The Furious Angels
FA Discussion => General => Topic started by: Jester on November 15, 2010, 04:43:38 pm
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Alrighty folks - let me give you the skinny
As some of you may know, I've ran multiple radio stations geared toward MMO's such as Radio Free Zion, Awakened Radio, Yar! Radio, Dnd Radio, Lineage Radio, and MMORadio (among a few others). They were all incorporated under a company which I split with a partner called TMSBroadcasting.
Now, I want to see if you all are down for doing an F|A radio. It could be used for a great recruitment tool/public relations utility/GAME CHANGER FOR FA//random fun.
Logistics and everything aside - what do you all think?
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I like it but would need more info on it before I give a definitive answer.
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What information would you like?
This is what this is for. Ask Questions, hash shit out.
And go.
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What kind of music would it play? Bluegrass?
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I think the questions to ask are...
Who is the radio for? FA members? FA potentials? Or everyone?
How would this fit into the identity of FA? If it were a public station, could it be part of "the signal"? How would it keep the mystery and intrigue of FA rather giving out too much information?
What makes it different? Why would anyone want to listen to it? For FA news? SWTOR news? Podcasts? RP stuff? Music? All of the above?
What would our target number of listeners be? Would it be 24/7 or more podcast style?
I'm not sure I have the answers to any of these questions...heh.
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Wait a minute... Mr.Fuhrman? Shit, I hadn't realize that was you. You still talk to any of the old crew?
Some discussion on those points have been brought up in other threads; this comes up about once every year or two. When I hosted items for us in MxO it didn't seem to take off at all, so I think it would need to be expanded to not just FA members.
http://thefuriousangels.com/index.php?topic=6189
http://thefuriousangels.com/index.php?msg=79905
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Yussir! How are ya mano! Yeah I still talk to Sundog and a few of the others. I figure that with the few RFZ'ers that are around here - we can make a stupid awesome shindig.
What Im going to do is answer as many of these once a day - so pound out as many questions as you want.
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If it were a public station, could it be part of "the signal"? How would it keep the mystery and intrigue of FA rather giving out too much information?
It would be cool if we could record more "news broadcasts" like we used in the challenge. They could be played at intervals between songs.
It wouldn't have to be "You're listening to F.A.R., Furious Angels Radio! Your source for TOR news and Furious Angel updates!" I think less-is-more would be more appropriate. We could even name the broadcast "Faint Signal" or "Republic Broadcast" so we could still keep with the RP of our recruitment.
Aside from that, I don't know if any of us has enough free time to actually DJ and give daily/weekly TOR updates. Once we start down that road, and if it's well received, we'll be expected to maintain that kind of coverage. Of course, I'm only drawing on my memories of the way RFZ was run, and it always seemed like there was a ton of man-power behind that. I'm not sure if a single faction would be up to the task.
That's my two cents.
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I'd be very interested if it played in directly, and subtly, with our recruitment and FA goings on. I'd be willing to take a shift if we ever got it up but it could only be a few short ones during the week at most. But very intriguing and a good, new form to get our info out there and be as cryptic as we want ;)
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Im not too familiar with how it works, but Im up for the idea. Curious as to what music we would be playing. the news broadcasts would be awesome as well, but we would need a lot of incoming info to really keep that going.
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My main concern would definitely be the man-power. Although I would have time to be a DJ, I, in no way, have any sort of voice for radio (hahahahahahahah) nor any taste in music that would cause people to want to listen, unless I decided to update my music library. Theoretically, I would do that, but I don't really think I have much of a voice for radio.
Besides Adad, Jester, and potentially Fuse, who would be willing to do this? I can't remember the exact hours that RFZ ran with a live DJ, but I feel like that made it really special was that there was almost always someone live during peak hours.
I do think it's good to be talking about this now, though, while Beta is still in its earlier stages. I really, really like the idea of a radio station. It could potentially be a huge recruitment tool and would definitely raise our profile in the community in a very positive way.
EDIT: Don't you also need a super connection to be able to DJ, one with a high upload capacity? What would be some of the technical specifications for both DJ's and the general station? What resources would have to go into this to make it viable? Or is that already in place from your past ventures?
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RFZ was 99% live DJ when it got going - I'm not sure if we even had music setup for automation on AWR/YAR/MMO.
The way this works is that you buy a server that can support the amount of bandwidth for the number of listeners you expect to handle. The DJ connects with software to this server and uploads a single pipe stream to the server and the listeners connect to that server which relay's the music. This is why when I did some stuff for FA in the past I could only support about 5 listeners without rough buffering off my own box through a cable connection, but had over 700 listeners on RFZ at one time.
While it depends on the quality your streaming, generally 300kbs upload speed in minimum to support a streamless stream and gaming/web use. Software isn't an issue to get. We used SAM Broadcaster and it was an amazing tool, but there are free options that don't have as many features.
I've looked into the pricing a bit for the station I ran, but that was ultimatley taken care of by the owner, so I'm sure Jester knows more about that than me.
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I'd definitly be up for this. I'd also prefer to be involved with the setup and adminstration if we move forweard with this. While I don't have the experience of Jester, I was a DJ on RFZ from nearly the start to the end, and also did about 10 hours a week on AWR and YAR, and a bit less on MMO. While I wasn't the most popular DJ, I think my FuseBOX show was liked more than I had expected, and at least the most popular in it's genre. I also ran the station for midwest-edm.com including optimization, hiring, and setting up standards and expectations for our DJs.
Plus, I have the perfect face for radio. :)
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I have a decent base to start from (~12k songs currently) and free time while I'm unemployed, and a decent mic/pc/fios connection. I suppose it's a wonder why I haven't dabbled in DJ'ing :-p
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The biggest thing for the DJ is really having a good amount of decent quality music, that doesn't have messed up ID3 Tags and a DSL/Cable connection.
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What about the rights to play copyrighted music? Or does that not apply to internet radio stations?
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Not sure the current situation - but the main reason as I understood it that we do not currently have an MMORadio, AWR, or YARRadio anymore is because of when they cracked down on this. I believe they had lifted or revamped many of the regulations since then though.
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From an rp standpoint, would we be more likely to play it out as a station that's secretly run by us or as an unaffiliated broadcast that we can "hijack" when we need to get a message out?
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I'd love to see a RFZ type deal for TOR but run by FA members. If its more focused on TOR news and in game updates we'll get a huge listening base. That would give us the opportunity and resources to get the recruit message out there and get the same level of infamy FA had in MxO. If we name it faint signal or have FA blurbs between every song, we'd have more Kyote's that get butthurt because it's being used for guild recruitment. But if its a good source of music and game news with the occasional recruitment blurb here and there, it might get some notoriety. I'm interested to see if this idea plays out.
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The problem is, we can have a successful guild or a successful radio station. We can't have both. We could have a crappy guild and a successful radio station, or a successful guild and a crappy radio station, and if we're really unlucky both of them could be crappy...heh.
I don't want to become the next RFZ or DarthHater. I'm more interested in creating content that could...
1. Enhance the game for FA members/the public
2. Add details to the FA backstory/challenge story
3. Provide a creative outlet for RPers and DJ enthusiasts
If we're going to go this direction, I think it should be a roleplay thing. The station is a niche radio station that is big into conspiracy theories. One of the big news headlines that have caught their attention is the disappearances that have been happening to people who have been following the mysterious signals. They have guests on who are specialists who analyze the situation and spout off theories. Each DJ could have their own personality - maybe you're really big about getting into the bottom of things or maybe you don't really give a shit.
Meanwhile, sometimes the music cuts out and the signal gets hijacked by FA's broadcast with mysterious messages, causing the radio station to try to dig even deeper.
Eventually this could lead to reflecting in-game events and the conspiracy could be about this group that seems to be showing up at significant moments and then disappearing again. Who are these people? How long have they been around? Why are they so furious?
Would we have many listeners? Maybe...maybe not. I don't know. But like I said, I hypothesize that if it gets really big, it will simply be a huge distraction from the guild and what the guild is trying to accomplish in game, so that's my concern.
Anyway, these are my thoughts. Feel free to agree or disagree.
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Personally I like the station being kind of a RP niche conspiracy format type of thing.
I agree that it could get way in depth and distract, but I do think it'd be really cool thing to have.... And if we have members who are so intent and want to dedicate most of their time to that and it makes them happy, then I say more power to them.
Though that's just my thoughts.
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I dunno anything about the process to say one way or the other. I think if your too Niche it drives people away because everyone already knows the signal is guild recruitment so they wont bother so much. but I do feel Tbone is right that if it is a major success we are looking at manning this thing 24/7 and spending less time in the game.
What I really need to know from jester is exactly how this is going to work and if we are playing copywrighted music, indie music, exactly how all this works since MMOradio was taken down by the RIAA. It had a lot of fans but that doesnt make it legal. atm I want to know if that still stands that if we did this and it got popular that we wouldnt get shut down for some violation.
By my accounts, if your have each dj working 3 hours, you need 8 DJs plus any support staff, News researchers, advertising staff, etc. Thats for live radio.
While I would love to be on some project like this, I really need to know what to expect as to how we go about running something like this successfully
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Im going to start compiling answers to everything. I think we have enough posts for me to generate some good info.
@Paitryn, Id like to make it very clear that MMORadio was NOT taken down by the RIAA. It was shut down by myself and my partner due to the royalty rate increases by Sound Exchange. It made it very unfeasible to have an ad-supported business when you had to increase those rates 600% just to pay off that one company. I'll speak more on the RIAA and radar later. MMORadio was very very very legal, as was every TMSBroadcasting station.
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i apologize for misunderstanding. from the online reactions by fans and posts here i falsely misinterpreted its outcome.