A Virtual Broadcasting Empire

In our last episode, our hero (me!) announced he was getting ready to close his little faux radio station due to circumstances beyond his control. Since then, circumstances have changed, however, things are still beyond my control and have taken on a life of their own. I’m just hanging on tight and enjoying the ride.

Radio Danko will not be closing. I hesitate to make such a definitive statement but for now and likely the foreseeable future, it’s business as usual for my radio station/music stream.

The change in circumstance that allows Radio Danko to continue is that we can now be heard in Canada again. Our host platform has geo-blocked a number of countries, most likely for financial reasons, and while I’m still not happy about that, the blocking of Canada was the deal-breaker for me as Radio Danko has a number of loyal listeners there. The vast majority of our listeners come from North America and Western and Central Europe and are now unaffected by our host’s geo-blocking, which means Radio Danko is virtually (pun!) unaffected by it as well, so we can continue operations.

I’m very fond of the station myself so I’m really glad I don’t have to close it. In fact, rather than closing one music stream, I opened two more! One on the same hosting platform as Radio Danko and the other on a different platform.

Funny how that happened. It’s a rather long and complicated story so I’ll skip the details and just say an unexpected series of circumstances and opportunities combined to cause me to start my own little virtual broadcasting empire. Bill Paley never imagined such things.

Radio Danko was originally created to provide inworld music in my various virtual lands and the inspiration for the two new streams comes from exactly the same place. Now, throughout my virtual home of Dankoville on Naras Nook grid – every area has an appropriate music stream that I know I’ll be happy with because I picked the music!

Dankoville is a 768 varregion (the equivalent of nine standard regions), so there’s a lot of territory to cover. Radio Danko is heard in the city and town areas as it has been since it was created in May of last year. But now in the rural areas, my new station, Chicken Fried Country Radio is heard. The third stream, Retro Roots Radio, is just perfect for two of the local bars, The Evergreen Pub in Dankoville and Ted’s Tap in New Teasdale. (I’ve also got it on at my farmhouse.)

And since I’m a man of many worlds, I need music Elsewhere too. That’s a little joke. “Elsewhere” is the name of my region on Craft World. I can’t remember which station I left on when I was there over the weekend but Retro Roots Radio should be the perfect choice in Elsewhere too. I’m also running it in Second Life at my retreat, my cottage in Winterfell, another perfect fit.

The music streams are an outgrowth of my virtual world hobby and now with three of them, I suppose they are a hobby all on their own. But the new hobby or sub-hobby leads me right back to virtual worlds. As I’ve been working on getting the two new streams up and running, I’ve been thinking I really need to make a physical space in my virtual lands for a radio station building. I’m not sure whether to go simple and small, little one or two-story office buildings for each station, or go for a larger build to house all of them, a virtual world headquarters type of thing. So that’s one new virtual world project to think on and develop over the coming weeks or months.

Another project is much simpler… I’m gonna make an inworld radio that only has my three stations on it! Oh sure, I still listen to other music streams and I use other streams for parcel music in some of my virtual spots, so I won’t be getting rid of my current inworld radios. But I’m going to make a new radio with only my streams, just because I can!

And I’ll leave a slot for a fourth station. (Stop laughing!) I have one more idea for a music stream but it’s on the back burner for now as I do have my hands full.

Internet radio stations come and go — that’s why I made a music stream in the first place, a couple of my favorites went away — so you might be looking for a new music stream, yourself. And since I have three, one (or more!) might be your answer. So here are the direct links to all three. You can use these links in a browser or to set parcel music inworld. Please check them out! Thank you.

Radio Danko (link updated Aug 25)

http://listen.radionomy.com/radiodankovirtual

Retro Roots Radio

http://cabhs30.sonixcast.com:9790/;

Chicken Fried Country

http://listen.radionomy.com/chickenfriedcountry

Each stream has a little website with info about the music genres and ways to listen, have a look…

Radio Danko website

Retro Roots Radio website

Chicken Fried Country website