips 'n Dip so I probably
wouldn't have much to say at that time.

I could have a Chips 'n Dip post-show but by the end of Chips 'n Dip
my wife is usually sitting in the living room with her dinner waiting
for me to join her, and I'm hungry :)


Listeners, feedback, audience participation:

I have no idea exactly how many people listen.  I can see how many
are tuned in during the live broadcast but I am assuming of the
subset of people who like this type of music, and the subset of that
who know about the show, there's two subsets: those whose schedule
aligns with the time-slot and those with schedules that do not align.

I am assuming the non-live listeners' subset is larger.  I don't
have any insight into this.  I *could* explore web server logs or add
some tracking there but a) this won't give me insight into listeners
that go to the anonradio archive directly and b) I don't want to.  In
fact I think it's probably healthy for me to just not concern myself
with these statistics at all.  I think this is a pitfall many
YouTubers fall into, especially when they start to try to turn their
hobby (YouTubing) into a job.  You stop being motivated by your
passions and are motivated by charts and graphs and the statistics
behind them.

Still, I am thinking of implementing some kind of virtual "send me a
postcard" thing on the web site such as a guestbook, though it would
probably get filled up with spam and hacking attempts:

Buy Ketemine here!
'; drop table Users; --
(something from a Nazi piece of shit)

etc...

*sigh*, such is the nature of the web in 2026.

How about this, if you're a human then you already know my email or
could deduce it pretty easily, so if you listen to Chips 'n Dip why
not send me an email and let me know.  Here's what you could include:

How did you find out about the show?
Which show and/or tracks were your favorite so far?
Are you able to listen to the show live (sometimes)?
Anything you want me to read-out over the air in an upcoming show,
shoutouts to friends, advertise your BBS or your own show?

Also, if you are even *more* adventurous, you can record something
like: "You're listening to Chips 'n Dip on aNONradio!"
And I can throw them in during shows like a station identification,
which isn't strictly necessary since this isn't over-the-air and the
FCC station identification requirement doesn't apply to internet
streams, but they're fun and enhance the radio-ness of the broadcast.


Archive & Storage:

Yesterday's show was great, I loved the mix, very high energy and
fun.  Glad aNONradio was back on the air.  I didn't hear anyone
complain about stream issues.  However, after the show is done at
some point I want to review it and make sure the recording was good.
It wasn't :(  Yet again the aNONradio archive recording had multiple
glitches in it.  I have gone ahead and uploaded my own recording of
the show to the web site and the links there, as well as the podcast
feed (RSS button on web site) for episode 14 will use that recording
instead.

I have had to do that multiple times and eventually if this keeps
happening I will hit my disk quota on SDF.  So I am looking at other
web storage options (has to be http or https for it to work in the
podcast feed).  I am considering using archive.org but as I have
posted previously their reliability isn't so great.  There's lots of
commercial options but all this costs money, hence the Kofi link on
chips-n-dip.com.  No contributions so far so I can't fund anything
from Kofi donations.  Right now I'm just exploring options.

I would like to use my own personal recordings 100% of the time
because they are recorded straight from Mixxx as it's streaming, and
independent of any network issues so I know it's a clean recording
and I can just post it without having to spend another hour listening
to music I *just* listened to, making sure it's clean.

If you want to support me with all of these endeavors: Chips 'n Dip,
Yesterday's Tomorrow, KRAB-FM archive recovery, Divarin Radio which
will include all of those and more, and help fund web hosting for
these audio files and icecast streaming then you can use the Kofi
link on the Chips 'n Dip web site https://chips-n-dip.com

Okay this phlog post is yet again starting to sound like an
advertisement, gotta stop doing that.



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