radio free fedi blog

fedi

a wild new channel appears

( please do not follow this account, this is for long form reading, expanded masto posts, specialty pages/posts and archive reference. Please follow and interact with us at @radiofreefedi@musician.social where we announce and link the material here)

The RFF Specialty channel expands our mission to promote and discover independent artists by offering a slightly more genre or thematic option for “scheduled” listening for the RFF community.

There will be hour long blocks of loosely related “genres”. These themes are rotated throughout the day to give multiple chances to catch something you are keen for and each time a block plays it is 100% randomly populated from affiliated tracks. We envisage more themes could be added such as long form spoken word or readings. For now we have leveraged the best we can, what the community has offered.

These themes are meant to absolutely include overlapping works from the main and Comfy channel, but also showcase MORE works from outside that set, and more diverse and more specific as well as longer formats!

Our hope is that this provides a part-time light version of a more targeted or focused discovery to alternatively drop in and discover but not quite be a set and forget full-time of any genre.

As mentioned in multiple State of the Station reports, RFF will never be 10 specific genre channels as end points for consumption. We will also will never be hyper algorithm'd or on demand playlists. As a volunteer community service we can neither afford that model nor want to pull focus from the discovery emphasis for our community of independent artists. We will always be an absolutely community driven, non-commercial, free form, stream only delivery that celebrates consent and agency of artists and listeners.

The Specialty channel has been a monstrously big undertaking and will be the absolute most curation we can undertake as a volunteer community service.

RFF encourages you to drop in, discover and LEAVE to go interact with artists and support them on their platforms! We want you to step out of your wheelhouse a bit and embrace new to you art. However, we hope having a way to be even more inclusive and promote even more material with this slightly tighter scoped option will be an awesome extension of the RFF community.

The programming block themes rotate at approximately the top of each hour (2-3 min window explained at bottom of this post) and are indicative of what the community of artists has offered to date:

EXPERIMENTS IN RFF – 0000, 1000, 1700 UTC experimental, avant, counterpoint, drone, noise, sampling, collage, sculpture, avant spoken, power electronics, generally weird, might well contain conflicting sounds or harsh frequencies side

RFF IN THE ATMOSPHERE – 0100. 0600, 1100, 1800 UTC ambient, soundscape, atmospheric, epic, soundtrack, space, more floating or rhythmic than ultra beat orientated

RFF SINGS – 0200, 0700 ,1200, 1900 UTC not an instrumental in sight, from the diverse voices of RFF with eclectic sonic underpinnings. Pull up a chair it's story time. vocals, singer songwriter, storytelling, piano, folk, electronica, eclectic whimsy, all vocal focused.

RFF CHIPS N DIPS – 0300, 1300, 2000 casio jams, chip tunes, 8bit, 16bit, all the bits, bleeps and boops, chirpy synths, gaming sounds, anime sound, vocaloid sound

RFF IS GONNA ROCK YOU – 0400, 1400, 2100 UTC yo dawg we heard you guitar the guitars!, all uptempo rock, metal, industrial rock, punk, power pop, chunky riffs and wah wahs

RFF SYNTHETIC – 0500, 0800, 1500, 2200 UTC synthpop, synthwave, cyberwave, vapourwave, new wave, new new wave, such synth very wave

CLUB RFF – 0900, 1600, 2300 UTC BEATS, techno, dnb, EDM, EBM, house, industrial dance, electro, hip-hop

These blocks will give you a rotating scheduled option to tune in for a more specific sound if that is your jam. This gives a bit more leeway to include more tracks from the community of artists on Main/Comfy and since people will tune in knowing what the block's vibe is and have choice, it provides a better venue for wilder sounds and longer run times.

Everything about submissions for the specialty channel is just as the others, we still will try to introduce artists to the station via the Main/Comfy channels if possible, still manually screen and process for relative sound attributes, data accuracy and the trust and ethos RFF hopes to uphold to avoid harm and untoward actors.

The main and comfy channel will always remain the same weird and wonderful drop in and discover community/college radio vibe. The new specialty channel gives us a place for future special programming from the community to be determined that will not break the core function and vibes of the Main and Comfy feeds! This could easily simulcast to our video channel for interactive chat etc. Special fedi artist related programming from the community, release parties, performances, Q+A's, roundtables, tutorials, interviews, long form spoken word, performances...

What do you want to bring to your 24/7 #fedi #community #radio ?

Thank you all for your support and aroha to the station and to each other!

No matter if you are an artist contributing music, a fedizen contributing station reads, a listener supporting artists materially or with a kind word, or any of the amazing multi-directional collaboration, promotion and support we have had the joy to witness between all of the above, radio free fedi is YOUR community station.

If you aren't already listening right now, go and listen and discover!

Keep fedi weird!

Support fedi artists!

https://radiofreefedi.net

RFF Specialty Extended Remix Behind the Sausage errr Music:

Another huge thank you to the community patrons that have made it possible to keep extending RFF's ability to experiment and expand ways to maximise promotion and discovery for the amazing pool of fedi talent sometimes hiding in plain sight. There is no way we could have funded the infrastructure to sustain this project much less expand the service to the community without you.

And to everyone who has had patience with our physical inability to laser focus on every communication or request and to anyone who has offered words of support for our volunteer running in the hamster wheel of this effectively full-time job, THANK YOU.

Some new channel specific thoughts and pardon our dust issues.

We have endeavoured to massage the station management system to as close as possible rotate themes in hourly blocks. We are balancing trying not to have tracks extend too far into the next hour when you are expecting a different theme while also not cutting off tracks just because the top of the hour hits.

Therefore you may find a theme may end/start within 2-3 minutes either side of the top of the hour. We have hacked as hard as we can and this seems the best balance to get this channel launched and not dis an artist by cutting away or harshing a theme too much by hearing a thing you didn't tune in for.

In it's early days we may have gotten a few tracks not quite right for vibe and we will do our best to tidy up as these are heard, bearing in mind we have been working through ~1000 tracks that were baseline in the system for Main and Comfy as well as >2000 submitted to date tracks overall to select more to go into the specialty channel playlists. The difference is not because of omission , but rather because of manually selecting indicative tracks rather than blindly dumping whole album submissions into an autoplay.

The Main and Comfy channels are and will always be the core of the station! There is nothing wrong with them and despite the occasional variably motivated protestor, we respect the overwhelming appreciation of the model. In mapping themes for the specialty channel we hope we have carefully considered what can be helpful as an extension to the service while keeping the importance of Main and Comfy at the fore. That is why the specialty themes are mostly quite pronounced, meaning if it's a bit more jangly rock, light alt rock, trip hop, chill, downtempo, pop tinged, etc it can be primarily showcased on Main and Comfy and/or there is just not the depth of submissions to sustain a theme block yet.

Here are some use cases that we reckon have served the community well to date and will still apply to having a loose run time cap for the Main and Comfy channels:

  • you have limited time to tune in, we want to avoid you only hearing two artists in a half hour session, and maximise discovery for the contributing artists

  • for our many neurodiverse friends we want to avoid overwhelming and make it easier to stick around or know they can drop back in shortly if something is uncomfortable but hopefully not uncomfortably long

  • and for general comfort of ALL who are hopefully more inclined to stick around even if a single track is not their cup of tea, because they can rest assured something different is coming in a few minutes. This not only helps with listener expectations and willingness to discover but helps us present more artists toward our mission of being a fun promotion and discovery layer to generate love and support for independent fedi artists!

We love independent artists AND each other so we work hard to find community supporting balance in every facet of our operating ethos. Huge gratitude to the artists that have not so much come along for the ride but rather gathered in such awesome solidarity showing there is so much support and respect out there and that art isn't a competition.

While we do things a little slower, organically and a little outside the box, it is always with the hope of doing right by the beautiful community that has formed around this project with the core of helping promote independent fedi artists and acting as a transient layer to spark communication and support directly to artists.

Going forward we hope to always maintain the community trust and love we are trying to amplify regardless of external pressures because as a community we owe no one a platform, but we do endeavour to show everyone the most empathy and support we can muster.

Keep lifting each other up and stay awesome out there friend.

Heoi anō tāku mō nāianei Kia ora rawa atu

#radioFreeFedi

updated March 2024

Good news! Our community is now over 350 music artists, over 450 wider writing, voice, advising, patron and other contributors, almost 4500 fedi friends, hundreds of thousands of streaming sessions, and growing! You are all doing an awesome job building community and uplifting each other around creating, submitting, listening, sharing, collaborating, complimenting and materially supporting one another!

Against this amazing community resonance, we are a volunteer one hamster powered wheel so please be understanding replies and communications cannot always be immediate or sometimes at all.

When we put out a (weekly or more) station music update and artist welcome post, that is often a trigger for a flurry of submissions, and that is AWESOME. It does mean it may be a couple to 10 days before another batch of submission review work makes it to a full station update.

We can no longer manually respond to every submission. Our current work flow has us using a “favourite” of your submission message to mark for ourselves and to let you know that review and upload work has been completed if we've added your submission to the station.

You should then catch yourself tagged in the next update and welcome post for that batch. We have worked on a few copy paste replies with links to helpful resources or peer mentors for things like audio quality and format, meta tagging, cover art etc as we decreasingly have the time make the fixes as we can no longer always absorb that work. We receive anywhere from 10-30 submissions per week ranging from a single track to entire catalogue and if any number of those have not read nor followed any of our submission tips best they can it grinds progress and morale. Your help with submissions will mean faster updates and more RFF development. Cheers.


TLDR QUICK SUBMISSION MESSAGE TEMPLATE

To submit original music, jingles, station IDs or voice pieces for play consideration on RFF here's what we need in a simple DM :

  • Files. A link that requires no login to a zip (for albums) or download by group of 320mp3 files with clean artist and track meta and cover art if applicaable IN the audio files. Or bandcamp codes. Or you can DM for our private drop. where to stick it

  • The license you release under that we pass along in now playing and our directory.

  • Your preferred artist support web link we will link to all your tracks for now playing and our directory.

  • Your preferred public fedi identity to be linked with tracks on our now playing and recently played resources. PLEASE mention if you do not wish to also be included on the RFF artists importable follow list.

That's it, simply DM to @radiofreefedi@musician.social

Things that can really help us get more music out there quicker AND get you heard in more places:

  • Don't get hung up on style or genre or recommending individual tracks you think might go in a certain place. It is much more efficient to submit a whole album for consideration and you might be surprised how we can get more tracks into multiple channels and specialty blocks.

  • Similar to above, don't drip feed a track at a time if you are sitting on a previous album or albums etc. It's much more efficient if we can review, process and add tracks in groups and batches rather than redoing the same artist info tasks over a pile of separate submissions. But please DO send us new singles if that is your release model. We also love when you send advance preview or even exclusive early tracks in advance of release ideally at least two weeks ahead of public release in case of the station public facing update window lag described in the intro on this page.

  • If you do not embed your cover art into the files you submit, please do not send massive separate image files. It compunds time to download that to then have to convert it to a 200x200 or less jpg to then have to merge into your audio filse or worse, having to load it into the station system for each of your tracks. We aren't really able to do that anymore at scale. If you have no image in the audio files, or a seperate image file, the tracks will probably play with a default RFF tower logo.

If anything here is unclear or you still have questions, please read on. We have been working on some boiler plate responses and a network of artists and friends of the station standing by as helpers who will do our best to help include as many artists and community members as possible in the RFF experience.

/TLDR


Further helpful info for original music submissions

Who can submit

Any good fedizen can contribute to your fediverse community radio station. We manual check all submissions' accounts for general fediquette or bad actors/spam/cross-posted/empty accounts etc that might harm the community. If you are out in the feed having a nice time, promoting your art and being an inclusive, supportive, interactive and rad community member, let's go! If you have a brand new empty fedi account AND no other public web presence or mutuals in the RFF community to gauge some community assurance we might err on the side of caution.

What to submit

Music, jingles, station IDs, writings, voice reads.

Anything original that you can consent for streaming on our community station. If you haven't already had a listen you can hear and see our channel desciptions at our main site

Have a listen. There is a lot of independent talent out there in ye olde fedi. Don't be intimidated and do send stuff in. We can find a home for most anything. At the same time, do reflect if the wider community might be able to help with guidance on some basic mixing and mastering. Previously we've spent time sweetening submissions that were not quite up to scratch for levels etc, but as we have grown, this is no longer tenable.

Music! We can cater to most anything from the absolute comfiest on our Comfy channel to rip the paint off the walls on our metal and experimental blocks on the Specialty channel and everything in between.

Voice! On the Main channel at the top and bottom of each hour we run theNews and theTrafficReport which are absolutely not what they say they are. This is a chance for micro fiction, micro theatre, poetry, public domain readings, weird sonic collages and more from the wider community of fedizens to participate in your fedi community radio. You can submit finished pieces to the general submission guide or you can reach out as a volunteer reader for station announcements or other materials submitted.

Station IDs! The more community voices the better. You do not have to be a music artist to drop a station ID. You can submit to the guide or DM for out private file drop that has some outlines and guides for station reads.

Writing! If you have writings, poems, microfictions, edutainment you would like to offer for community volunteers to read for our spoken segments, please reach out via DM @radiofreefedi.@musician.social

Caveat for volunteer comunity voice reads, station IDS and being inclusive. We do not expect “broadcast quality” from community voice read submissions and RFF or an artist friend of the station are on standby to sort that.

File formats and track info

Our preferred format for a balance of quality and library consistency is 320mp3. FLAC is OK, but for our purposes as a volunteer driven community service a bit bigly in size at scale and easier to munt tags so we are now steering away from it.

If you only have wavs or aiffs etc, there is probably a way in your DAW or audio editor to export as mp3. It is really hard to recommend any specific tool as so many apps and online tools are dodgy and malicious.

It is really important that you submit files with your desired and approved artist and title tags so that it will show in all our now playing and recently played tools and so that we don't have to spend time trying to figure out what to put there or get it wrong. These include the website now playing, recently played, csv files of recent history and out now playing bot for ALL 3 channels. We want folks to accurately find and directly support you!

Generally speaking if you give us a Bandcamp code this is usually already sorted since that platform loading process makes sure there are no empty tags and hopefully it is to the artists desire.

Again, various cross platform tools you may have access to can help with this part. Audacity/Tenacity when you export a file as mp3 will give. Something like the VLC media player might also help with adding or editing track meta data where you can right click on a file and see the meta tags, edit and save.

There is just too many variables between operating systems ans software to safely recmommend A WAY but if you are truly stuck here, reach out and we have some seasoned RFF artists on standby who may be able to help assess your best way forward.

Where to stick it

The very easiest method to get us tracks is to share a Bandcamp code only IF you have them readily available. This allows us to get the format we need with mostly gauranteed good track meta data and cooked in art. If a higher quality well tagged mp3 is an option, Faircamp, Mirlo (testing), or other similar plaes a code or private link can get us a zip of well tagged files can work as well.

Pretty much any of the file sharing web tools out there that allow you to share a private link that will not require any login is sweet. WeTransfer, Mega, even microsoft or googles drops, we don't have to love it, it just needs to be a no login required share.

Soundcloud and Funkwhale are not recommended for sharing for a variety of clunky time sinks and inconsistencies including poor file format options and high probabilities of bad meta data. Also, please do not e-mail audio files or attach them to fedi posts.

If you have absolutely none of the above just say in your submission DM to the station that you would like to use our private drop.

Length

Our loose time target of les than 5 minutes for Main and Comfy channel tracks is to increase comfort, diversity and discovery and be more neighbourly on the stream for all parties.

If you have something quite long you'd like considered for Main and Comfy. If there is a super awesome track we can programme fades if we spot a good location to do so during review. Edits/highlights shortened intros/outros are welcome but unless 17 inute opus' might not be necessary if it might fit a Specialty channel block.

With our new Specialty channel themed blocks let's keep it reasonable so it isn't a “you” show, but up to ~10 minute pieces are now considered. We have found this method gives listeners some clear expectations and choice for expected theme and agreeance to potentially longer works.

So again, err on the side of let us hear it all and we'll do our best to find a place or places to feature it.

Levels

I love a good wall of noise from time to time, but this is more whet the whistle of potential supporters and not a shock venue. Check your levels and seek some mastering advice if they are super quiet or super clipped. This is absolutely no interest in loudness wars, or commercial and pop homogenised sensibilities, rather just a need to avoid massive collisions in sound quality or levels for general listener comfort. We want them to stick around, discover you and then hopefully support you directly.

Here are some helpful tips from producer and friend of the station Jamie Hill to get you started:

https://blog.radiofreefedi.net/basic-limiting-preparing-songs-for-self-release-and-rff-submission

https://blog.radiofreefedi.net/how-to-do-fades-preparing-songs-for-self-release-and-rff-submission

License

We celebrate consent and agency. We are happy to showcase artists with all manner of preferred license and hope this model leads to more good talks about attribution and how you CAN ask a copyright artist for amiable terms to use their work, just like artists can sell or agree to custom terms for varying flavours of open licensed works.

Some are hung up here, all we are asking is that if you hold your own rights and use a hard copyright for release, a simple word that you agree for radio free fedi to stream is all that is requested. It does not matter how many non-exclusive platforms you have aggregated to so long as they haven't sniped your ownership. Otherwise just advise us of your specific flavour of open license type. This is stored and displayed at the per track level to accomodate variance, collabs, etc.

Please advise RFF the web link of your choice to show on the website directory and with your now playing tracks. You can watch the now playing on the website for examples of what other artists are doing.

Popular options include artists' own website or blog, link pages, various platforms for buying and/or downloading audio, donation platforms and more.

If you ever make some platform changes and want to update what is showing for your tracks, DM us.

Please advise us of the public fedi handle you would like associated with your tracks, or not. While we celebrate fedi present artists and encourage collaboration sharing and support, we also love artists consent and well-being. We can just show the RFF link if you want to share your music but not your personal fedi handle.

Please advise us if you do not wish for your artist public fedi handle to be included on the RFF artists follow file. This is an importable csv file for mastodon and like platforms for artist promotion and communication. This does not circumvent you manually approving follows if you have that setting in place.

While we haven't loudly broadcast this lately it has previously on balance been seen as quite useful for those seeking to fill their feed with music, and for networking, promotion and collaboration for artists. This is one of the reasons we have always asked for a public fedi handle. We defer to artists' wishes, as an example, you may like to attribute fedi handle with all now playing lists but not include on the follow file.

If we've included or omitted you contrary to your expectation or situations have chandged, please DM.


Most of you have been absolutely kick ass and spot on with submissions which helps massive with accuracy and turnaround, thank you. We have reached a point where volume and “accuracy” can sometimes get a bit avalanch-esque.

In the past we've tried to smooth the edges for the artists awesome enough to hop onto this funky fedi train of a project, but now as we grow there just isn't enough time in the day. Thanks for your understanding.

Stay excited. Keep submitting. and keep fedi weird!

#radioFreeFedi #submissions #tips #help

[https://radiofreefedi.net]