It seems that every week there is another post on this and other forums from New radio stations looking for DJs and presenters, all of them state that they are the best thing since sliced bread and all are offering the prospective DJ/Presenter "The chance of a lifetime" to present a show on their station. What they are all basically saying is that they have a couple of DJs and a few mates tuning into their station and they desperately need more DJs and listeners.
It has become so easy to set up a radio station on the internet and with streaming becoming cheaper I can see a lot more stations popping up all over the place but the sad reality is that most of these NEW stations will disappear just as quickly as they are set up.
A lot of people open up an internet radio station without really considering the true costs both in time and financially of legally running a station, when they start they are extremely enthusiastic about running a station but a few months down the line when their listener figures haven't really climbed they start to lose that enthusiasm and the station then closes, or the licensing authorities catch up with them and demand that the licensing fees are paid and they very quickly close the station down.
The question is would it be better to look for a decent station that is already established to present your show on rather than starting your own internet radio station? IMHO you would be better approaching another station and presenting your show on their station before even considering starting your own internet radio station.
Most internet radio stations that are already established will ask you to send them a demo of yourself and if they like it they may well offer you a slot, of course you will not get one of the best slots but with time you could work your way into one of the more popular slots or you may get approached by other stations asking you to present your show on their station at a better time slot.
If of course you send your demo in to stations and you keep getting turned down you have to ask yourself the hard question as to whether you are actually good enough or are you approaching the right sort of stations? If you decide you are not good enough as a presenter there are of course other ways that you could do stuff for radio stations like making jingles or voice overs which you may find is your area of expertise!
Ok so what qualifies me to say all of the above? Do I run an internet radio station? Have I presented shows on other internet radio stations? I can answer Yes to all of the above!
Ok so here is my story, I am a Taxi Driver In London, yes a Black Cab driver and a couple of years ago I had the wacky idea that the London Taxi Trade should have its own radio station, I banded the idea about among friends and also on twitter where I am followed by a couple of thousand other drivers and my idea was met with a very positive reaction with everyone saying that I should go ahead with the idea. I have DJed since I was 14 as a mobile jock and in pubs and clubs around the London area with quite a lot of success in my younger years so I decided to go ahead and explore setting up a radio station, I mean how hard could it be?
So I looked at terrestrial radio which in London is basically a no go! I then looked a DAB which is cost prohibitive costing many thousands of pounds each month to stay on air so the only option left was Internet Radio which to set up a basic stream was fairly cheap, so I found a cheap streaming provider and off we went, we got listed on Tune In radio and started doing a couple of live shows a week with a lot of listeners tuning in for those shows.
A friend of mine was involved with setting the station up with me and he was doing a couple of live shows during the afternoon and I was doing mine on a Monday and Tuesday evenings and all was going quite well until we hit a couple of obstacles! Firstly my internet connection with SKY broadband started to let me down so I changed internet providers back to BT and opted for their Business Infinity Unlimited which obviously cost more money. then the streaming host changed hands so we had to find a new hosting company. We tried a couple of hosting companies until in January of this year we found a company who we are now with and cannot recommend highly enough, their support is second to none and the man who runs the company is totally commuted to his customers, something that is quite rare these days!
Our original basic set up was that we had built a little studio in a Taxi garage in an office which is up in the roof which gets very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer, we had a main computer in that office which run the automation and when I did a live show from home I would log into the garage computer and switch of the encoders and then start to broadcast from my house, during the summer of this year we managed to destroy 3 computers due to the heat in that office! So we did experiment with running the station form a Windows VPS which worked out quite expensive so we are now back to streaming from a PC!
We then hit another barrier! Our target audience is quite niche, we are broadcasting to Taxi Drivers who are listening in via their mobile devices int he main and many of them are not on unlimited data plans, so we had to look at our streaming rates, we were originally streaming at 64kbps and we had added a 128kbps stream for those who tune in from home as some said that the quality was not that good when listening from home but we no had to consider also streaming a lower bit rates so we added a 24 kbps stream and I know some of you are going to laugh but we also added a 12kbps mono stream.
We then had some professional IDs and jingles made, and we also licensed the station and all was going quite well but then out listener figures started to drop and we became a bit despondent with the whole project, I went off and presented shows on a couple of other internet radio stations and did consider setting up an internet radio station aimed at anyone rather than one aimed at a niche market such as Taxi Drivers but decided against that idea due to the number of internet radio stations that are already operating.
So where are we now? Well we were called London Taxi Radio and our target audience were London Taxi Drivers of which there are about 25,000, quite a limited audience! We decided to target our station to a wider audience of Taxi drivers around the UK as there are around 250,000 of them, but that meant a change of name, what should we call it? We did consider Taxi Radio but thought it was a bit bland but were going to go with it until a lady Taxi driver suggested we call it Sherbet Radio, Sherbet being the cockney rhyming slang for cab, Sherbet Dab = Cab, so we are now called Sherbet Radio, which obviously meant changing all of our imaging and ids, more cost!
We now stream at 128, 64 & 32 Kbps MP3 Stereo 48 & 24 Kbps AAC + Stereo and 12 Kbps AAC+ Mono, we have 2 PCs which Mirror each other so in case one of the internet connections fails or the PC itself fails which just switch over to the other one.
So where am I going with all of this?
Well during our 18 months on air I have seen numerous internet radio stations come and go, some due to lost enthusiasm, some due to licensing authorities catching up with them and some due to the costs.
We are still here and are getting stronger and still gaining listeners!
Why is that? I was ready to throw the towel in a call it a day, but I do have the broadcasting bug, but I was just going to go off and present a show on another station but my mate Mark who runs the station with me, convinced me to carry on. We have been gaining a lot of listeners since our name change with around 45-50 tuning in to each live show. We are still looking for presenters but we never post on forums asking for new ones as we are looking for DJs and presenters from within our own industry.
So how much has it cost us? to be honest, I really wouldn't like to add up how much we have spent! but here are just some of the costs we have incurred.
Monthly Costs
Internet Connection £55
Streaming Costs £20
Webhosting £10
Licensing Fees £34
Jingles & music £40
Total Monthly costs £159
Hardware (all purchased second hand)
Computers £800
Audio Equipment (Mixers, Mics, Compressors etc) £2000
Jingles & FXs
FXs to make our own jingles £1000
Purchased Ids & Jingles £500
Software £500
Time
We have committed hundreds of hours to setting up, running and maintaining the station and if we had been working instead, the time would add up to many thousands of pounds!
There are also a lot of costs that I have probably forgotten , or don't want to remember….lol
We are only just, after 18 months getting the station to sound how we would like it, we run a main PC with our automation software which runs our pre recorded shows and links to our live shows, are we any good? Probably Not…lol
Am I any good? probably not
We are committed or at least should be!
I have merely posted this to provide those who are thinking of setting up an internet radio station with the real costs involved and the level of commitment in time and monetary terms necessary to keep and internet radio station going.
If you want to have a listen then please do, let us know what you think, we welcome criticism of any kind, good or bad, I do my show on a Monday evening between 9pm and midnight GMT, tune in if you want.
You can find us at http://sherbetradio.co.uk
It has become so easy to set up a radio station on the internet and with streaming becoming cheaper I can see a lot more stations popping up all over the place but the sad reality is that most of these NEW stations will disappear just as quickly as they are set up.
A lot of people open up an internet radio station without really considering the true costs both in time and financially of legally running a station, when they start they are extremely enthusiastic about running a station but a few months down the line when their listener figures haven't really climbed they start to lose that enthusiasm and the station then closes, or the licensing authorities catch up with them and demand that the licensing fees are paid and they very quickly close the station down.
The question is would it be better to look for a decent station that is already established to present your show on rather than starting your own internet radio station? IMHO you would be better approaching another station and presenting your show on their station before even considering starting your own internet radio station.
Most internet radio stations that are already established will ask you to send them a demo of yourself and if they like it they may well offer you a slot, of course you will not get one of the best slots but with time you could work your way into one of the more popular slots or you may get approached by other stations asking you to present your show on their station at a better time slot.
If of course you send your demo in to stations and you keep getting turned down you have to ask yourself the hard question as to whether you are actually good enough or are you approaching the right sort of stations? If you decide you are not good enough as a presenter there are of course other ways that you could do stuff for radio stations like making jingles or voice overs which you may find is your area of expertise!
Ok so what qualifies me to say all of the above? Do I run an internet radio station? Have I presented shows on other internet radio stations? I can answer Yes to all of the above!
Ok so here is my story, I am a Taxi Driver In London, yes a Black Cab driver and a couple of years ago I had the wacky idea that the London Taxi Trade should have its own radio station, I banded the idea about among friends and also on twitter where I am followed by a couple of thousand other drivers and my idea was met with a very positive reaction with everyone saying that I should go ahead with the idea. I have DJed since I was 14 as a mobile jock and in pubs and clubs around the London area with quite a lot of success in my younger years so I decided to go ahead and explore setting up a radio station, I mean how hard could it be?
So I looked at terrestrial radio which in London is basically a no go! I then looked a DAB which is cost prohibitive costing many thousands of pounds each month to stay on air so the only option left was Internet Radio which to set up a basic stream was fairly cheap, so I found a cheap streaming provider and off we went, we got listed on Tune In radio and started doing a couple of live shows a week with a lot of listeners tuning in for those shows.
A friend of mine was involved with setting the station up with me and he was doing a couple of live shows during the afternoon and I was doing mine on a Monday and Tuesday evenings and all was going quite well until we hit a couple of obstacles! Firstly my internet connection with SKY broadband started to let me down so I changed internet providers back to BT and opted for their Business Infinity Unlimited which obviously cost more money. then the streaming host changed hands so we had to find a new hosting company. We tried a couple of hosting companies until in January of this year we found a company who we are now with and cannot recommend highly enough, their support is second to none and the man who runs the company is totally commuted to his customers, something that is quite rare these days!
Our original basic set up was that we had built a little studio in a Taxi garage in an office which is up in the roof which gets very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer, we had a main computer in that office which run the automation and when I did a live show from home I would log into the garage computer and switch of the encoders and then start to broadcast from my house, during the summer of this year we managed to destroy 3 computers due to the heat in that office! So we did experiment with running the station form a Windows VPS which worked out quite expensive so we are now back to streaming from a PC!
We then hit another barrier! Our target audience is quite niche, we are broadcasting to Taxi Drivers who are listening in via their mobile devices int he main and many of them are not on unlimited data plans, so we had to look at our streaming rates, we were originally streaming at 64kbps and we had added a 128kbps stream for those who tune in from home as some said that the quality was not that good when listening from home but we no had to consider also streaming a lower bit rates so we added a 24 kbps stream and I know some of you are going to laugh but we also added a 12kbps mono stream.
We then had some professional IDs and jingles made, and we also licensed the station and all was going quite well but then out listener figures started to drop and we became a bit despondent with the whole project, I went off and presented shows on a couple of other internet radio stations and did consider setting up an internet radio station aimed at anyone rather than one aimed at a niche market such as Taxi Drivers but decided against that idea due to the number of internet radio stations that are already operating.
So where are we now? Well we were called London Taxi Radio and our target audience were London Taxi Drivers of which there are about 25,000, quite a limited audience! We decided to target our station to a wider audience of Taxi drivers around the UK as there are around 250,000 of them, but that meant a change of name, what should we call it? We did consider Taxi Radio but thought it was a bit bland but were going to go with it until a lady Taxi driver suggested we call it Sherbet Radio, Sherbet being the cockney rhyming slang for cab, Sherbet Dab = Cab, so we are now called Sherbet Radio, which obviously meant changing all of our imaging and ids, more cost!
We now stream at 128, 64 & 32 Kbps MP3 Stereo 48 & 24 Kbps AAC + Stereo and 12 Kbps AAC+ Mono, we have 2 PCs which Mirror each other so in case one of the internet connections fails or the PC itself fails which just switch over to the other one.
So where am I going with all of this?
Well during our 18 months on air I have seen numerous internet radio stations come and go, some due to lost enthusiasm, some due to licensing authorities catching up with them and some due to the costs.
We are still here and are getting stronger and still gaining listeners!
Why is that? I was ready to throw the towel in a call it a day, but I do have the broadcasting bug, but I was just going to go off and present a show on another station but my mate Mark who runs the station with me, convinced me to carry on. We have been gaining a lot of listeners since our name change with around 45-50 tuning in to each live show. We are still looking for presenters but we never post on forums asking for new ones as we are looking for DJs and presenters from within our own industry.
So how much has it cost us? to be honest, I really wouldn't like to add up how much we have spent! but here are just some of the costs we have incurred.
Monthly Costs
Internet Connection £55
Streaming Costs £20
Webhosting £10
Licensing Fees £34
Jingles & music £40
Total Monthly costs £159
Hardware (all purchased second hand)
Computers £800
Audio Equipment (Mixers, Mics, Compressors etc) £2000
Jingles & FXs
FXs to make our own jingles £1000
Purchased Ids & Jingles £500
Software £500
Time
We have committed hundreds of hours to setting up, running and maintaining the station and if we had been working instead, the time would add up to many thousands of pounds!
There are also a lot of costs that I have probably forgotten , or don't want to remember….lol
We are only just, after 18 months getting the station to sound how we would like it, we run a main PC with our automation software which runs our pre recorded shows and links to our live shows, are we any good? Probably Not…lol
Am I any good? probably not
We are committed or at least should be!
I have merely posted this to provide those who are thinking of setting up an internet radio station with the real costs involved and the level of commitment in time and monetary terms necessary to keep and internet radio station going.
If you want to have a listen then please do, let us know what you think, we welcome criticism of any kind, good or bad, I do my show on a Monday evening between 9pm and midnight GMT, tune in if you want.
You can find us at http://sherbetradio.co.uk
Last edited:
