Running A College Radio Station Advice

[jcamps]

Hey vinyl collective, I need some help.

I'm on my second term as Vice President of my school (Wentworth)'s internet radio station. We operate on a very thin budget and things have really been looking up this fall, as we got a ton of new freshmen djs.

HOWEVER. I just got an email from our club advisor stating that we do not and have never had the licensing to play music that the radio station does not own. For years, our DJs have just brought in their laptops/MP3 players to use their own music for shows. I haven't broken this news to the club yet, but I fear everyone is going to quit as this takes all the fun out of doing the radio station. The school's CD collection is weak, and I really didn't anticipate on using funds on purchasing music (unless I could get away with buying records ).

Has anyone on here had experience running a radio station before?

I'd really like to find away around the licensing issue, but if that can't be done does anyone have free legal music download site suggestions? I'm thinking we are just going to hit up amazon and newbury comics cheap bins, but that is still very frustrating. I was hoping to use most of our money to promote the station and sponsor a few on campus concerts.

Any suggestions/ideas would be welcome thanks everyone.

[goraiders]

could you buy a rhapsody account or something else where you can stream unlimited?

[danthemjfan23]

get in touch with every label you can think of and let them know that you'd like to be added to their mailing list. have them send you promo cds (and/or records if they press them and you have turntables at your station) and work around it that way. it'll take a few weeks - minimum - to get enough stuff coming in to have a respectable rotation, but once you establish those contacts, things will eventually start pouring in.

[axlrose]

Maybe I'm out of it because I haven't worked at a station in over 5 years and it was regular radio (though we did stream), but at the time we had the right to play anything because we paid royalties to the major copyright companies, so we could play any of their material. It had nothing to do with ownership of the material. Additionally, because we were non-profit and education we were given an incredibly prorated royalty cost. I believe we paid less than a penny per song for internet streaming.

As for reaching out to labels, it's a great idea and if any are unsure about your status or how wide your reach is offer to take digital copies of music and just burn it for the station. It's a little more leg work but it might sway a few labels.

[jcamps]

Yeah I'm definitely going to contact all my favorite labels and explain the situation, getting a rhapsody account is a brilliant idea also I hadn't thought of that.

Edit:

So I talked to our club adviser and he informed me that we do already pay royalties, but they only cover medium that we own. Doesn't really make sense to me why we'd be paying in the first place. He shot down the rhapsody idea too, their terms of use are only personal and not broadcats

[Guest markovianprocess]

What about Spotify?

[rocknroll76]

If the dj's are that serious about it, couldn't they donate their CDs to the station? Or the students? Put out a bulletin asking for people to donate CDs to their beloved radio station. If you get any junk you don't want, go trade 'em in for CDs you DO want.

Other than asking for free ones from labels or buying your own, there's not many options.

[birdwell]

check into some of the college radio promotion companies. when i worked for our radio station we had hundreds of cds coming in a month, we had a dedicated music staff that took home like 10 cds a week and did reviews on them, what sucked, what didn't, stand-out tracks. these promo companies also consistantly hooked us up with free tickets to shows...to either give away on air, or just go to the show ourselves.

edit - Promo Company (person to contact): Planetary (Sean), The Syndicate (?), Team Clermont (jj Flores), Pirate (Meredith or Doug Blake)

[shenanigans]

As far as rhapsody/Itunes - when you buy music from those programs it isn't licensed for radio use. I'm not really sure what your adviser means by "does not own." Yes, you can't illegally download music and play it, but own is a loose term. We had a digital system (MegaSeg) and "own" meant that the music had to be uploaded from a real cd - not a burned one. One thing I did to increase our library (we were in our 2nd year) was that I made a deal w/ the local used cd shop. Every night we'd borrow 15 cds upload them to the system and bring them back the next morning. In exchange we let them underwrite a show. Had a different person pick up the cds every night so it was a good variety. Other than that, check out the promo companies - pirate probably won't send cds, but they put all their big releases on a website you can download from. One that he didnt list is Southern Lovin - Tony - they do all of No Idea's stuff. I gotta run but I'll check this thread again later.

[000000]

our radio station subscribes to CMJ, and we get a shit ton of music from that. not sure how much it costs, but it might be worth looking into in order to bulk up the collection.

[jcamps]

Spotify looks great, unfortunately it isn't available in the states.

definitely going to do a cd drive.

thanks for the contacts birdwell and shenanigans, i'm definitely going to get in touch with them and look into cmj. do they just send samplers out with magazines?

[xjustinxschwierx]

I ran a radio show on a legit community/college radio station in Chicago for 6 years and never heard of this issue.

[forgeagain]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure having the physical CD in your possession and having the MP3s makes pretty much no difference in terms of licensing. Just because you bought a CD doesn't give you the license to do whatever you want with it, including broadcast it. That's an entirely different matter.

That said, I'm pretty sure you're covered through BMI/ASCAP/etc. licenses and the fact that no independent label that isn't through BMI/ASCAP/etc. would ever try to collect royalties from a college radio station that's helping their artists gain publicity.

[counterfiction]

This makes absolutely no sense to me. I worked for a station for almost four years and I've never heard of that royalty structure or even anything like it. The publishing companies don't care if you own the music that you play, they only care if it gets played and that they get paid.

Fuck the man, they're not going to take your station away for playing burned CDs. Not to mention that it's only an internet station and there's no way they're going to check into it.

What are they going to do, call up and ask you if you own the physical medium of the song you're currently playing? If they do, um, just say yes.

[jcamps]

yeah exactly, right now it's just a matter of our club adviser being a dick about this. hopefully he just turns his back and everyone can play what they want without him noticing.

[garrygumguru]

I was a DJ at my college for a couple of years. I'm pretty sure we had something set up with CMJ where we had to play at least two songs from a list of albums every hour, and then we could keep getting new music from them. We were encouraged to bring in our own CDs and upload them to the computer to boost the station's library. If we wanted to bring in our computer or mp3 player, that worked too.

[thenuthouse]

If you pay your licensing fees to BMI/ASCAP, you're covered. By no means do you have to have in possession the actual songs being played. Shoot me an PM, and I can get you in contact with the adviser for the station where I used to work. He'll be able to quote you chapter and verse, giving you something to take your club adviser.

Seriously, that guy's reading SOMETHING wrong.