Radio Danko Prepares To Sign-Off

UPDATE, JULY 13, 2016: Radio Danko lives! And that’s not all! See the update on this blog, A Virtual Broadcasting Empire

UPDATE, MAY 16, 2016: It ain’t over ’til it’s over! I may be able to keep Radio Danko on the air once we shutdown on our current platform. Further investigation and extensive testing must be done first to see if another platform meets our needs. This may take a few weeks to work out so PLEASE STAND BY! In the meantime you can still hear us in the US, UK and most EU countries and some others; we are still geo-blocked in Canada, Brazil, Japan and many others, though I’ll bet some of you are smart enough to know how to get around that. Stay tuned to this page for updates! Here are our current listen links:

Radio Danko – direct link to listen online or inworld as parcel music
http://listen.radionomy.com/radiodankoworldservice

Radio Danko page on Radionomy website
(listen here and see the Recent Tracks & Artists list)
http://www.radionomy.com/en/radio/radiodankoworldservice/index

original article, May 11:

My music stream, Radio Danko, is hosted on the platform, Radionomy. That company appears to be instituting policy changes that I can’t live with. The result is, I’m expecting to have to shutdown Radio Danko for good in the very near future.

At the heart of the matter is the issue of music rights fees. It’s a very long and complicated story but the most important part of it is that in January 2016, new policies went into effect in the U.S. that dramatically increased the fees for small webcasters. Radionomy pays those fees for us, in exchange for that and for providing the platform, we broadcast their commercials twice an hour.

From what I’m gathering from various sources, Radionomy has decided to geo-block our streams to countries where they have no advertising revenue. I guess this allows them to only pay rights fees in the countries they are continuing to stream to, the ones they do receive advert revenue from. It looks like they are going to continue to stream to the US and the EU and a few other countries but are blocking the streams to Canada, Brazil, Japan and many more.

I started Radio Danko to use as parcel music in Dankoville and my other virtual world places. But now a visitor to Dankoville from Canada or Brazil won’t actually hear Radio Danko, instead they’ll hear an ambient lounge station which plays rights-free music. It’s Radionomy’s default re-direct station. This defeats the original purpose of Radio Danko.

If I wanted to spend a lot of money and dedicate a lot more of my time to Radio Danko, I might be able to continue, using another platform or method of webcasting. If it was my main hobby, I would. But my main hobby is virtual worlds and I would rather spend my time and money directly on that hobby rather than on what is in reality, a side project. I’ve run Radio Danko for exactly a year and it’s been a lot of fun but it looks like my only smart choice now is to shutdown. The only thing that stops me from doing it today is that Radionomy – as usual – has not announced anything officially about it’s new policies, other than to confirm they are geo-blocking some countries. They have not even told us which countries are blocked! What information I do have is from talking with other users via social media and figuring it out among ourselves. But I could not leave my regular listeners hanging any longer so I’m putting out this note. If you use Radio Danko as parcel music and you live in Canada or any other country that’s been affected by this policy change over the past week, I suggest you find another music stream to put in your parcel. The rest of you can still hear Radio Danko until I actually stop updating the daily program logs.

My heart goes out to my fellow webcasters for whom running a small radio station is their main hobby, a labor of love for most, with no financial incentive. The short-sightedness of the U.S. government, the big record companies and music publishing companies is killing off the hobby of thousands of “just average folks” who have a love of music and radio that they want to share with others. Contrary to the propaganda that is put out by big money interests (and their allies who don’t really understand what’s going on), the actions of the corporations and inaction of the government is not an attempt to protect the artist, it is clearly an effort to quash any and all competition, however small, so the big companies can have full control.

I thank you all for listening to Radio Danko over this past year and for the nice compliments that have been sent my way. It really has been a pleasure to run this little radio station and to have others enjoying it. I’ll announce the actual shutdown when I get some confirmation from Radionomy or when I just give up on waiting for it. Unless Radionomy pulls the plug on me unexpectedly, the stream will keep running – in the countries you can still hear it in, until I decide exactly how and when to make an exit. Could be I’ll be happily surprised by some unexpected good news from Radionomy but it sure doesn’t look like it. Stay tuned to this page for any further news.

It also could be that Radio Danko returns at some time in the future, if changes in U.S. law or the policies of big money corporations ever allow for that. I don’t expect that but I’m going to keep Radio Danko’s social media accounts just in case I need them again some day. They’ll just be very quiet after the final broadcast day is announced.

Thanks again for your support,

Danko Whitfield
aka George Miner
for Radio Danko