This is just an opinion piece today. I own an Amazon Echo and currently these are the only music directories or services that the Echo accepts: * Amazon Music * Spotify *iHeart Radio * Tunein Edgewater Gold Radio is heard on Tunein so you can access it with your Amazon Echo device but there are many internet and FM stations that are not heard on one of these services. This means that you cannot access them on one of these devices. Given the popularity of these devices, music and radio access should really be expanded. Users should be able to access their favorite music or station in many different directories including Live 365, Nobex, Itunes etc. Users should also have to ability to enter a

Forty six years ago I walked into the college radio station at William Paterson University hoping to get a show. I had no radio experience but was willing to learn and do anything I could to make my debut on the air. I swept floors, emptied kitty litter, took out the garbage etc. Luckily I was given a show. It was on Friday mornings from 8 - 11am. At the time the station was a carrier current station with transmitters in the dorms and hookups to the student center and snack bar. Thats it but it was a big deal for me. WPSC 590 am could be heard in and around the college dorms on 590 am. The signal always had a "hum" in it but it didn't seem to bother anyone.It had regular listeners in the sna

When I first started Edgewater Gold Radio back in 2002, I used the Auto DJ feature in Live 365 to run the station. There were limitations, no voice tracking ability and really very little if any cross fading or processing. I used this system for many years.It's a great backup system but I wasn't satisfied using it for 24/7 broadcasts. I switched to OTS automation in 2004 but was still was not satisfied. I need a system that has great dynamic features and is easy to use. I needed to reduce my workload and had to find a reliable system to run my station. Last year, I was introduced to Nextkast Automation software. I couldn't be happier. They system is easy to use, very powerful and has great

Hearing Christmas music on the radio was always a thrill for me as a kid. It confirmed that the holiday season is well underway. Working in radio, I always enjoyed it when Christmas music was added to the playlist. I love the holiday season and Christmas music always brings back great memories for me. Traditional we usually wouldn't hear any holiday music before Thanksgiving. Radio stations would start to add the music to their playlists a little at a time from Thanksgiving day on. The amount of Christmas music increases each week as we got closer to the holiday. Today, some stations switch to all Christmas programming in late October or early November. The reason.....financial of course. Wh

Lots of holiday activities kick off this week in Rehoboth Beach. The annual tree lighting will take place on Friday, November 23rd at 6:30pm. Here's the official posting on www.cityofrehoboth.com. The official kickoff to the 2018 holiday season will be the City of Rehoboth Beach Tree Lighting and Sing-Along at the Bandstand on Friday, November 23, from 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. This year’s tree has been generously donated by Pat Romaine. Partially sponsored by WSFS, the sing-along will be hosted by Clear Space Theatre and officially illuminate the city’s most famous tree at 7 p.m. Song lyrics for the sing-along will be available to Cape Gazette subscribers in the ‘Tis the Season holiday guide inse

If you're an internet station you probably don't have your own news team. If you would like some news on your station, I would recommend adding FSN or Feature Story News to your station. FSN's anchored news bulletins are updated multiple times daily. They provide three versions of FSN World News. The cost is about $15 a month. FSN News works with all automation system and do not contain any commercials. You can choose between three types of newscasts per hour. * A 30 second update * Three minute news bulletin * Five Minute newscast At the present time, Edgewater Gold Radio only airs locally produced music news. We don't offer any world or national news coverage. I am considering adding F

Internet broadcasters are faced with fierce competition from thousands of other stations streaming all the time. You're broadcasting to the world so how can your station stand out and attract listeners? Unlike terrestrial radio stations that are corporate owned, Internet broadcasters have an "open slate" to be creative and provide programming not found on commercial terrestrial radio stations. We also have the advantage of seeing statistics on a daily basis showing who's listening, where they're listening, the device they're listening on and if the trend goes up or down. If you're a new internet broadcaster, one of the first things that you should do is try to get your station listed in as m

Terrestrial radio targets specific areas which can create a fairly easy revenue stream. You concentrate on the area that you cover. Promote events, provide traffic and weather, air local programs and sell advertising targeting local merchants. It's a totally different situation when it comes to internet radio. Internet radio is world wide. The map above shows all the areas of listeners to Edgewater Gold Radio. The darker the color red, the more listeners. As you can see we have listeners in nearly every country in the world. Creating a revenue stream is difficult with internet radio. We air network commercials and share a small part of the revenue. Being a local station can be very difficult

Once in awhile I 'll have two of the same recurring dreams. One is that I'm at a radio station, on the air using only vinyl records to play music when suddenly one of the turntables stops working. Keep in mind I have only two turntables and there are no music on carts or reels in this dream. It is a dreaded feeling that broadcasters sometimes had to face back in the day of vinyl. Another dream I have is accidentally leaving the mike open and having unwanted studio chatter go over the air. This can actually happen and does! While I was working at WFAS-FM in White Plains, New York, I was doing a Love song show. Listeners would call in their song dedications. I recorded some of the calls to ai

Soundproofing is very important when it comes to providing quality audio to your podcast or internet radio station. If we are broadcasting from a studio at home, some soundproofing will improve your sound and limit outside noises. If you are designing a new studio, there are some things that you should take into consideration during the design process. Soundonsound.com has provided a detailed explanation of soundproofing and hopefully can provide you with some good tips if you are designing a sound proof studio. Soundproofing People often don't understand the difference between soundproofing and acoustic treatment, so, here it is in short: acoustic treatment makes your room sound better, whe

Some stations use the night to offer different kinds of programming. Since Internet Radio is worldwide, programmers must be careful when choosing different kinds of programs to air during the night time hours. Edgewater Gold Radio plays oldies. It's main audience is in the United States but gets lots of listeners from all over the world. We play oldies from the 50s through the 80s all the time. Our daytime rotation consists of more uptempo sixties and seventies songs with some 80s and some uptempo 50s. At night our rotation changes a bit. We play more 50s and some are medium and even down tempo songs. We also keep the 60s, 70s and 80s in this rotation. There are more medium tempo songs in ou

There will be many answers to this question. Running an internet radio station can be both a gratifying and costly experience especially if you have a significant number of listeners. We won't go into the costs right now because I want to concentrate on the amount of time, you spend each day on your station. Most of the time, internet owners, use some kind of radio automation to run their station. Some stations have multiple remote DJ's who provide a few hours of voice tracking per day. Some stations are mostly music and really don't require a that much programming time. I feel that the more you put into your station, the more time you will spend on programming each day. Edgewater Gold Radio

Yesterday, I had a minor panic attack. Edgewater Gold Radio's main automation program runs from a Dell Computer. It's a very good computer with excellent virus protection and lots of disk space. Sometimes, Windows 10 will send a message saying that they have an update. I choose to install the update, later in the evening because the system has to shut down. The radio automation continues from the Auto DJ in the cloud during this time. This happens maybe once a month if that much. Yesterday, I received no message of an update. I woke up and the system appeared to be shut down. I had to rush to get to work so I had very little time to troubleshoot at to what caused this problem. I restarted t

Your radio station is on the air, humming and everything seems to be rolling along nicely. You've worked hard to achieve quality programming. Suddenly something goes wrong with your hard drive, your system crashes and in an instant, the months and years of your hard work is erased in a flash! Hopefully you won't ever experience this situation because you routinely back up your system. I can't stress the importance of regular backups. I back up my station on a weekly basis. Choose a day and make that your system backup day. I back my system up on Sundays. About a year ago, there was a problem with my hard drive. The system shut down and would not boot up. To make a long story short, I had to

This is one of the most important mid term elections in a very long time. Anger, frustration and distrust has affected millions of Americans and there is a great fear that things will get worse. I'm usually not political in my blogs but I feel that we are the only ones that can heal this greatly divided country. If you usually don't vote in the mid term elections, take the time and get out and vote this time. Your vote will make a big difference. I'm encouraging all of our Edgewater Gold Radio domestic listeners to make the effort and get out and vote! Believe it or not, the way we feel really affects our health. Hearing and seeing the events over the past two years raises my blood pressure

It's that time of year again. Clocks go back one hour this weekend. I remind my listeners to set their clocks back and change the batteries in their smoke detectors while they're at it. When I worked in terrestrial radio, we just worked an extra hour if we were scheduled for the overnight shift. We also made sure that we set all of the clocks in the studio back an hour. Today with radio automation sometimes, we don't have to do anything. They system re-sets itself and adds an extra hour of programming to the schedule. At Edgewater Gold Radio I use Nextkast radio automation software. I usually run the station in "playlist" mode meaning that each hour is generated in advance. This mode is need