radio free fedi blog

radio

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

Welcome to radio free fedi and thanks for dropping in to discover amazing independent fedi artists. You can find many helpful posts on our main masto account and long form expansion and context on how things are going or get going here on this blog.

Here is some helpful information on how to listen to RFF.

The easiest thing to do is visit https://radiofreefedi.net and you have multiple options.

On our site: Hit play on one the embedded web players available for each station. That's it, a single javascript solely on our local domain is used to update the now playing and recent artists information for your discovery delight and so you can communicate with and as directly as possible support the artists you find.

In your media players: Please note there are links listed for each channel listed on our website that you may use in your local media player of choice such as VLC or MPV etc.

As players and systems vary wildly you can use https versions of our links but if you are having trouble with a feed playing or receiving good song info you might try changing the link to just http.

Here is a playlist file for VLC etc with all four channels using http links as listed on our site.

Other apps and sites: We are listed in the very large and open radio-browser directory of radio stations and streams. This directory provides a standard for third party sites and apps to search all the listed stations.

You should be able to use almost anything on this list and just search for “radiofreefedi.net” and be all good. As these are third party sites and apps, we can't guarantee their excellence or durability 100%, just that they are a way to get the original stream delivered by RFF in other ways you may use especially mobile.

I have no idea why there are so many damned duplicate entries in the radio-browser listings. I was super careful depricating old public streams and submitting new relays to have one clean listing per channel. Somthing glitchy with their directory, or something rogue, or some “helpful” individuals have created a hot mess but so long as you see a relay dot radioferefedi dot net as a prefix, that is the current public stream source for all our channels.

Chat Hangouts, Video Simulcast, Special shows/events: Our Owncast server, thanks to good sorts at @owncast@fosstodon.org simulcasts at https://party.radiofreefedi.net when we are not live with chat turned on for a moderated chat hangout, of for special listening parties and commuity performances and events.

Other listener and RFF community made options

Roku: RFF contributing artist and friend of the station @limebar@mastodon.social enjoys listening in the lounge and made a Roku app

MPD: @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk has posted about a simple conversion to m3u for personal MPD player usage


For sharing now playing information to facilitate interacting with and supporting fedi artists, we have various web pages, json, csv and a now playing bot @rff@nowplaying.radiofreefedi.net for all channels. Reach out via DM on the station account if we can be of help.

If you are interested in offering more options to access the unaltered RFF streams AND show real-time artist support, contact and license info we are totally onboard with helping when we can to provide station info for ingesting.

Our website, owncast site, now playing bot, and as many other places as we can show data that is not generally passed around by radio streams such as artist fedi link, artist support link and artist license. Our entire mission is to be a discovery layer, not an end-point for consumption. We WANT you to go away (so to speak) and interact with artists on fedi which has proven to be a powerful fuel for creativity, collaboration and drive. And we want you to support independent artists on the whatever platforms they can manage being on if you can be at all amiable.

KEEP SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND FEDI and INDIE ARTISTS

and keep fedi weird

this is your 24/7 fediverse #community #radio #radioFreeFedi

Kia ora rawa atu

( 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)

OK Team, something light and fun. Do you wanna rep RFF to everyone standing over your shoulder or on that jitsi call you are sharing your desktop to? Well good news fam, here are some 1080p radio free fedi wallpapers for you to rock out with and/or curate a comfy desktop.

RFF tower logos are all by awesome friend of the station @RobCubbon@mastodon.art

Enjoy!

radio free fedi wallpaper 1080p black background with tower logo

radio free fedi wallpaper 1080p white background with rainbow tower logo

radio free fedi wallpaper 1080p white background with black tower logo

radio free fedi wallpaper 1080p black background with rainbow tower corner logo

radio free fedi wallpaper 1080p white background with rainbow tower corner logo

how to listen/submit/contribute: https://radiofreefedi.net

KEEP SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND FEDI ARTISTS

and keep fedi weird

this is your 24/7 fediverse #community #radio #radioFreeFedi

Kia ora rawa atu

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.

#StateOfTheStation

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

Heoi anō tāku mō nāianei Kia ora rawa atu

( please do not boost or follow here, this is only a long form reading and archive reference. Please follow and interact with us at @radiofreefedi@musician.social )

Artists supporting artists.

Listeners supporting artists.

Listeners supporting listeners.

Artists supporting listeners.

Fedizens supporting fedizens!

We've said it before but here it is again. It is truly amazing seeing and hearing of all kinds of mutual love and support organically traveling out there from you all.

As artists of diverse means and situations fiscal support is of course always appreciated because cause paying the grocer is needed. We hope RFF is a useful discovery layer for this where possible.

But do not underestimate the power we all have for a kind or supportive word.

When you hear something new to you and it resonates and you take a moment to drop a note to an artist you are a force multiplier of energy and GOOD that is hard to quantify but fair to say HUGE and often reciprocal.

It is hard to avoid much of the latest dramas in social media and the fedi.

What we will say is we are so amazed for the community that has formed to lift up RFF and each other.

Do we put energy into promoting each other? YES.

Does that equate to or need the vices, traps and negative fogs of clout cannon influencer culture and anti independent artist walled gardens? NO!

This is what the fedi and RFF is to us and we are so happy so many of you have come along for the ride.

Here's to keeping fedi weird and full of support and amazing organic collab and discourse.

Everyone can contribute here. Artists of any genre submit your work. Anyone can submit fun IDs or do reads from our scripts. Huge thanks to the patrons both public and anonymous that keep the lights on. And everyone has the power to lift each other up. We've seen it heaps and it is AWESOME!

Have a kick ass and/or comfy weekend. Enjoy the tunes and each other.

how to listen/submit/contribute: https://radiofreefedi.net

KEEP SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND FEDI ARTISTS

and keep fedi weird

this is your 24/7 fediverse #community #radio #radioFreeFedi

Heoi anō tāku mō nāianei Kia ora rawa atu

( please do not boost or follow here, this is only a long form reading and archive reference. Please follow and interact with us at @radiofreefedi@musician.social )

Music updates are weekly or fortnightly and based on flow of submissions and mostly IRL pressures and stresses. The whole midweek update post idea is often bleeding more toward weekend. We recognise there is a decided lull in fedi activity on the weekend, but it is what it is.

#StateOfTheStation

We've rebuilt the nowplaying interface on the website which expands the comfy channel recently played to the same depth as the main channel and moved a few things around and softened some of the pain hopefully. We literally hadn't looked at it or had time to think about it since launch in February. Doh!

We posted recently that we have cruised past 2000 friends and 200 contributors and climbing almost every day. Awesome!

We have seen a number of amazing collabs kick of from fedizens finding fedizens and some via radio free fedi. And even more rad, we are now getting to put into rotation on the station some of the outputs of the collabs. Totally awesome! The collab between Lehto and Socool we've been spinning in advance of their EP release this month is so so good. There is so much talent on the fediverse hiding in quiet corners. Let's shout it all a little louder eh?

The fediverse focused publication wedistribute is back and released a nice writeup on our little community project and some of the feels of listening to radio free fedi. https://wedistribute.org/2023/06/radio-free-fedi/

Thanks to the amazing group of patrons that have rallied to RFF and a few new friends joining that effort, our infrastructure is sustainable for months to come. While it is hard some weeks to donate the time we'd like for developing and keeping the station going, content gathering and review, community management, editing, data entry etc etc etc, when that monthly bill comes for the servers it is nice to report that we feel zero existential dread in that respect at least. So thank you to our patrons.

https://radiofreefedi.net/#shouts

It wouldn't be a thing without you as we would have pulled the plug for costs some time ago, and instead we are out here making amazing connections for and with artists and listeners. Awesome!

We've received multiple new station IDs and new spoken word micro fiction from a fedizen collab writer/reader team that organically formed around a fedi interaction. Awesome!

Artists you are doing pretty darn good at letting us know when you have a new release, single, EP, album, collab etc and often sending them our way for advance play which is so cool! Please keep that up. We see chatter out there that there are definitely regulars who notice and call out new stuff from artists they previously discovered on RFF which is guess what...AWESOME!

Everyone, if you want to hear more of something, send it in, or encourage artists you know and/or love to submit.

The response to the csv file for easy masto and derivative import of the RFF artists list was overwhelmingly positive. This is great for networking and promotion and is why we make sure you are ok with and give us a public fedi ID. it's a great way to catch up and add as the station adds, or pare down as you find artists that jam your way.

https://radiofreefedi.net/following_radioFreeFediContributors.csv

We update this file every single batch of station updates, as well as the txt list of every artist with their links and licences on the website, and we have started shouting out by tagging new artist adds and existing artists new song adds in the regular station update posts.

We were recently called corporate/commercial and anti diverse due to our rough time limit guideline? We hope anyone that tunes in for a few minutes or reads the website or a couple of posts will get that the entire mission is to promote going AWAY from RFF straight to the artists and supporting them. The intention of keeping things neighbourly in length is to provide more diversity for the drop-in and discover experience. As in previous state of the station reports, we cannot afford the time or infrastructure to provide hyper curated genre end points for dead-end consumption. That's antithetic to the weird, wild, fun and diverse discovery experience of your fediverse community radio. That being said if you have long form work or very experimental long loop or drone kinda stuff and don't mind providing an excerpt, the bottom of the hour theTrafficReport is an awesome place we'd like to highlight more sound collage and excerpts of other long form stuff.

If there is ever a lag in response time or we get a bit of data wrong, we apologise, please reach out via DM and we appreciate your love and patience as this thing grows and grows. We are a lone hamster in a wheel.

We have had quite a few folk reach out to do station IDs, station read, or reads of materials we have ready for TheTrafficReport and TheNews segments but not submit. We would love for a variety of fedi voices to be included in this way. Don't be shy, DM the station for info, we have script outlines and material ready to help you and some new writers have also appeared.

Reminder that our playlist bot @radiofreefedi@botsin.space account is unattended so try not to DM it on accident. It's name has BOT in the front of it. Please do use it as a reference if you were washing the dog and could not look at the screen 27 minutes ago to get links for an amazing artist you heard!

And you did it, it's the end of the message. Stay awesome out there!

how to listen/submit/contribute: https://radiofreefedi.net

KEEP SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND FEDI ARTISTS

and keep fedi weird

this is your 24/7 fediverse #community #radio #radioFreeFedi

Heoi anō tāku mō nāianei Kia ora rawa atu

( please do not boost or follow here, this is only a long form reading and archive reference. Please follow and interact with us at @radiofreefedi@musician.social )

Ahoy fedi friends, thank you so much for your amazing community vibes, sharing your thoughts on what you are hearing and supporting fedi artists. And now some extremely fascinating.........housekeeping

Weekly updates Given the midweek surges in fedi activity and liveliness and the being a busy time for concurrent listeners we have shifted to a midweek weekly update on new tracks an artists. We work on this continuously following up with artists, reaching out to more, and constantly getting tracks ready behind the scenes in the station to then go live in groups around when we post that kind of update. Generally there is a late weekend to early week response to the weekend posts by submitting artists.

This week we had a second midweek surge so just kept on adding awesome new tracks. We hope you have a kick ass and/or comfy weekend hearing new things on both channels.

Interviews Have you enjoyed any of the artists spolight interview we have run? We haven't done an artist spotlight interview segment in a few weeks as IRL has been exceptionally heavy on your one hamster in a wheel RFF engine room. We may make these available from the website for streaming only and think they are a bit of fun to help introduce amazing fedi artists. Feedback was a bit sparse. They are labour intensive for comms and prep and edit so we are re-assessing.

If you have an upcoming release that is a great time to organise having a spotlight synced up so please DM the station account if you are keen.

Time and effort and ethos and thanks Full disclosure even when we skip some features, segments and have a “light” week it is still generally a half-time job to keep things ticking, growing and to maintain the vibe and hopefully diverse and/or comfy standards while making certain we are staying true to the ethos as a discovery layer that CELEBRATES sending you off to fedi interact with artists and hopefully even support them on their platforms of choice.

We are in a pretty good spot in terms having the core infrastructure funded for a few months thanks to some amazing artists and patrons. The other fuel that really keeps this going is when YOU, the community, support each other and hopefully we get looped in to see that kind of amazing collaborative and support spirit in practice. Quietly or openly hearing from artists on what this project means to them really solidifies why it is so important to celebrate artists, agency and consent, together. Keep it up team.

If there is ever a lag in response time or we get a bit of data wrong, we apologise, please reach out via DM and we appreciate your love and patience as this thing grows and grows.

Spoken word and writings We have had quite a few folk reach out to do station IDs, station read, or reads of materials we have ready for TheTrafficReport and TheNews segments but not submit. We would love for a variety of fedi voices to be included in this way. Don't be shy, DM the station for info, we have script outlines and material ready to help you.

Writers, do you have some poetry, micro fiction, or weird and wild possibly out of context sections of writing we can point voice readers to or in abscence of that our amazing announcer crew at.

New Releases Similar to the weekly update on new tracks added shifting to midweek, we will also do the announcement of recent/new/pending releases from artists on the station then and boost for the weekend

beware of the robots

be advised our playlist bot @radiofreefedi@botsin.space account is unattended so try not to DM it on accident. Please do use if you were washing the dog and could not look at the screen 27 minutes ago to get links for an amazing artist you heard!

Reviews We have a backlog of mini reviews and we will start trickling those out, again spoons and time. We reckon these are handy for artists to boost or quote in other formats so they feel they are tooting their own horn. We say TOOT TOOT!

404 not what now? Also weirdly various posts with both the bot and the station account mentioned have not shown up to to the station account and this week we've had a number of DMs and bookmarked posts vanish from our end so thanks for your patience.

Wow you made it to the end you legend. Stay awesome out there.

how to listen/submit/contribute: https://radiofreefedi.net

KEEP SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND FEDI ARTISTS

and keep fedi weird

this is your 24/7 fediverse #community #radio #radioFreeFedi

Heoi anō tāku mō nāianei Kia ora rawa atu

( please do not boost or follow here, this is only a long form archive reference follow us at @radiofreefedi@musician.social )

Often times numbers are used to divide, conflate, obfuscate, other, and oppress. But we hope in this instance here are some numbers to celebrate your #radioFreeFedi community in reflection of 3 months 'on the air'!

#StateOfTheStation

192 the number of music, voice, writing, financial contributors in RFF to date. AWESOME, keep it growing and submit music, readings or other help.

41 hours of material in our main channel rotation pools

10 hours of content in the young and emerging comfy channel rotation

50% funding to offset the first year of back-end and infra fees for RFF. We are 3 months into being public and thanks to some amazing contributors (including artists) we had no hesitation to add the comfy channel and improve our permanence and stability.

1 hamster in a wheel volunteer operation so thank you for your support, patience and enthusiasm as this experiment has grown rapidly and organically

PRICELESS

The support you all are showing for one another as listeners and artists. The discovery and encouragement to artists are why this thing exists. Well done team!

Not wanting to being the end point of consumption or the focal point of attention, but rather a discovery layer to fuel interaction and support with artists may seem odd to some. The interaction we have seen, heard of and been in are a testament to YOUR awesomeness

( of course as soon as this was posted as it's original masto thread the numbers changed because you are all awesome )

how to listen/submit/contribute: https://radiofreefedi.net

KEEP SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND FEDI ARTISTS

and keep fedi weird

this is your 24/7 fediverse #community #radio #radioFreeFedi

Heoi anō tāku mō nāianei Kia ora rawa atu

from the desk of radio free fedi . please do not follow or boost this blog account or post. it is only a reference to long form we can't smash or make into 1 of 12 threads in masto.

What we've learnt so far in our first 7 weeks and from putting it out there about possible growth.

#StateOfTheStation

There can be a response to jump on a wagon of cool, now “hey be all the stations/playlists/genre silos like spotify/soma/etc/etc.” We can't because we are:

  • unapologetically niche. all fedi, wildly diverse. weird and wonderful.
  • community driven, volunteer, will always avoid commercial or walled garden mechanisms in our sphere, and fedi presence for artists and highlighting consent and attribution are not negotiable!
  • committed to ALL are welcome and we do mean ALL, all humans (and a few raccoons, possum, badgers, alien deities etc), all genres and genres busters! except nazis, and fascists, and racists, and anti trans, and anti queer. fuck them. we celebrate sound and each other, not otherism.
  • because of the above item we will never automate nor payola submissions as a trust mechanism for the community we are a part of and want to celebrate. time sink yes, good for community also yes.
  • weird wild and lavishly diverse to yes sometimes gently challenge, but mostly to spark adventure and discovery
  • meant to be a transparent non-commercial non-corporate intermediary for discovery not an end point for consumption
  • against highly siloed curation that shifts focus away from artists toward a platform. the main stream will always be weird and wonderful drop-in and explore as you wish
  • most likely not be doing highly curated genre channels because that makes RFF more of an end point of consumption and not the discovery layer to get you to the artists which is the mission
  • a jumping off point to go fedi interact with and to support fedi artists on their platforms of choice which we do not judge. SUPPORT FEDI ARTISTS
  • the artists, connections between them and with listeners are the absolute focus, not any RFF layers hence no RFF specific “app” or distracting web stuff
  • you will continue to hear electronic and metal, folk and classical, downtempo and bangers, sometimes you catch a wave, sometimes you catch a basket of wth. enjoy.

Trouble we are having:

  • some days it feels like 1 in 3 fedizens are a soundscape, noise, drone, ambient, experimental artist with 17 minute compositions. we are trying to feature excerpts of things like sound collage into spots like theTrafficReport and be as inclusive as we can but without artists taking this onboard and providing us said excerpts or edits we can't always afford the editing time
  • similar to that, we do our very best to get SOMETHING on from everyone who submits, but again long format, very long loops, poor sound quality or well outside of levels sounding balanced in broadcast we try but simply don't always have time to adjust submissions. these things are just not neighbourly to the other artists or the listeners in a diverse unscheduled drop-in discovery format
  • expectations? we are the opposite of a paid genre curated artist obscuring service. we work very hard to balance artist rotation based on number of tracks by each to maximise variety. many people get it, it is 100% not demographic, algorithm, payola, ad driven. This IS 100% community driven. What is on the station, outside of the above issues, is exactly reflective to what is submitted. As previously stated going hard silo and making the THING an ultra curated endpoint you consume is not a goal. The THING is a little challenging sometimes, but it is celebrating diversity, each other and THE FEDI ARTISTS, not a curator or a website or a playlist. Want more of a certain genre? Then please help encourage more fedi artists to participate.
  • there are many things we could do. technically and content driven. however, rule 1 is not to distract from core mission of interact with and support fedi artists!
  • if not hyper curated “channels”, scheduled genre shows will take a MASSIVE chunk of programming time and could technically be on a side stream, but as it stands, we do not feel they should be on the main stream. “you” may like it, but it thwarts the drop-in anytime and catch some diverse discovery ethos.
  • as a disabled person needing remote work, saying “I'd pay for a feed/show of xyz” would be exciting to me were it not antithetical to the station mission. I can't yet see a way to balance that up without becoming the things we are actively not.

Whats awesome:

  • so so many stories of discovery, mutual artist support, listeners subscribing and buying and giving words of encouragement to artists!
  • the overall support for things we recognise as being weird and different and the core tenets we are standing on
  • have you heard “golf punk” by sockpuppet or everything by Helen Bell? I mean come on, we are so excited these amazing artists came into our feed.
  • it's a lot of work but we are having fun with artist spotlight interviews and hope you are liking them
  • your boosts and interactions tell us that you like or tolerate our nowPlaying mini reviews and we try to do an 8 or 12 hour boost on most station posts to catch you awake

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where to then?

Therefore, given the poll direction, and more importantly some very constructive chats with listeners, and assuming continuing patron help with some infrastructure upgrades, we think the following is the least distracting most “on brand” for a RFF small growth step.

We are in the process of scaling up and developing a “comfy” station feed. This will be both a subset of contributing artists and a superset of tracks, being able to feature more material maybe not included on the main feed. This will not be a genre channel persay, rather a vibe.

NEW “CHANNEL” FACTS:

  • this channel will not have spoken word bits and sound collage at top and bottom of hour
  • there will be no jump out at you surprises in terms of drastic sonic clashes and we hope that helps some listeners
  • sonic and vocal pallets of light beats and rhythms we hope most will agree are suitable for focused OR background discovery, chill out and enjoyment
  • while we are shaving off some of the experimental, hard, rough, piercing, throbbing edges, this will still be wildly varied from as many artists as possible who ALL will still be on the main discovery feed with varying degrees of track overlap

radio free fedi comfy!

What we need:

  • keep supporting fedi artists!
  • continued celebration of our difference and of our community
  • keep sending in original music, if you are already contributing to the station please let us know when you have new stuff we can consider and help hype
  • keep putting hands up to do station reads
  • if you have the means, help offsetting infra costs is how this thing is evolving from the initial smell of an oily rag operation and we have begun to separate out some tech for resilience going forward
  • more understanding that there isn't always time to respond to queries that might be pretty clearly answered on the site, that we can't always find a way to include every submission nor have the time to adjust things to within parameters to do so. We can't always respond to every post about “why don't you use this platform?” or “I hate Martian Speed Casio Waltz, why is there not more Hungarian Death Lute Polka!?!?”. The station is and will as direct as we can hustle behind the scenes to make it be a direct reflection of who contributes material. Any compassion, help with care taken with quality submissions to minimise our workload, or maybe holding off on helpful demands that would obviously strain or distract from our core ethos is a massive help.
  • Not my style but I have been told it is worth noting that a lone volunteer spent 60 hrs a week for a month getting this community experiment up and running if that helps with understanding that this is not spotify in resource, ethos, or hatred for artists.

phew, thanks if you made it this far. we hope it helps to have a place other than truncated threads to document more long form some of the behind the scenes in evolving a community driven artist discovery tool

KEEP SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND FEDI ARTISTS

and keep fedi weird

this is your 24/7 fediverse #community #radio #radioFreeFedi

listen and contribute: [https://radiofreefedi.net]

Heoi anō tāku mō nāianei Kia ora rawa atu