As we did radio, and why we want to fly

For the seventh year we do the project without striking UPS and downs. This project is Internet radio. We are often asked why we do it, for whom, and why so long if no one knows about us — it prompted me to write this article.

How it all began.

I love music. In high school, I sucked at nobody famous heavy band on the guitar, then a few years of writing music on trackers, and after the trackers, become a DJ, better known among friends than anywhere else. On guitars we played music of his own composition, without a vocalist, but on the tracker I wrote in the uncertain electronic style, telling everyone that he invented his own. With DJing easier — minimal, idm, to invent anything not necessary.

My friend also loves music. So much so that almost all of my adult life I worked as an administrator in Nightclubs. It gave him a great opportunity to communicate with a variety of musicians. He is well versed in music, in all directions, read a lot of books, and in very good savvy (unlike me). He knows many musicians that nobody knows.

We met a long time ago, in the vast not the most popular FTN network. Met and became friends, despite the fact that we lived in different cities. Once we talked about that in Russia, there are many unpopular musicians who write in the table that terribly talented, but about which nobody knows anything. This was the first brick laid in the Foundation of our project.

Thoughts on radio came to me in that moment, when I played in the woods at the open air E. It was on the beach the night of the lake I suddenly saw people who want to listen to music and after I run out of strength to put it. As it turned out, my friend at that time had long raved about the idea of a private radio, sometimes visited the local FM radio station with its own program. He immediately supported this idea, especially because by that time he had already opened the network music lebl, and actively communicated with musicians, music which could be put on the air.

Since I worked as a network engineer, and knew what Cisco, FreeBSD, and in General how is the Internet, I immediately raised shoutcast server, created the first playlist of favorite tracks, and asked his future colleagues to help with the music.

Thus was born radio verdure station, which formed a simple philosophy:

the

Very often we listen to musicians, friends and acquaintances, to whom nobody listens. We are happy to share this music. the

• We do not found any radio station that we could include in “the moment”. All this time his own — someone of us writes code, someone is going to sleep, and someone sits and looks out the window. We are trying to prepare the life-saving drink of comfort and tranquility that is always waiting to take it off the shelf.

What happened.



When we came the first audience, we wanted new measurements, and we began to go live and I sometimes brought the music from the house, and he invited his buddies to play with him. Then I met one of the founders of the pirate stations in the suburbs, and we worked a while on the FM band, of course, illegal.

Another team member joined, when we came up with the idea to do a regular transfer with microphones. We were so pleased with this idea that we bought a separate remote and microphones, and friends brought their old headphones. We went on the air 25 times, took calls, chatted, argued, swore — it was our favorite program Logia. We have visited all of our friends, it was pretty cool, and maybe we ever start doing it again.
Generally, do your own radio is very nice, almost everyone who can, helps may, design, ideas, appliances, and we can't say that this radio makes someone specific — at different stages of their ideas, efforts, time, shared by many. And that was the key to our success is friendship and fellowship.

For example, we ask all who have the opportunity to record in another country “You are listening to a certain radio” in the local language, after which one of our brilliant colleague (whom no one has seen) makes great Jingles.

A few months ago we celebrated the sixth birthday, and move on.

However, despite the six-year history, the number of concurrent listeners is small, 10-40 people. But it does not bother us — many of our students with us for a couple of years, and we don't care how many of them. We do not expect that someday we will Wake up famous, and of the publicity. We do radio, which we listen to ourselves and if it listens to anyone else, is the height of what we could expect.

Maybe it's because it's almost home project, and we are doing this unprofessionally. One day, right before the live broadcast, I came down for a friend to help him to bring two turntables, and me shut the door. It was the evening of 30 December :) Two hours we sat with the decks in the stairwell and waited for the locksmith, and the neighbors congratulated us on the upcoming. Of course, that almost all those who are specially gathered for this live, not mastered two hours of waiting. Another home Studio, the less responsive the neighbors just turned off the breaker box during the speech — probably they didn't like the vibrating bass.

a Little technical detail.



We employ internal and external shoutcast servers, two streamer, and control system playlists. When we put a new file on the server, it is added to a database of tracks, after which it can be included in one of the daily playlists. Just we have 7 playlists for each day of the week — this allows you to accurately and effortlessly update the music, and shaping the content depending on the day of the week. Once another playlist is composed and “together” (its length is exactly one day) it poured a pls file on the server. Once a day, the first streamer touches this playlist and starts to stream it to the internal server. This is the simplest streamer in Perl, it does not transcode anything, just pouring stream and its main advantage is that it can switch to the new playlist, not interrupting the broadcast. Thus we have an internal server that is constantly spinning weekly schedule. But to hang in there users would be irresponsible, because after switching the flow (for example when switching on the DJ, or any online, broadcast) users would be disconnected from the stream. Thus, a more complex streamer takes the stream from an internal server, transcodes it to the required quality, and pours for the external server, where it is already dismantled users. This second streamer can accept a connection from a DJ, and back to stream from an internal server, so not interrupting the broadcast. Not very elegant, but works quite stable. May be, someday, we'll rebuild everything on icecast and will greatly simplify the scheme. I know that in the 21st century and icecast'e and shoutcast'has declared the possibility of switching streams on the fly, but in practice, we constantly experienced a problem with that.

I'm not a designer and not a programmer (actually I'm a network engineer), so the design and layout of the website is far from what we would like to see ideally. Sluggish engine written in php, and the site is still typeset in vi. The interface also does not possess the intuitive — all the features of the site, our users know not immediately, but when they have an interest and call anything they haven't paclical. We like to think that it's a feature radio turns his face gradually. Some can't even start the stream, and we patiently answered “click on nature.” Nature, by the way, is updated every month, after the seasons. It was a very difficult step for Internet project — my physical ass, and once a month to go into the woods a camera.
conclusion.



We learned how to distribute duties within our mikrokollektiv, and replace each other in difficult times — radio can't wait, it should live and breathe always. Despite the almost entirely Russian-speaking chat, we have a lot of these parts of the world that we have to open the map to understand where it is. Live broadcasts are rare and unaccustomed voices in the air the listeners are always surprised that someone is here. One of the failed points of the strategy is to provide a venue for performances of all the talented musicians and DJs. The tiny size of the audience cuts off those who need the popularity, but we are happy that our invitation was used by several of interesting bands.

We try our best not to stick to a certain format — the division of music into styles, this is the most hideous invention of mankind. If you try to describe the music that we play, I would say that we try to create an atmosphere of comfort and tranquility for the mind. Would be really great if you are looking for something similar — we will be happy if our little project will gain some new listeners.

One day, our friend went on a hipster flea market in Finland, and came across two sleepy Finns who drank tea and listened to our station on small speakers. In those moments, we want to fly, and never abandon a favorite project.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru