State of the Station Report – July 2023 – boring fiscal version
Born of a fever dream wish it into being challenge from a fedi friend, radio free fedi was a classic smell of an oily rag let's get it going and see what happens after that kind of story.
The reality
We appreciate the patience and love so many of you have shown in helping us to navigate how the sometimes overwhelming levels of communications and noise we need to organise and manage which can impact our ability to respond or act immediately. The reality for us as a single, disabled and IRL unwaged volunteer is that our daily tasks require a great deal of coping mechanisms and grouping of tasks that includes:
managing submissions, editing/cleaning/recording voice content, adjusting music submissions that may not meet basic format clarity or level thresholds, cleaning track meta data, cleaning imagery, adding extended meta for every single track with fedi link/support link/license so that multiple services/sites can ingest and highlight, all artist and station communications, ALL customer service inquiries, ad-hoc community support, vetting new contributors to not platform any fascists etc, previewing and queuing station adds, playlist programming for both channels, multiple website management, reviews, interviews, archive blog, care and feeding and maintenance for multiple server platforms, development and tuning for systems, station expansion planning, balancing costs, catering, other duties as required...
The great news:
As we have stated before, RFF would not be “on the air” or growing such amazing organic connections amongst artists and listeners and supporters were it not for some amazing patrons who love the vibe and love their fellow fedizens and independent artists. The bare minimum to keep the lights on is funded until NOV/DEC 2023. Awesome!
As a community we have not only helped each other with artist promotion and instigated fiscal and real world support out there for the contributing artists but also generated an incredible amount of love, support and goodwill that while it cannot buy groceries, is a strong fuel to carry on and create. The amazing support of all kinds including emotional from listener to artist, artist to listener, artist to artist, listener to listener has been an absolute honour to have had even the smallest part in facilitating.
The less great news:
The volunteer has no personal resource to cover any gaps so there may be some tough decisions on the horizon. In terms of content and news and updates and community events we want to do all the things but we cannot afford the time and there is sometimes a lack of understanding of how much free stuff can cost.
If the community rallies to cover the non-human costs, we will do our best to carry on. Given the scope and scale and spoon count and the collective desire to do more cool stuff that has proven to massively resonate with the community, there may begrudgingly but certainly in line with our community driven ethos be a separate support mechanism for the human at some point. Again, community willing.
Until then, we keep sending out positive vibes and try our best to expand the ways we can walk the walk as a non walled garden, non-commercial, consent and agency promoting, as transparent as possible discovery platform that invites, nay encourages listeners and supporters to leave it and interact with and support fedi artists!
Rationale
RFF launched end of Jan 2023, we received our first donation in Feb 2023. We are therefore mapping things to try and survive the first year meaning FEB-FEB. At time of this post we are funded until ~DEC 2023 and about $80 short of making it a year. Infra costs have already gone up when we added the comfy channel and our next expansion will shrink how far we are funded.
For anyone casting any doubt on the intentions or ethos, THE SOLE VOLUNTEER building, managing, running all operations and community work for RFF has taken zero donations, rather have tried to commit to securing infrastructure stability for a stable time into the future.
RFF would have been folded up early in if not for the amazing community of patrons (some also contributing artists) who have covered the infrastructure costs that are very reasonable but not doable for said volunteer. We are posting this for transparency and a reference as needed if there is any question of what we are trying to accomplish with limited resource and solely community driven.
money money money money......MONEY
If we cover all expenses, we'd also like to make a donation to our masto server. We always want the focus to be on the music, not about any human curator or algorithm or platform, or hyper curated dead-end consumption experience. We are dead serious when we say, drop in and discover, and, support fedi artists!
All figures in $NZD
RFF annual expenses if no cost increases and prior to pending JUL expansion ($NZD) $26 Domains $208 Public facing streaming servers $104 Static public facing sites' hosting $364 virtual servers for station management systems, storage, drop/sharing
TOTAL expected annual infra costs: $702
Donations: $136.00 LP (liberapay) to date $256.00 Ko-fi to date $75.00 Other $158 LP promised
Total in to date: $625.00 Projected annual over/under: –$77.00
VOLUNTEER HOURS JAN 220 FEB 212 MAR 160 APR 100 MAY 80 JUN 56 JUL 168 projected (will be more due to expanding services)
TOTAL HOURS TO DATE: 996 If @ NZ min wage $22,908.00
OK, let's get back to finding more ways to promote amazing fedi artists eh?
how to listen/submit/contribute: https://radiofreefedi.net
this is your 24/7 fediverse #community #radio #radioFreeFedi
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