For those of you that may be unaware, amazingtunes.com recently decided to bite a very large, music shaped bullet and launch a national radio station. While I can’t tell you how a bullet can be shaped like music, I can enlighten you a little further on the ins and outs of what we’ve called Amazing Radio.

Broadcasting throughout Britain on DAB digital radio (and online) we’re now providing the world’s first, and only, dedicated unsigned radio station. All content that reaches the airwaves is uploaded to amazingtunes.com by you folk at home – not a label in sight – with the artist still keeping 70% of the revenue.

We’ve well and truly wandered off the beaten track here and to a larger extent we’ve a relatively unknowing view of where the station will be a year or so from now. There’s a good reason for this though; it is our aim to place the power back in the hands of the people that actually listen, to heed suggestions of the fans and artists and provide the listener with a democratic service that evolves with the wants of those that tune in. How refreshing…

The music industry is by and large a closed shop, far too incestuous to be fair and far too quick to dismiss anything brave enough to buck the trend. It’s fair to say that we’re not really the most compassionate of people here at amazingtunes.com when it comes to our view of the current industry – an antiquated machine, rusted up cogs that churn to the same sounds, insistent on ignoring the digital era and patronising the awakened listener with their rotisserie-like flavour of the week. Even those organisations supposedly representing the artists – such as the PRS – somehow manage to tread on the toes of the listeners.

To this ends we’ve tailored Amazing Radio to provide something a little more real – to offer something that will strike a chord with genuine music fans and first time listeners alike. You may not be aware for example, but Amazing Radio stands outside the cumbersome grip of the PRS. Listening to Amazing Radio at work, or in the shops, doesn’t require a PRS license. This is certainly radio for the people by the people with no hurdles, no advertising, and most importantly, a constant flow of great new music.

Having just taken off air the last of the test transmissions we’re now airing the first scheduled shows. Have a listen and see what you think. Then tell us. What do you want to hear? Let us know what you like and even more importantly, what you don’t like and let’s ensure that as we move forwards we’re all singing from the same, innovative and ethical hymn sheet.

amazingtunes.com

You can follow the Amazing Radio blog here. Keep up to date on our progression behind the scenes and let us know what you think. Your feedback to date has been brilliant. Both inspiring and informative, so please keep it coming.

Tomorrow morning – that’s Monday – at 0800, we’ll stop test transmissions.  Hurrah. Yippee. Marvelous. About time too.

What you’ll hear will be … a bit different. As you may have noticed, it’s not our style to say “Da Daa! Here’s a 24×7 schedule!  Like it or Lump It!”  I’d like the schedule to be controlled by you, just as much as the music selection is. So tomorrow we’re launching a couple of key lumps for consideration.

AUDITION - where you choose the music 
0800, 1200 & 1700 weekdays, 1000 and 1530 weekends

This is our most important show – it’s the heart of the interactivity.  We suspect you’re a bit too busy to listen to all 17,626 songs on amazingtunes.com (that’s the total this morning, with 7 more added so far today.  It’ll have increased by the time I finish writing this*). But we listen to everything, to check nobody’s stealing music, to monitor for taste and decency, to check PRS membership status – and because it’s damned good fun.  So Audition is our selection of ten songs that caught our ear. We’d like your permission to add them to the playlist.
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My friend Matt emailed me a picture of HMV Oxford Street, where yesterday every DAB radio was tuned to Amazing Radio. A few weeks ago, an Amazing artist went into his local store and re-tuned all their DAB radios too.  There seems to be a bit of a guerrilla campaign going on; not so much ‘Flash Mob’, as ‘Flash Knob’.  I wonder which shop will be the next one to turn (or be turned) on to Amazing Radio.

Mind you, the Guardian says we are ‘the people’s radio station’ and Time Out says we’re ‘nobly democractic’ – some Direct Action goes with the territory! – especially as Amazing is the only radio station you can listen to in business premises without a PRS licence.  But then I wonder: where next?  Libraries? Starbucks? The House of Commons?  Welcome to the People’s Republic of Music

Here’s a tip to maximise how much of your money goes to the artist.

When you buy an ethical download, we have to deduct VAT and the cost of the transaction.  70% of what’s left goes to the musician(s) whose song you liked.  We don’t take any deductions of any kind to cover our costs.  We’re not a record label

But if you only ever buy one track at a time, the transaction cost is proportionately higher.  If you bought one song one day, and another the next, it would be more expensive than buying two songs in one transaction.  And so on.  The sweet spot starts to come when you buy eight songs in one transaction. Happily,  amazingtunes.com remembers what you put in the cart, so you can go away and come back again, until you get past 8 songs.  The person I love most so far bought 25 songs in one sitting.  That’s even better.

That’s why, at the moment, I have four songs sitting in my cart.  When I get past eight, I’ll make the payment and do the download.  (And yes – I do pay for them myself, by the way!).  So more of my cash will go to the deserving musicians who wrote and recorded the songs, less to Visa or Mastercard or some bank.  I really hope you’ll consider doing the same.

ps coming soon – mobile phone payments, Paypal, and other things designed to make it easier and simpler to support artists with an ethical download.

We’ve now ironed out the gremlins in the playout system, and from tonight will start experimenting with a ‘proper’ schedule which varies during the day.  It’ll go something like this -

0600 – 1800: – very diverse music, no preference for any genre, no A/B/C playlist rubbish.
1800 – 2300: themed, genre-specific music, for extended periods: a chunk of Metal, some Electronica, a pile of rock, some jazz, stuff like that.  Not aiming to be all formal, ‘an hour of this then an hour of that’, but trying to put similar styles of music next to each other for however long seems sensible.
2300 – 0100: Ambient.  You might even hear some birdsong.
0100 – 0600: All kinds of everything, no restrictions, sometimes a bit wild.  (Wee small hours radio listeners are workers, not people falling asleep!).

As usual, this is just an idea, and an experiment.  Please tell me if you think this approach is wrong, and what you’d prefer.  Once we get it right, we’ll start to introduce more voices – I think, only in the evening, all the feedback has suggested you don’t want DJs during the day – and then we’ll open all music selection up to interactivity, as all our systems should be in place and tested by then.