Reading this week about the sad demise of Live365 it got me thinking about the hopes and dreams of younger Dave. Younger Dave wanted many things, to travel the world, to drink lots of beer, meet lots of girls and of course – make my millions and run a radio station. Some how I was deluded into thinking the last two were interlinked, run a radio station and make a fortune, it was simple. Build something great and the masses will come. It’s a common fallacy, you have the best idea – of course you do, everybody else must think the same as you do, it’s so brilliant! It’s as true now with the multitude of stations/platforms as it was a decade ago.
Older Dave is a little wiser, he knows radio stations don’t attract an audience just by being brilliant, you have to bang on doors, spend money on advertising and build brand awareness. He also knows it’s a lot of work, and as I’ve already alluded involves a lot of money. That’s where Live365 went some way to help new entrants, it provided the infrastructure to get you going. True most of them were tin pot jukeboxes that had few listeners, but still if you had an idea you could get it on the internet for virtually nothing. So I did a bit of hunting around and came across another similar platform, Radionomy, and had a go at creating a station. I already had a catalogue of music from my weekly playlists that would act as a playlist, all I had to do was upload it all, throw in a bit of cheesy production and hey presto young Daves hopes and ambitions would not be completely forgotten.
So an evening or two later and I have a rather basic radio station that’s on TuneIn and soon to be on Pure Connect (the Pure Radio platform). Have I got any listeners, no, of course not, but I knew that. This was born more out of curiosity than any real ambition to make anything proper, but I’ll keep it going as a vehicle to help promote (to one man and his cat) The Friday Lunchtime Playlist – which is slightly more manageable than a fully fledged radio station.
If you fancy a listen you can find it on TuneIn by searching “FLP Radio”
