[FM] Re: Internet radio / Grassy Hill Radio

[Tom Neff]

There are two basic kinds of internet radio station:
 * An encoded on-air feed from a regular broadcast station, like KPIG, WFUV,
and a fast-growing list of others (pretty soon I expect that almost everyone
will do this);
 * stations that are NOT on the air anywhere, but just stream to the Net.

The advantages of listening to a "real radio station" online are
 (a) If you have a sentimental attachment to it, like I do for, say, WGUC in
Cincinnati, you can indulge your "home again" feelings no matter where you
are.
 (b) You can listen to Gene Shay, or a live interview with Tom Paxton, etc.
 (c) At different times of the day you can get more than music - news,
drama, whatever.  (This is advantage or disadvantage depending on what you
wanted.)

The joy of listening to a Net-only station is that it can be ALL MUSIC, and
if you're lucky or pick your station well, all great music that you like.
No pledge drives, no Phoenix traffic reports to ignore in Concord, no
student jazz DJ's miscueing tracks, no NPR audio essays on the plight of the
Kosovar lepers, etc - just music.  Also, a net-only station can often tell
you more about what's playing than a broadcast station streamed feed.

As Alan mentioned, we have a Net-only folk station at Grassy Hill,

	http://radio.grassyhill.org

with over 700 folk and acoustic songs (and growing) in a rotating playlist.
Our listeners tell us they love it so far!  We stream in MP3 format at a
full 56Kbps, which means that if you have ISDN, DSL, Cable modem or access
to a T1 or better at work or school, you can listen all day while you work.
We are also relayed through live365.com and we may do some additional (not
for profit) deals.

The web page constantly displays the current (and last four) selections
being played; we plan to add clickthrough to take you to an appropriate
album or artist page for each song on the playlist, and thumbnails and
descriptive text for the current selection.  We also hope to offer
interviews and live sets on a side channel.  For programming and technical
inquiries, contact us at radio@grassyhill.org .