A year ago, I started this radio station. During the holidays back in 2010, I started going through my old record collection, fixed a turntable and rediscovered the joy of vinyl. One thing was for sure: I have a lot of old K-Tel albums. These albums not only represented formative years of my childhood, they also were interesting musical time capsules of the 1970s and 80s.
As a result, Vinyl Voyage Radio was born in February 2011 and I started hosting the K-Tel-themed show,
Adventures in Vinyl, which featured a different K-Tel album every month. It's been fun hosting the show and becoming reacquainted with the music, history and memories.
We've been on the air now for just about a year. Over the year people from all over the world have listened. Recently, the station has clocked hours from Israel, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Belgium, Ukraine and Mexico. Total listening hours is relatively small, however. Just under 1000 hours in 12 months. If we were a commercial station we would have been out of business that first month.
But we are not commercial. Although it does cost us to run the station, the fee is relatively small. Hosted by
Live365, we are able to keep costs down while
Live365 pays the royalties for every song we play. The station is run off a computer in my basement. We have about 150 hours of music loaded and that number increases regularly as I record more vinyl into the computer.
So I had to decide whether or not to continue for another year. Today, as I was listening to K-Tel's "
Music Machine," I was placing all of my K-Tel albums into a brand new record case my parents gave to me for Christmas. And then it struck me: I have much more K-Tel to share.
I don't know how many people have listened to
Adventures in Vinyl. I know my mom has. Perhaps she is the only one. I don't know.
So I made a decision: as long as I still have K-Tel, Vinyl Voyage Radio will remain on the air.
For a few days coming up, we will most likely go silent as we make different arrangements with Live365 (and I try to clear a major virus off of the computer). But we will be back in early February playing great music the way it should be: on glorious vinyl.
And if no one listens, that's okay, too. This isn't about getting the most listeners or making money. It's about music. And if one person, somewhere in the world, enjoys the trip through my record collection, then it is worth it.
