BY RALPH SLEDGE
I'm not exactly sure how to start describing this station.
It's not quite like anything else I've heard, and that's
a good thing. You've got to be in the mood for a stranger mix
of music than maybe you're used to -- but for many, what this
means is that it will be a delightfully refreshing change. So,
if you're thinking maybe you want to hear Omar Faruk Tekbilek
followed by the Thievery Corporation, or maybe an hour of obscure
burlesque music, you're in luck.
The site itself is an 800x600 picture of elegance. It's
designed to fit entirely "above the fold" on most monitors,
and each area on the site is just a variation on the initial theme.
You can't go to any screen that isn't one click (or maybe two)
away from the music. The retro-modern look is well designed and
about as modem
friendly as they come anymore. I encountered an occasional javascript
error, but never enough to cripple the site -- just enough to
make an information pop-up window unavailable.
The music from the site is encoded in variable bitrate
RealAudio, so modem users and broadband users alike will be happy,
without ever having to face a "click here for such-and-such
bandwidth" list. The high-bandwidth sound is good enough
to pipe through a set of decent speakers and have ears be happy.
But it's the music that makes this site really stand out.
Again, I'm not quite sure how to start describing it. It doesn't
fit under any one category, except that none of it is mainstream
American fare. The station itself is a 24-hour live stream with
various DJ's playing extremely various music. Yes, there are actual
DJ's, and they're fairly unobtrusive. They come on every once
in a while, and they may or may not say something about what they're
playing -- but it's mostly music. It's not just a jukebox of music,
either: the shows are produced and generally produced very well.
Each day there is a "specialty show" as well,
which are archived and available at any time after the show is
first 
broadcast.
A big chunk of the station's personality comes from these hour-long
shows: right now, I'm listening to "Alpha Lounge," hosted
by DJ Vivian Vavoom, who will apparently have me "strolling
down memory lane to the torch-song standards and then blasting-off
into the the new frontier of space age lounge!" This week,
she seems to be featuring songs where monkey sounds are integrated
into the music. I'm not kidding.
Other specialty shows include "Key Grip", which
is a movie, television, and Broadway musical station: "Global
hobo", which seeks to "expose the pink underbelly of
international music", and "Pop Autopsy," which
is a talk show that claims to be "poking at the corpse of
pop culture."
Alpha Radio might not be appropriate when you're in the
mood for the Beatles, but I'd listen to it's far more original
content for weeks before I listen to Britney Spears one more time.
Alpha Radio is available here.
From NewMediaMusic.com: "Musicmaker.com, a provider
of custom music CDs on the Internet and of digital
downloadable
music, today announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously
voted to liquidate and dissolve the Company...
"In determining to liquidate the Company, the Board
considered a number of factors including that the music industry
and e-commerce in general are in a period of rapid change and uncertainty;
the potential for
growth and availability of financing
this
environment is extremely limited; the Company's inability, despite
significant efforts,
to in identify a buyer or strategic partner willing to offer greater
value than that expected to be derived from liquidation; and the
Company's stock has traded well below the net asset value of its
shares..."
Read the entire story here.
And according to an article at StreamingMedia.com (
here),
MusicMaker's share price has fallen from a July 1999 high of $281.55
to $2.88. Last November the company executed a 1 for 10 reverse
stock split.
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From PRNewswire: "MTVi, the leading online music entertainment
company, today announced the
promotion of Jason Hirschhorn to the position of Vice President
and General Manager,
Sonicnet.com.
Hirschhorn was previously VP of Product Development for Sonicnet.com.
"In his new role, Hirschhorn will be responsible for
overseeing the day-to-day operations of Sonicnet.com and will report
directly to Fred Graver, SVP, VH1 Group, a division of MTVi, which
includes VH1.com, Sonicnet.com, and Country.com.
"Hirschhorn joined MTVi earlier this year following
the acquisition of Mischief New Media, an online music company founded
and
headed up by Hirschhorn."
Read the release
here.
Also from PRNewswire: "MTVi, the leading online music
entertainment company, today named MTV News veteran Michael Alex
to the newly formed position of Vice President, MTVi News. Alex
will head MTVi's centralized news organization, which provides music
news to MTV.com, VH1.com, Sonicnet.com and Country.com. Alex will
report directly to Nicholas Butterworth, president and CEO, The
MTVi Group."
Read this release
here.
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Reprinted from yesterday's afternoon
edition...
From the Portland Press Herald: "BroadcastAmerica.com,
the once-promising New Economy company that
plummeted into bankruptcy, failed to strike a deal for an infusion
of cash from an Alabama company and may be sold at auction.
"Roger A. Clement Jr., BroadcastAmerica's lawyer, said
Wednesday that Bowman Investments had decided not to make an offer
to buy BroadcastAmerica. That sale might have allowed the Internet
broadcasting operation to continue.
"Clement said he will ask a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge
in Portland to schedule an auction of BroadcastAmerica's assets.
He said BroadcastAmerica will ask
the court to order the company be sold as one unit, rather than
by breaking up its assets and selling them one by one."
Read the Press Herald story
here.
From RBR: "In a 12/31 letter to BA shareholders, John Brier,
President/COO and Alex Lauchlan, CEO had the following to say:
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Dear BroadcastAmerica shareholders:
We are writing with regret to tell you that BA will not be
doing a deal with Bowman Transportation. This, in effect,
exhausts our last chance of structuring a deal that will keep
the company out of Chapter 11, or from transferring property
to SurferNetwork, due to the lien on the assets.
It has been a tumultuous few months and we feel confident
we tried everything possible to keep the company alive in
these difficult times. NASDAQ has seen the worst possible
performance in 29 years. Interest rates have been raised six
times in the last year and the internal sector has lost over
1.2 trillion of value in the last 52 weeks.
None of these factors bode well for BroadcastAmerica as we
continued to try and build the company to a profitable conclusion.
We sincerely regret the conclusion BA is now facing.
Thank you for your support and we sincerely regret having
to share this bad news regarding your investment in Broadcast
America. |
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Read RBR's report
here.
It had been reported (read
RAIN's coverage
here)
that BroadcastAMERICA had already filed Chapter 11, and that
part
of that deal was a merger (plus a $1 million investment) with
SurferNETWORK.
No word on where that deal stands.
BroadcastAMERICA, after losing the services of Sprint, MCI,
and Real for defaulting on payments, lost most of their streaming
affiliates. With no money left to pay employees, only upper management
and a skeleton crew willing to work gratis remain. Note that the
homepage (
here)
hasn't even been updated (notice the age of the news story running
on the site).
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