Somiatruites, Ciberderechos en la Red

La radio en Internet es un prometedor escenario para levantarse del sillón y sumergirse de lleno en el flujo de la cultura. No ser sólo un consumidor sino un usuario activo, partícipe del torrente cultural, y aunque uno no sea productor directo puede lanzar a la Red música que de otra manera no se escucharía en ninguna parte.

Hay sitios como Live365.com, que ensayan un modelo de negocio realmente interesante. Se trata de una red de radios, montadas en gran medida por aficionados, que aglutina más de 20.000 emisoras en la actualidad. La gente paga un puñado de dólares (de siete dólares en adelante) para montar su radio. Los oyentes pueden escuchar gratuitamente canales con cualquier estilo que uno pueda imaginar.

La gente quiere que le escuchen, cuando escribe en weblogs, o cuando pone su música. La gente quiere ser partícipe de la esfera pública y cultural.

En los últimos días he entrevistado a personas que han montado algunas de estas radios. En general buscan satisfacer su prurito de Dj o de locutores, y es muy interesante que en torno a estas radios surgen comunidades de ámbito mundial, con seguidores muy fieles que escuchan diariamente la emisora.

Me contaba Edward Meadows, que ha montado una de estas radios online llamada Flamenco From Jerez que un mes que andaba corto de plata algunos de sus oyentes (que le escuchan desde Australia, EE UU, etc.) le pagaron la factura del servidor de la radio.

Hay un artículo al respecto en 'Netcasters bring diversity online'.

Ahora mismo escucho Radio42. Una emisora de lounge montada por Bernd Niedergesaess, un simpático consultor de software que vive en Hamburgo y que disfruta a lo grande con su radio: "radio42 is the other main task I perform in any free second I can find. And it is taking more and more time. But FUN time!", me decía recientemente en un correo. Podéis visitar su radio, realmente bien montada.

De hecho ahí va una entrevista que le hice por correo hace poco.

What is your job?
BN:-> My main job is being a consultant and software developer for the telecommunications industry. But radio42 is the other main task I perform in any free second I can find. And it is taking more and more time. But FUN time!
Currently I personally do not do any DJing anymore at the moment.

How do you think that this new way of doing radio can impact in the music world?, Is it going to be an explosion in the music tastes now that people have access to stations playing music different form the comercial?
BN:-> Yes! And this is may be the best question you could ask!!! Please read my interview which I will mail to you tomorrow. This will in detail answer the question!
Anyhow - in short:
a) Commercial stations play only very few music
b) It is my dream to make Internet Radio more famouse and it is in fact becomming more and more 'known'
c) The problems of the music industry is and was, that they only support the acts which bring 'the fast money'. They supported only the 'big' acts. This led us to minimal musical diversification. The people do not have much chance to investigate their own musical taste and they have no choice in selecting the station they like. When you only hear the same 30 CDs a commercial station plays, music can not evolve in the mind of the people. So people even buy only those CDs which make the industry believe, that those acts are the one's to support. But infact what should a person know about music when he/she has no chance to listen to alternatives. Internat Radio finally has such an ability to offer alternatives.
- You need to teach to the younger generation that there is much more nice music out there
- And you need to serve music to people who love music
We try to do both:
- We play only the music we like (and a lot of others do to)
- We support the 'smaller' acts as well
- And we make sure, that people can learn that there is so much great music out there
But, anyhow, we need to specialize - so we play MUSIC FOR LOUNGE-LOVERS.

How many people listen to your station per month?
BN:-> That's hard to measure. In total we have around 7.000 hits on our web-site every day, that is about 200.000 per month. But a lot of people come back every day. So I assume, that we have around 15.000 unique listeners per month.

Is it expensive to mantain a station like yours? could to tell me how much is it?
BN:-> In comparision to a commercial station this is much cheaper. Mainly because an internet radio does not need any special hardware and all it's software components are free available. But by running an internet station you can not make such money. So everything is free, privat and commercial free.
It coasts about 1.500Euro/month (including license, server rental and buying CDs) but it does not include any salery. Everybody is working for free.

Where do people listen to Radio42 music from?
BN:-> That's the best thing. It is really from all around the world! The majority of course comes from Germany and Europe. But we have people tuning in from all around the world (USA, Brazil, Phillipines, Singapore, Russia, China, Venezuela etc.).

Do you have feed-back from this people?, what do they tell you?
BN:-> Yes, we receive a lot of feedback everyday. Most people encourage us to continue our great work - since it is free and really offers an alternative for the people. There is not much bad response - because the good thing of Internet Radio is, that everyone can really choose to what station they want to listen. That is even the main difference to a local commercial station - where the people often do not have much alternatives. So Internet Radio is even more tough! If you are not good, that people can easily change the station. But you can not so easily leave you country when you do not like a local, commercial and terrestrial station.
But sometime we even receive some hints how we could optimize our service.
Here are some comments we received:
"Free your Mind and your Ass will follow! Keep up the good work fella´s"
"radio42 and life´s getting better"
"r.a.d.i.o 42 totally rocks!!! coolest station i have ever listened to...gives me this Cafe del Mar feeling.... Thank you !!!!"
"I can only say: without your station I could not survive my hard days of working. Many thanks and respct."
"So, it`s a kind of gratification to listen to such a radio station like radio42. I`m studying and while wasting time to do the works for university, I`m pretty amused to enjoy this likely music"
"I´m listening to your station now for a couple of days since I discovered it and it will be my daily dose of work-support for lots of more days to come. Great music! Thnx"
"I have already listened to a lot of internet radio stations, but this one is definitly the best"
"Would be great, if I could download all the wonderful music you play - I would even pay for it!!"
"HI GUYS!! I am from Colombia - South America! I was looking for some info for my radio program at Super Estacion 92.9fm & I got a lot of help from this page! Thanks & keep being like this! Buena Suerte"

Why the name Radio42?
BN:-> That is a longer story. My former company was called "solution42" and it was a small, very successful but family-like company until it was sold to a US-based company. And we (the founders) had been fond of a book: "Hitchhikers Guide through the Galaxy" from Douglas Adams (may God rest his soul). So it was obvious, that I need to call this station after this company and in respect to Douglas Adams (who also loved music).
In this book there was once a question about "...the sence of life, the universe and all the rest?". Our earth was part of a project to answer this question and there was once a computer build who's answer was "42" to this question. But the computer's comment was also, that maybe the question was not really precise.
"42" stands for this question and the answer in the same time.

Do you think it is a rewarding activity for you to mantain the radio?
BN:-> Yes! I am not financially rewarded with money of course (I personally spend about 1.000 Euro everys month) but it is worth because:
- I bring people together from all around the world
- People listen to music and music is love
- They reward me with respct and love as well
- I can teach the music industry, that 'fast money' is not always the best way
- I teach people about musical differences and tell them about alternatives
- I love music and it had been always be my dream to open a radio station Now the dream became true with radio42.Turkey, mi2g reported last month.