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Personalized Email Domain

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Derek Bullard Posted in Radiosolution, Web Hosting

Personalized Email Domain – For Your Small Business

An online visibility is essential to the success of your business. Many clients search online for local goods and services. If you don’t have a personalized email domain name, this means people are browsing for and not finding your firm online.

When you first started your small business, did you haphazardly commence sending electronic mails from your own private email account? Or, if you’re up till now in the planning stages of opening a new business, do you feel you’ll be fine sending your business emails from a Yahoo! or maybe a Gmail account? In that case, think again. The email domain name from which you send your emails bears a major impact on your business’s reputation and credibility.

If you are like many business owners or organizational officers, you are often looking for ways to set yourself apart from your business rivals or enhance the image of your business. A personalized domain might seem like a small detail, but it really can be an excellent piece of your brand identity. If you purchase a domain name then your email domain is the end part of your e-mail after the @ sign. A personalized domain will be uniquely given to your business. For instance: abc@customdomain.xyz

Why you should consider a personalized domain name:

#1 Credibility: imagine if a potential buyer has not heard about you before or they have not once before tried your services? What sort of impression will you leave them after you initially make contact? Your email address could be the first impression that you leave with a prospective client. Which business will you prefer based upon their email address? radiosolution@yahoo.com or name@radiosolution.com The latter looks the most appealing and professional.

Huge email providers for instance Gmail, Hotmail and also Yahoo! are frequently used for junk email addresses since it is quick, simple and cost free to sign up for their services. Some junk filters can flag email handles with those domains since they come from servers, IP address ranges, or maybe domains which can be frequently used for junk e-mail. You wouldn’t wish that your client miss an important e-mail from you as it went into their junk e-mail filter.

#2 Brand Awareness: After you send out an email it may be forwarded to many different email addresses. When people see your personalized email account it could establish awareness for your business. Should you have a website with similar domain, people may also see your email account and visit your website.

#3 Promotion: It really is free promotion for your business each time you send someone an electronic mail you’re subtly branding your business. The issue is, will you brand it as radiosolution@gmail.com or name@ radiosolution.info. Undoubtedly the latter choice will help imprint your business brand in the recipient’s mind.

#4 Development opportunities: In case you have business associates or workers, or if you ever intend to hire staff one day, having your special business email domain enables you to develop a uniform naming convention for your employees and business units. This looks professional and helps clients easily find the suitable people to message.

#5 Marketing: Finally, your e-mail marketing efforts will get much better results if clients observe that your emails are generated by your company’s email domain, they will immediately know they are genuine and be more prone to open and read them.

Radiosolution can support you every step of the way as you setup a personalized email domain for your business project. Start by checking to see if the domain name you would like is available by clicking here.

Once you have selected an available name you are able to make your purchase. Please contact Live support or contact us if you have any questions.

SHOUTcast Black Friday

Posted on November 24, 2016 by Derek Bullard Posted in Radiosolution

SHOUTcast Black Friday

Thanksgiving has arrived and that can mean only one thing; it is time for SHOUTcast Black Friday savings and specials. We have put together some deals that might give you that boost needed to finally start your very own radio station.

Make your project even more professional with your very own domain name. Check to see if your own domain name is available.

We are offering an amazing deal of 50% off the first month on any SHOUTcast or IceCast servers. *This special excludes any dedicated servers.

You can also try our web hosting packages including unlimited emails accounts. We are offering the same amazing deal at 50% off the first month.

The coupon code for both of these deals is BlackFriday

If you require any assistance with the purchase of any product please contact our sales team. It will be our pleasure to meet you and assist you.

Complete Start your own radio station package for 1 year @ only 99$ You save 160$! WOW!!!

Domain name .com
Web hosting with 2Gb of space
1 web page with Html5 music player playing your station
Centova Cloud based radio management with 25 slots at 128kbps
Radio Id recorded by Dibblebee

Buy directly here for Black Friday

Please note the coupon code will expire November 25, 2016 at midnight

Radio Imaging is Important

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Derek Bullard Posted in Radiosolution

Radio Imaging

Every radio station or DJ needs proper radio imaging to sound its best possible. It can come in the form of a radio jingle, sweeper, promo, intro, commercial or radio identification. Your radio will probably be playing live music or your listeners will hear informative content from a host or deejay. However, any professional sounding radio station will need to let its listeners know the name of the radio station. This is usually done with a short radio identification between a set number of music tracks. The pre-recorded sweeper lasts a maximum of 20 seconds and will do marvels by creating a nice sounding radio flow. Your automated broadcasting software should have the features you need to automatically place these station identifications.

Your radio sweepers will identify your radio station all the while calling your listeners to some specific action. They will have a maximum of about 15-20 words and contain short music beds or sound effects. They can say something like; “You are listening to the high energy dance (name of station) on your FM dial.” or “You’re tuned to (name of station) check out the website at (website address) ”

You can record these sweepers yourself with good audio production software such as Adobe Audition. You will also need a decent microphone. However, if you do not have enough experience to create them yourself, you can give your radio a professional sound by purchasing an audio production (sweepers, liners, station IDs, DJ drops) Dibblebee (Derek Bullard) will deliver an affordable, high energy, friendly and upbeat promo you will be sure to love. Listen to some of his voiceover work here

If you are convinced your radio station will need a professional sound, go ahead and place your ‘radio imaging audio production order’ via the Radiosolution website.

Radio Website

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Derek Bullard Posted in Radiosolution

Radio Website

From many of the aspects to consider when starting a radio station, our new clients will often ask about a radio website. After explaining the importance of having a radio website, we will explain the best way to go about developing the best radio website. Your radio website is a very important aspect of running a radio station. It will be your main means of attracting and communicating to your listeners. A radio website is also the number one way to get your listeners to tune in to your SHOUTcast or Icecast radio broadcast feed via an embedded web player. Your web site must reflect positively on the image you want to portray. Simply put; if your website is outdated and of poor quality, there is a good chance your listeners will quickly click away. Your website will need to reflect the radio station objectives you have already laid out. It is impossible to build a success full radio station if you have skipped any of the essential planning.

Step 1- Domain Name

You will first need to select a domain name. You can purchase a domain name for about $15 per year. You can use the Radiosolution Online Domain Checker Tool here at http://radiosolution.info/wp/whmcs-bridge/?ccce=domainchecker Try and select a domain name that will contain your radio station name or main keyword.

Step 2-Hosting

Choosing a web site radio station hosting company can be tricky. There are many factors to consider when selecting a reliable internet radio station host. We will not get in to detail about choosing a radio station hosting company, because you will have already gone through the necessary and similar steps when you selected a SHOUTcast or Icecast provider. We highly recommend that you host your radio website at the same place you selected your SHOUTcast Icecast hosting company. Most of the time you will have this included at no extra charge. Make sure you ask them about the available website builders or CMS (Content Management System) that can be installed on your hosting account.

Step 3- Plan Website Creation

It is time to prepare by asking yourself a few questions; What is your budget for your website? Will you hire a webmaster programmer? If you choose to do it yourself, would you be content with a free online website builder? Which website builder tool will you install and use? What are the solutions offered by your radio station host provider? Do you actually have the necessary skills to do it yourself? The next steps are necessary whether you are planning or creating your radio website. Now, why not have a look at your competitors and look at what you like and do not like about their radio station. How could you make your website and project even better? Who will be your target audience? What will be the different sections on your website? What will be the content and who will write it? After you consider those questions, you should have an answer to the following points for your radio website; Purpose, goals, target audience and content.

Step 4- Start Creating Website

At this point even if you have decided to do the website yourself or if you will hire a Website Designer Programmer, you still need to choose between a free website builder that comes with your web hosting package or if you will use a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress. There are many ways to create a website. You can program it yourself using coding languages like HTML, MySQL PHP etc. However, you better be skilled or be prepared for a long expensive project when you start from scratch. We would strongly suggest using a more simple solution. If you are running on a very tight and limited budget, you may have no choice but to use the free website builder included with your hosting package.

Rvsitebuilder

This FREE template based website builder solution is probably installed on your web hosting package. You will find that it is fairly easy to setup your radio website with a step by step wizard that helps you get started within minutes. You do not need to have coding skills or to know HTML, but it is a plus if you want to integrate more advanced features. You will save a lot of time with the web-based drag and drop web design tool. Rvsitebuilder is a very legitimate tool to consider for your basic, low-budget radio website. Here is the Rvsitebuilder homepage http://www.rvsitebuilder.com/

WordPress

This is another great and easy website builder tool to build a small to medium sized radio website. However, for new users it does require a bit of a learning curve. WordPress has a great community for support and there is thousands of easy to install plugins to optimize your website. With the right SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugins, WordPress websites can obtain very high search engine results. WordPress is extremely flexible and a great solution for a radio website. Download WordPress here http://wordpress.org

There is a lot of information and tutorial for both Rvsitebuilder and WordPress. WordPress is highly recommended for your radio website. If done right you will be highly satisfied of the results. If you believe your project will become large and popular you can consider other CMS solutions like Joomla http://joomla.org or Drupal http://drupal.org

Step 5 – Your Website Content

A website is not always about having the best design or looking the prettiest. If you want to run a successful radio website you will need to have good content. They say Content is King, this is very true for your audience visiting your radio website as well as the search engines who are indexing your website pages. When you update your content frequently, your audience will come back often and most probably be intrigued enough to stay tuned in to your radio station.

The first thing to remember is that since you are a radio website, your audience needs to be able to tune in to your radio with one simple click. Too many radio web stations are using outdated players or ones that require a download. The most popular players these days are built with HTML 5 and there are plenty of them available for free. Here is a very reliable HTML 5 free player http://radiosolution.info/wp/free-shoutcast-player/

Here is some popular suggestions for some basic pages and features you should create on your radio website.

Homepage (with rich text containing focused keywords about your radio station)
Tune in Now (a link to a pop up player)
Pop up player page (html 5 player, now playing song titles, ad placement and social media links)
About the Radio Station (information about the purpose, goal and objective of the radio station)
News (what is happening right now and what is new about your radio station)
Station Schedule
Station Staff (deejays, presenters and volunteers)
Join the Team (for presenters and volunteers to join)
Contact us (contact form sent to your email)
Social Media Links (Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc)
Other Links ( sponsors, useful tips, supported artists etc.)

Other useful features or ideas:

Archived Shows (you can put a link to popular shows that have been aired in the past)
Live Video Feed
Music Videos
Donation Page (receive funds from listeners that support you)
Strategically placed advertisements from your sponsors
Blog (about artists and music)

Interactive ideas for your listeners:

Chat Box
Polls
Forum
Contests

At the end of the day whichever way you choose to plan and develop your project, make sure your radio website contains information about your radio station, your schedule, a blog and news stories. You want to generate revenue, so keep a place for affiliate products and ad space. Be creative and look for ideas that will get your listeners more involved with the radio station. Make it interesting and interactive so they keep on coming back.

SHOUTcast Canada

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Derek Bullard Posted in Radiosolution, Starting a radio station

SHOUTcast Canada

If you run an internet radio station in Canada, you will be pleased to know that you can get SHOUTcast Canada hosting. Radiosolution has been offering everything you need to start internet radio station since 1997. We can provide the information and tools that will make your internet radio in Canada a huge success. Even though Radiosolution can provide SHOUTcast and Icecast hosting services worldwide. We have strategically placed some of our servers in Canada. Quality, security, excellent customer service and reliability is some of our main concerns. You will appreciate our professionalism and friendliness Canadian style…eh? 😉 If you are based in Canada there is many advantages of taking or transferring your SHOUTcast Icecast to us.

Advantages of SHOUTcast Canada

Have you noticed how much the Canadian dollar has dropped in comparison to the USA dollar. Well, we have you covered, because we are still charging the same price whether it is in Canadian or US Funds. Now is that not a decent commitment to our Canadian friends feeling the wrath of the economy on our dollar. You may be paying up to 40% more than you should be. Is that money that could be invested else where in your internet radio project?

Not only are we willing to take on the american dollar, we will price match any valid competitor out there offering a better deal. We will not put a price on gaining your confidence and getting your business.

Lets be frank, some of the competitors are treating their customers like numbers. There is no personalized service whatsoever. Why not enjoy a friendly relationship with our team. We promise you excellent service and technical support.

Since you are on a Canadian server you will benefit from fast loading times, less buffering and no latency. Your listeners will see the difference and appreciate that you are using nearby servers.

We are convinced every radio station is doing their due diligence to respect copyright and broadcast laws. We realize that licensing is always a huge concern. As a Canadian broadcaster you may qualify to be covered by Socan under our license agreement. You will need to contact us for more details.

In conclusion, in Canada you will benefit from better privacy laws that are in place for now to protect your personal privacy.

Radiosolution is a SHOUTcast Icecast Wowza hosting company based in Quebec, Canada with servers based in Europe, USA and Canada. Contact us to learn more about starting an internet radio station.

Internet Radio Software Shoutcast

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Derek Bullard Posted in Radiosolution, Starting a radio station

Internet Radio Software

Out of the many factors to consider for your radio station, one of the most important is the software that you will choose to broadcast your music and voice to the world. Happily there is some choice out there. You will discover simple to more advanced and free to paid versions of broadcasting software. Your selection will be based on the operating system you are using; MAC OS, WINDOWS or LINUX.

Winamp; Simple and Free

Recently Winamp & SHOUTcast have recently changed ownership (from AOL to Radionomy). With AOL, SHOUTcast appeared to be free of any commercialization and was left to the community for the longest time. I am not convinced Radionomy was the best organisation to save the project. SHOUTcast was in danger of being closed by AOL and this created a huge outcry by the community. Radionomy at the time appeared to have saved the day. However, now over time it has become evident that they are revamping the whole project for their own commercial gain. This being said it is unclear where they will take Winamp. For now it is still available here (http://winamp.com)

Winamp allows you to manage a playlist, broadcast your voice and offers different plugins to control fading. Combined with the SHOUTcast Dsp plugin you can get on air easily and quickly. You can download it directly from Radiosolution website (http://radiosolution.info/downloads/shoutcast-dsp-2-3-5-windows.exe) to avoid having to give your email address to Radionomy.

Pros; Free to use. Easy and fast setup.

Cons; Very hard to achieve a professional sounding station. Your station will sound like a looping playlist. Difficult to use the voice and microphone feature. Not at all optimized for a live broadcast. Workflow is very painful. No basic scheduling features.

Final verdict; If you want a professional sounding station avoid Winamp if possible. There are way to many other great programs to waste time working with this software.

Current platforms; MAC OS, WINDOWS

Butt Broadcaster

Butt Broadcaster is an easy to use, multi OS streaming tool. This is the best tool to use if you are using external equipment such as (DJ controllers, CD players, Mixers, etc.) It will stream and record from your MIC or LINE Input. It supports SHOUTcast and Icecast and runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It is NOT intended to be a server by itself or automatically stream a playlist of audio files. So you will still need an audio source and to rent a SHOUTcast v1/v2 or Icecast hosted server.

The best part of this software is that it is completely FREE and I feel it achieves everything its commercial competitor Nicecast (https://www.rogueamoeba.com/nicecast/download.php) does. Nicecast was a long time favorite and solution for MAC OS users. MAC users had a limited choice when it came to broadcasting tools. Butt Broadcaster changes all of this. Download Butt Broadcaster for free here. (http://butt.sourceforge.net)

Pros; Free to use. Easy and fast setup.

Cons; You need external hardware.

Final verdict; This is the best free tool out there to stream and record your external equipment.

Current platforms; MAC OS, WINDOWS, LINUX

Time to Get Serious With Sam Broadcaster

If you want to get more serious about your radio station and you have a small budget, you will want to consider purchasing Sam Broadcaster by Spacial Audio.

Sam Broadcaster is a radio automation software developed specifically for radio stations. It has a quality streaming DSP encoder that will allow you to connect to SHOUTcast v1/v2 or Icecast. This software can organize large music libraries quickly into multiple categories, import information from tags and automatically look up track information via Amazon.com.

The built in audio features like cross-fade detection, gap killer, volume normalization and 5-band compressor and limiter will make your radio station sound professional.

You can discover many of the other features if you give the software a trial run here. (https://store.spacial.com/545/cookie?affiliate=34502&redirectto=http%3a%2f%2fspacial.com%2fsam-broadcaster)

Pros; Professional sound. Widely used by many radio stations. Easy to use Microphone.

Cons; Have seen many database issues. Requires a certain learning curve. Steep price in comparison to some free alternatives. You will need to learn how to PAL script to benefit from Sam’s full power.

Final verdict; I have suggested Sam Broadcaster to many different radio stations, because it seems to be tailored well to the needs of a traditional radio station. However, I do have a soft spot for free alternatives.

Current platforms; WINDOWS

Even Better With RadioDJ

You will not have to break the bank to get quality software to run your radio station. RadioDJ comes highly recommended as an excellent FREE radio automation solution. It is also a very good alternative to Sam Broadcaster.

RadioDJ features integrated Shoutcast/Icecast encoder (by plugin), an audio Processor plugin (with AGC, Compressor and 10 band Equalizer) for a great sound. It has multiple sound-card outputs an works with any sound-card supported by Windows. You will appreciate the Auto DJ function, based on category and subcategory rotation for 24/7 automation. RadioDJ comes with predefined main categories that will help you organize all of your sound files. Beside those, you can add virtually unlimited categories and subcategories for your music, jingles, sweepers etc. Go ahead and download and install the software for free (http://www.radiodj.ro/)

Pros; FREE, Professional sound, Reliable database management. Great support community.

Cons; I really cannot complain about anything.

Final verdict; RadioDJ is my choice in Radio Automation Software. I do have a soft spot for free alternatives.

Current platforms; WINDOWS

Honorable mentions

The list of broadcast live radio software could go on as there are other solutions that many radio stations are using with much success. We have simply outlined the software with which we have the most experience. Based on research we have some other software that deserves mentioning.

Station Playlist (http://www.stationplaylist.com/) Designed for Pro Stations. A trial is available for download but you must purchase a license.

Simian LITE and PRO (http://www.bsiusa.com/) Powerful fully featured, professional radio automation software. You must purchase a license.

Mixx (http://www.mixxx.org/) A FREE World class mixing engine with Auto DJ feature for Windows and Linux.

Megaseg (http://www.megaseg.com/) This is the Sam Broadcaster for MAC users. You must purchase a license.

It is no secret that running a radio station takes time and patience. However, listeners will only stick around if your station sounds professional. Choosing the right software can influence those factors greatly. Hopefully this list will help you make a good choice so you can concentrate your valuable time by offering a quality sound, not to mention focus on attracting and keeping listeners. Do not hesitate to contact a Radiosolution representative for assistance with any of these programs.

How to add and submit your station to ITunes Radio

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Derek Bullard Posted in Radiosolution, Starting a radio station 1 Comment

Every radio station owner that is serious about their project should submit their internet radio station to ITunes Radio. You will need to meet their requirements and follow their guidelines closely. The process can take sometimes close to a month, so be patient. You will need to have a solid server of at least 300 listener slots. We can help you find the best server here. Remember, the purpose of this article is to serve as an aide to your submission process and we can in no way guarantee that you will be accepted by ITunes. If you are not comfortable doing the submission process yourself, we can attempt for you for a ontime fee of $35US. The process is guaranteed meaning if you are not accepted you will receive a full refund.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

* Streams must broadcast at a bitrate of 128k or higher, except for spoken word such as News/Talk, Sports/Radio and non-music Comedy where AAC/AAC+ streams 64k and higher are acceptable.

* Stations can list only one bitrate and one genre.

* Stations using names other than their own to be listed higher in the directory or twice in the directory will be rejected.

If you have already sent new submissions or updates, they will be processed within approximately 5 business days.

TO ADD, EDIT, OR TROUBLESHOOT YOUR LISTING

1) All emails must have one of these three subject lines as follows:

* Station Submission: (station name) (ex: Station Submission: Hits Radio)

* Station Update: (station name, exactly as it appears in iTunes)

* Other Inquiry: briefly state issue here

2) If you have updates for several stations, please forward all requests at once and into one email. Please attach the information in a document (Excel, Pages) if there are more than three updates.

3) We will only accept requests from the contact that we have on file for the station or a station owner. Listeners, friends, station personnel not listed with us cannot make requests on behalf of a station.

4) **UPDATED SUBMISSION FORMAT**

Submission requests must contain all of the following information and be submitted directly into the excel spreadsheet we have provided for you, available for download here:

http://www.itunes.com/radiosubmission

Station Name (this must be the name as it is used in your station’s official branding; you may not change your name to start with ‘A’ to be listed higher unless it is a legitimate part of your station’s name) *Station genre City, State Country of Origin (select your 2-letter country code) Short station description (to be shown in tuner) *Explicit material? (Yes or No) *Frequency (select 23) Website for station (include full URL, beginning with http://www…) *Approved (select Yes) Contact name, email, phone number and iTunes Store login account/email address *Status (select Active) *Strength (select 45) Audio Stream IP/URL (sorry, only one url per station) *Language of Broadcast

*These fields have been pre-populated in the spreadsheet for your convenience. When inserting information into the Station Genre, Country of Origin, Explicit, Frequency, Approved, Status Strength and Language fields, please click the drop-down arrow to view your list of allowable entries. Inserting information that has not been made available to you in these fields will result in a rejected submission.

Once you have completed your spreadsheet with all of the above required information, save your work and drop the excel file into an email with the remaining necessary station information attached directly in the body of your email:

Stream Type (MP3, AAC or AAC+)

Cover Art: attach a 1400 x 1400 JPG or PNG image using RGB colorspace to your submission form

Please note:

– Stations will not be reviewed if they have not been submitted via an excel spreadsheet or have elements of the spreadsheet missing. All fields are mandatory.

– Any spreadsheet that has been modified from the original template provided will not be reviewed or listed.

– Our updated submission process relies on precise metadata. This means that any typos will result in an automatic rejection and the station owner will be notified and asked to review his or her spreadsheet for errors. Please review your station information for proper use of grammar and capitalization.

– We are currently undergoing a metadata audit to ensure the proper use of things like spelling, capitalization, grammar, etc.

Here are a few examples of station descriptions that will result in an automatic rejection:

– The BEST Hits On The Air E V E R !!

– Beat Central –> Broadcasting Your Favorite Tunes !

– STREAMING HARDCORE HOUSE **24/7**

– your official station playing NON stop jams

Here is how the above stations should read in order to be considered for approval:

– The best hits on the air ever!!

– Beat Central, broadcasting your favorite tunes!

– Streaming hardcore house 24/7

– Your official station playing non stop jams

5) Station update requests must contain the following information:

Station name (this MUST be the name as it exists in iTunes) Contact person name, email and phone number The specific update you’d like us to make ONLY (do not resubmit information that is remaining unchanged)

If you have updates for more than three stations, please submit all modifications into an excel spreadsheet.

Please note that if you are sending station updates via an excel spreadsheet you may not include station submissions in the same file, and vice versa. Please keep station submissions and updates in separate excel files.

6) Further notes:

Please ensure that your station stream works properly in iTunes:

* Open iTunes

* Select ‘Open Stream’ from the ‘File’ menu

* Enter your audio stream URL

Remember: only .m3u, .mp3 and .pls formats are compatible with iTunes. IP addresses (with these format streams) are also acceptable. .asx, .wma, .qtl and other various formats are NOT compatible and should not be submitted for consideration.

iTunes does not guarantee specific times of updates, station addition or station maintenance.

Additions and changes may only be made to the directory included with iTunes 11. No changes can be made to older versions of iTunes. If you do not see your station, first ensure you are using the latest available version of iTunes, available here:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Station names, descriptions, and URLs may be edited to conform to our editorial and technical standards.

We may remove your station at any time, without notice. We may not re-add a station depending on the issues surrounding its takedown. In most circumstances, we will attempt to contact you when we remove a station, using the contact info you provided to us.

Please allow up to 5 business days for your station to be added before inquiring about its status.

Thank you for your interest in iTunes Radio.

Regards,

iTunes Radio Team

itunesradio@apple.com