The guys have worked very hard today and we’ve got to the bottom of the problems we were having over the weekend, where too few songs were being played, too often.  (Well it is a test transmission).

We’re now running like mad to get a 24 x 7 schedule going.  When we’re there, and we’re certain all the systems are working properly, we’ll unleash the awesome power of the great British public (that’s you), to launch the real interactive service.  I’ll blog about how that will work as soon as I can.  Meanwhile, renewed apologies if you were bored to tears by the Test Transmission output over the weekend.  I know I was.

I owe you an apology.  The current output sounds more repetitive than before, and sometimes the same track is being played twice in succession.  This is, obviously, rubbish.  Here’s why it’s happening (I warn you, it’s ridiculous).

TX3 and the previous test transmissions were all manually assembled in an edit suite, then uploaded to the transmitter.  This gave us control over how often a song was repeated – basically, if the playlist was about eight hours long (as TX3 was), it never got repeated for eight hours. From Thursday, we’ve been using the proper playout system (that’s what’s generating the scrolling text).  I thought this would immediately be better.  We had loaded twice as many songs, and could generate a 24 hour playlist instead of looping an 8 hour one.

It’s actually much worse, because the playout is in random mode.  We had to do this because of some short-term technical constraints, or we couldn’t have got the scrolling text working for another ten days.   But apparently ‘random’ does literally mean random: the system plays one song, then plays another one entirely at random.  It has no memory of what it just did. Sometimes it plays the same song twice in succession.  You might hear the same song three times in an hour.  Random.  (I.e., totally crap).

Apple had this problem with the random function on the iPod, and they introduced a ‘not quite so random’ feature to stop it happening.  I remember thinking Steve Jobs’s explanation of this was hilarious at the time, and never thought our system would be so stupid and make the same mistake. But it is.

I’m really sorry.  Please bear with us.  We’ll fix it as soon as we can and make it … less random.  So the output will sound more, er, random.

The transfer to the new playout system went fine at 1000 this morning.  So now we got scrolling text for every song, control over the schedule, better audio quality and a louder signal.  Brill.  Well done Ian and Bill for incredible hard work and a flawless changeover.

Then this morning I did an interview with a pan-European radio station who want to link up regularly.  Amazing Radio Europe, now that’s an idea…

The transfer to the new playout system went fine at 1000 this morning.  So now we got scrolling text for every song, control over the schedule, better audio quality and a louder signal.  Brill.  Well done Ian and Bill for incredible hard work and a flawless changeover.

Then this morning I did an interview with a pan-European radio station who want to link up regularly.  Amazing Radio Europe, now that’s an idea…

So.  Tomorrow (that’s Thursday) at 1000 on the dot, you might hear a slight bump in transmission.  Then, you should notice two things.  First, the schedule will have changed to what I’m calling TX4, which I hope will be the last test transmission – and is definitely the first to be broadcast from our proper playout system.  Second, that cute little screen on your DAB radio should come alive with what us new-found experts call ‘DLS’ – scrolling text, revealing at last the name and artist for all songs on Amazing Radio.  You can see what you’re listening to.  You can tell your friends.  You can go to amazingtunes.com and buy an ethical download more easily.  Hurrah.

TX4 almost doubles the number of tracks, and it’s now a proper 24 hour schedule, not a loop.  But it’s still not the real thing, partly because you’ll decide when we get to the real thing, not me, partly because we chose this playlist, not you.  It’ll be the last time. We’ll only stop using the phrase ‘test transmission’ when you’re in charge of the playlist.  We need to build up to that.

Next, I’ll blog a bit more about how it goes properly interactive, and what I think the schedule could be like.  I’ll talk about some of the people showing an interest in this, what John Peel’s former producer said, today’s Reuters story and why Dutch radio is interested, and about the interesting emails I’ve been getting about playing Amazing Radio in public.

But not now: it’s almost midnight, and I got up this morning at 03.42.  Time to ‘lay down’. (Strange how I’m not the least bit tired).

I had a couple of emails late on Monday from people who said they couldn’t get onto amazingtunes.com and thought it was broken, due to too much traffic.   This is a great way to give me a heart attack – especially when I looked online at home and couldn’t see it either.   We’d had no error messages saying it was down, it’s always been incredibly reliable, so it was pretty weird … especially when I checked on my  iPhone and it was there after all; and resident tech wizard Jon Nairn could see it too, at his place, working normally.

Turns out to be some kind of ISP problem and the site was never actually down.  A couple of hours later I could see it too.  Panic over. But very sorry if you had trouble.

Test Transmission 3 is now live.  Once again, it includes new tunes uploaded to amazingtunes.com during the past few days.  And the playlist is already online here, so you can find the songs you like more easily.

We made TX3  sound a bit different from test TX2.  When I listened back to that, I thought we’d put too much speech in (especially too much of me), and that this was getting in the way of the music.  So this time, we’ve stripped it back, with more focus on the music and fewer announcements.  Please let me know how it feels, we need to gauge where you want the line to be between music and explanation, especially in the early days.

Meanwhile the Big Clever Computer that will do the ‘proper’ playout is all built and tested and we’re just sorting out minor technical issues like the best way to connect it to the transmitter so nobody nicks it and it doesn’t catch fire.

So we hope this will be the last Test TX and we’ll be able to schedule and vary the output properly, and make the scrolling text work, from next week.  Definitely,  No question. We hope.

Thanks again for listening, for all your feedback .. .and for supporting the Amazing artists whose tunes you hear.  It’s been overwhelming.  And if you’ve not yet bought an ethical download from amazingtunes.com – do it now! PC

Aleksandrs Ivanovs, who composes some crucial electronica as Gastronom (you’ll have heard him introducing Luse your Muse on the radio) also comes up with some fab ideas to spread the word about Amazing Radio.

Here’s my favourite so far:

Today I was at a digital store and just tuned all DAB stations on Amazing Radio It was fun …

Mmm – how cool would it be to do a stunt – kind of a virtual Flashmob – where we tune every DAB radio in every store in the UK  to Amazing Radio.

As Aleksandrs says, 

Ok. First principles.  We’re trying to fling open the doors for musicians.  We’d like to do the same for presenters: radio is as hard to get into as the record industry.

So when we say ‘we want DJs please’, we don’t mean loads of people who sound like yer average radio DJ.  We’re not asking you to give up your day job. We’re not into time checks, self-indulgence and inane babble about celebrities.  We just want new voices.

Who’s to say what a ‘DJ’ is on interactive radio?  It could be an artist introducing their own songs – and others that they like.  It could be a club DJ assembling a mash up.  It could be someone doing four links between songs in a playlist they created, and doing it again six months later.  As Aleksandr commented in a recent blog post, the links can include music, sound effects – they can be as creatively put together as you like.  It could be music journalism, interviews with Amazing bands. (more…)

Just after 6.10pm tonight the second test transmission started to go out on DAB.  We’ve inserted a lot of new tunes, many of which were uploaded this week, since we went on air on Monday.  I love the idea that only a few days ago some unsigned musicians who would never have dreamed of getting on national radio suddenly are.
(more…)