Most of you know that I abandoned trying to maintain player links a few months ago, due to the end of Windows XP support, the shift toward mobile listening with dedicated apps and the general notion of getting away from this web site being my entire life
But that’s not the only problem and probably not the most serious problem. Radio Stations have a habit of changing their web site domains for frivolous reasons, like a change in format – http://www.1089froggyfm.com/ becomes http://www.thewolf1089.com/ because the station changed branding. They also forget to renew their domains and they expire. The old domain is frequently released (almost always within a year) and picked up by some entity in asia or eastern europe that may or may not have ill intentions to visitors still using the outdated link.
Part of the old Windows based verification process was to go through every station (All 15,000 or so) on a regular basis and confirm that the web site is still correct, the format of the station hasn’t changed, and possibly update player links or enter schedule information. Because this is such a huge task, prioritization is necessary – a few formats like News/Talk get special attention since that’s the bulk of the visitor interest, and major markets are given priority over small towns in Oklahoma. Student run college and high school stations are close to ignored because they constantly change each year or more often, and NOBODY listens to them.
Before I ended the volunteer program, there was a display of the average age of how long it had been since a station had been verified. Volunteers had access to a page to do this – the general approach was the volunteer flagged the station with the issue, and I would fix it, because that’s the kind of micromanager I am 🙂 When the Average got up to over a year, I stopped displaying the statistic.
Here is a month to month count of verification activity
+----------------+----------------------+ | verified_month | verified_month_count | +----------------+----------------------+ | Never | 111 | | 2005-10 | 2 | | 2006-01 | 1 | | 2006-02 | 84 | | 2006-03 | 70 | | 2006-04 | 11 | | 2006-05 | 6 | | 2006-06 | 12 | | 2006-07 | 37 | | 2006-08 | 39 | | 2006-09 | 5 | | 2006-11 | 6 | | 2006-12 | 22 | | 2007-01 | 9 | | 2007-02 | 44 | | 2007-03 | 62 | | 2007-04 | 18 | | 2007-05 | 15 | | 2007-06 | 9 | | 2007-07 | 19 | | 2007-08 | 27 | | 2007-09 | 158 | | 2007-10 | 61 | | 2007-11 | 32 | | 2007-12 | 10 | | 2008-01 | 17 | | 2008-02 | 16 | | 2008-03 | 31 | | 2008-04 | 56 | | 2008-05 | 22 | | 2008-06 | 18 | | 2008-07 | 24 | | 2008-08 | 70 | | 2008-09 | 20 | | 2008-10 | 25 | | 2008-11 | 11 | | 2008-12 | 29 | | 2009-01 | 30 | | 2009-02 | 65 | | 2009-03 | 276 | | 2009-04 | 32 | | 2009-05 | 35 | | 2009-06 | 34 | | 2009-07 | 60 | | 2009-08 | 62 | | 2009-09 | 12 | | 2009-10 | 20 | | 2009-11 | 46 | | 2009-12 | 113 | | 2010-01 | 29 | | 2010-02 | 49 | | 2010-03 | 14 | | 2010-04 | 158 | | 2010-05 | 46 | | 2010-06 | 82 | | 2010-07 | 81 | | 2010-08 | 268 | | 2010-09 | 116 | | 2010-10 | 61 | | 2010-11 | 157 | | 2010-12 | 101 | | 2011-01 | 12 | | 2011-02 | 32 | | 2011-03 | 76 | | 2011-04 | 224 | | 2011-05 | 134 | | 2011-06 | 44 | | 2011-07 | 259 | | 2011-08 | 1750 | | 2011-10 | 31 | | 2011-11 | 13 | | 2011-12 | 1112 | | 2012-03 | 103 | | 2012-04 | 3 | | 2012-05 | 182 | | 2012-06 | 3 | | 2012-07 | 10 | | 2012-09 | 25 | | 2012-11 | 18 | | 2013-05 | 111 | | 2013-06 | 442 | | 2013-07 | 126 | | 2013-08 | 1123 | | 2013-09 | 465 | | 2013-12 | 153 | | 2014-01 | 287 | | 2014-02 | 207 | | 2014-03 | 191 | | 2014-04 | 35 | | 2014-05 | 286 | | 2014-06 | 186 | +----------------+----------------------+
You can see the year in Chicago (August 2012 – Oct 2013), I did almost no work on verification – you were lucky if I was keeping schedules semi-current. I’ve completely given up on looking for HD2/3/4 web sites.
Here is the first few of the oldest stations to give you a sense of the things not being looked at
+------------+----------------------+--------+---------------------+----------------------------+ | streamname | CityName | Statex | verifiedtime | FormatName | +------------+----------------------+--------+---------------------+----------------------------+ | WSPM FM | CLOVERDALE | IN | 2005-10-08 20:11:58 | Catholic | | WFSO FM | OLIVEBRIDGE | NY | 2005-10-25 08:51:25 | Religious Ministry | | KBKS FM/HD | TACOMA | WA | 2006-01-27 09:17:44 | Contemporary Hits | | WKAR FM/HD | EAST LANSING | MI | 2006-02-13 20:08:25 | Public Radio | | WERG FM | ERIE | PA | 2006-02-13 20:39:55 | Educational | | WBER FM | ROCHESTER | NY | 2006-02-13 20:47:57 | Community Radio | | WWOG FM | COOKEVILLE | TN | 2006-02-13 21:22:20 | Gospel | | WAMC FM/HD | ALBANY | NY | 2006-02-13 21:32:43 | Public Radio | | WBNI FM | ROANOKE | IN | 2006-02-13 21:53:51 | Classical Music | | WGTE FM | TOLEDO | OH | 2006-02-13 22:11:55 | Classical Music | | KUER FM/HD | SALT LAKE CITY | UT | 2006-02-14 01:25:35 | Public Radio | | KVLU FM/HD | BEAUMONT | TX | 2006-02-14 01:55:48 | Public Radio | | WQLN FM | ERIE | PA | 2006-02-14 01:56:13 | Public Radio | | WPSU FM/HD | STATE COLLEGE | PA | 2006-02-14 06:05:33 | Public Radio | | KJJP FM/HD | AMARILLO | TX | 2006-02-14 06:24:50 | Public Radio | | KING FM/HD | SEATTLE | WA | 2006-02-14 06:39:38 | Classical Music | | KVPR FM/HD | FRESNO | CA | 2006-02-15 19:01:43 | Public Radio | | KWGS FM/HD | TULSA | OK | 2006-02-15 19:31:46 | Public Radio | | WUSF FM/HD | TAMPA | FL | 2006-02-16 01:23:01 | Public Radio | | WERN FM/HD | MADISON | WI | 2006-02-16 04:18:40 | Classical Music | | KUAR FM/HD | LITTLE ROCK | AR | 2006-02-16 05:14:12 | Public Radio | | KUNR FM | RENO | NV | 2006-02-16 05:21:27 | Public Radio | | KHOY FM | LAREDO | TX | 2006-02-16 05:22:33 | Catholic | | WRNI AM/HD | PROVIDENCE | RI | 2006-02-16 05:26:35 | Public Radio | | WUTC FM/HD | CHATTANOOGA | TN | 2006-02-16 05:41:55 | Public Radio | | WVKS FM/HD | TOLEDO | OH | 2006-02-16 20:48:51 | Contemporary Hits | | WRVF FM/HD | TOLEDO | OH | 2006-02-16 20:50:51 | Soft/Lite Rock | | KCCK FM/HD | CEDAR RAPIDS | IA | 2006-02-17 01:19:21 | Jazz | | WHRB FM | CAMBRIDGE | MA | 2006-02-17 01:47:26 | Educational | | WGTD FM/HD | KENOSHA | WI | 2006-02-17 02:41:24 | Public Radio | | KCFY FM | YUMA | AZ | 2006-02-17 03:51:40 | Christian Music | | WFMU FM | EAST ORANGE | NJ | 2006-02-17 07:07:25 | Community Radio | | WQRM AM | DULUTH | MN | 2006-02-17 08:49:48 | Gospel | | WFCR FM/HD | AMHERST | MA | 2006-02-17 09:49:35 | Public Radio | | WBNW AM | CONCORD | MA | 2006-02-17 10:00:21 | Biz Talk | | WUEC FM | EAU CLAIRE | WI | 2006-02-17 11:26:35 | Public Radio | | WNZK AM | DEARBORN HEIGHTS | MI | 2006-02-17 11:30:25 | Ethnic | | WKYU FM/HD | BOWLING GREEN | KY | 2006-02-18 02:26:18 | Public Radio | | KAFM FM | GRAND JUNCTION | CO | 2006-02-18 03:21:12 | Community Radio | | WEVO FM/HD | CONCORD | NH | 2006-02-18 03:26:22 | Public Radio | | WMAX AM | BAY CITY | MI | 2006-02-18 05:24:37 | Catholic | | WNJA FM/HD | JAMESTOWN | NY | 2006-02-18 06:27:38 | Classical Music | | WMEH FM/HD | BANGOR | ME | 2006-02-18 06:28:30 | Public Radio | | KUAC FM/HD | FAIRBANKS | AK | 2006-02-18 06:32:28 | Public Radio | | WKSU FM/HD | KENT | OH | 2006-02-18 06:56:41 | Public Radio | | WKPB FM | HENDERSON | KY | 2006-02-18 07:09:31 | Public Radio | | WEKU FM | RICHMOND | KY | 2006-02-18 07:13:27 | Public Radio | | WAMU FM/HD | WASHINGTON | DC | 2006-02-18 21:36:03 | Public Radio | | WNTK FM | NEW LONDON | NH | 2006-02-19 05:01:30 | News / Talk | | KZIA FM | CEDAR RAPIDS | IA | 2006-02-19 07:38:21 | Contemporary Hits | | WEMU FM/HD | YPSILANTI | MI | 2006-02-20 02:06:26 | Public Radio | | WRVO FM/HD | OSWEGO | NY | 2006-02-20 11:30:31 | Public Radio | | WWGC AM | ALBERTVILLE | AL | 2006-02-20 13:53:07 | Religious Ministry | | KLUX FM/HD | ROBSTOWN | TX | 2006-02-21 04:48:40 | Easy Listening | | WKOK AM | SUNBURY | PA | 2006-02-21 22:05:35 | Local News / Talk / Sports | | KDSK FM | GRANTS | NM | 2006-02-22 00:18:57 | Oldies | | WNNJ FM | NEWTON | NJ | 2006-02-22 01:30:35 | Alternative/Hard/New Rock | | WSLU FM/HD | CANTON | NY | 2006-02-22 02:10:24 | Public Radio | | WSUS FM | FRANKLIN | NJ | 2006-02-22 02:17:50 | Soft/Lite Rock | | KZMU FM/HD | MOAB | UT | 2006-02-22 02:36:27 | Community Radio |
What I’m considering / proposing / bouncing off people is the notion that a volunteer would become ruler of a portion of the database and have primary responsibility for maintaining the station and schedule information. Reports of “It doesn’t work” or “The wrong program would go to you, with a ‘cc to me, and I would expect you to resolve the problems and/or communicate with the person who reports the issue in a reasonably timely manor.
I’m thinking along the lines of states having rulers, and possibly formats, creating a matrix. One person might take the lead for stations in New Jersey, and another person might want to maintain Country music stations – so a Country Music station in New Jersey would have two people with a shared responsibility.
Of course, there is no monetary or financial reward for doing this. Nancy Pelosi wants us to stop working and just do things that interest us and help us grow as people – what more motivation could you want?
Don’t respond right away – think it over and post a thoughtful response if you think this has merit. It means building some better web based tools and a few database changes, but it isn’t a major major project – but before I proceed, I would like some feedback.
Note that I’m not looking for “I know what WKAR is!” from the list. There are about 6,000 stations that are more than a year since they were looked at:
+---------------+---------------------+ | verified_year | verified_year_count | +---------------+---------------------+ | NULL | 111 | | 2005 | 2 | | 2006 | 293 | | 2007 | 464 | | 2008 | 339 | | 2009 | 785 | | 2010 | 1162 | | 2011 | 3687 | | 2012 | 344 | | 2013 | 2420 | | 2014 | 1192 | +---------------+---------------------+
To put some more reality on the problem, the average age is currently 1,016 days – roughly three years old.
There is a count by state
And average age by format
Off the top of my head, I’m surprised I haven’t been looking at public radio. I don’t think that was deliberate. It could be a reflection that many are located in small towns and I just neve get to them
NPR has a 24/7 national stream. Pls consider adding it as you did the Leykis, InfoWars and other 24/7 streams.
It seems like a reasonable idea. I can offer some assistance, but I worry that as I am not retired, I may not be able to meet a time commitment. It is a huge undertaking to be sure. I enjoyed testing for a long time – only the presence of evil scripts and other garbage forced me to back off.
And that’s an important point – by systematically going to potentially infected web sites, it does expose you to risk and any equipment you might use (especially Windows based) needs well maintained protections and backups of critical data. I can’t guarantee any kind of safety.
There was another process that I used to use – from time to time I would programmatically load each station’s web page (and player page and schedules) to flag 404 errors, invalid domains, “under construction” web sites and the like. I would do that maybe every 6 months and it would take a few weeks full time to clean up the issues.
The “systematically go through every station” like in August 2011 would take an entire month full time, and even then at some point I would lose interest in the unrated small town stations.
The point of segmenting the work would be to put boundaries around the time commitment – but that means getting more than 5 people involved wanting to help, becoming super heroes.
Depending on your browser, you may not be able to see the right side of the above tables…
In the interim, I’m thinking of adding in a layer of protection – if the station link hasn’t been verified in the last year (and potentially dangerous) – popping up a warning and offering the real link with a request to confirm the link is still valid
It’s also worth mentioning that just because it really is the station’s web site doesn’t mean it is “safe”. I remember one instance of an owner in Boise Idaho that had their web site infected and downloading Trojans. I wrote them an urgent email (I may have even called them, which I never do) – and the response was something like – okay, we’ll let our web guy know. Days later, it still wasn’t repaired – exposing all of the station’s web site visitors to being hijacked.
It is also a good idea to do regular backups. If something does go wrong – either with your software, or your disk, you can restore back to your last backup. Not much loss if your backup was yesterday.
Your proposal sounds good. You may have already figured out that I seldom listen to streams after 4 pm, but am on talk radio almost every morning. As a long time user of SRG, I will do anything I can to help. I’d be happy to do am talk radio.
This is not to maintain schedules or update player links
I would strongly lean toward doing it by State rather than genre – as people probably know more about stations near them and maybe would be motivated in a competitive seense
So hypothetically, if you were “in charge” of Massachusetts, there are 223 radio stations
http://streamingradioguide.com/radio-station-list-by-state.php?state=MA
(set format to all formats, and device type to windows)
This would not be the page to do the review – I’m just using it to give a sense of the scope nvolved in the stuff you don’t normally see
The relevant things that are what gets “verified”:
Is the station URL pointing at the correct station?
[common problem is there are derelict sites from previous owners]
Wikipedia is often wrong – one helper was really bad about just sending me “correction after correction” where the links were invalid or pointed to older versions/owners. I could tell they were coming from Wikipedia – maybe even someone loading their data into a database and *assuming* that any difference meant I was wrong
Is there a better URL?
For stations with no web site, can you find one?
Does the station format match what the station is playing?
The risk here is time consuming arguments about definitions
Is the syndicator affiliation wrong?
(ESPN station is now Fox?)
Did the station start streaming (or has stopped)
This is yes/no choice – not gathering player or schedule info, but needs to be confirmed by actually listening to the stream if it is new – many stations pretend the have a stream, but don’t
So just an example – Amherst College’s station is flagged as “silent” and they are indicated as not streaming
If you go to the existing URL and pull it up
http://wamh.amherst.edu/
You can see it does appear to be the right web site – the content is from 2014′ so it isn’t completely derelict – however, this is a college station and it’s summer.
There does seem to be a player and a watch live link – both are offline. This will need to be reviewed in September after classes resume. You might even be able to just barely hear it “over the air” in the fall where you live – something I can’t do from NC.
Delegation is good. Donald Rumsfeld would be proud. 🙂
I’d like to volunteer but not commit and I think that is true for most people that use the site. If I volunteer to help x hours every Saturday, eventually I will not live up to it and I will no longer enjoy being on the site and you will be disappointed. I think that is true for most busy people.
I suggest you modify your approach to allow anyone to suggest corrections (as opposed to reporting problems). That approach keeps the station database up-t0-date at radiosure.com. If someone’s favorite station needs an update, that person is motivated to get it corrected. Over at radiosure.com, the submitted corrections go to a list of approvers. Any approver can approve any change, but there are not many approvers. Approvers are similar to what you have been calling volunteers here.
So, please tap into the vast majority that would like to give back on an ad hoc basis – primarily when it affects them.
Please do not speak for what other people may or may not do.
Ok. I don’t know how to respond to: ” but before I proceed, I would like some feedback” without talking about the likely success of the process. Speaking only for myself, I am definitely not interested in participating.
Thank you for your feedback
Thank you for the great site. I want to help but don’t want to over commit and not follow through. If you can find a way for me to contribute on an ad hoc basis, I’m in!
Yeah, would love to do the work, but I’m only getting 6 hrs of sleep every night. Once the SHTF and everything grinds to a halt, I’ll have lots of free time.
Im usually unemployed 5 months out of the year due to my job being “seasonal”
I get paid my years salary in 8 months, so i have a lot of free time on my hands then.
I just would not want to fuck anything up. If there is a fail safe involved, I really like the idea. Learning to do things like this would also give me good training I can put down on a resume. I really enjoyed when I was able to check stations and fix them when they were incorrect, then sending in corrections and add I really, really, loved adding show topic discussions. Ill keep an eye on this thread
oh and to add, I have a spare computer I can use just for the purpose if this or i’m doing something im experimenting on that might crash it.. So I would not be worried about crashing it..
I would be interested in helping here and there with what you are proposing. I work 5 days a week, and evenings are somewhat busy at times (working toward a graduate degree). But I do like to geek out listening to the unknown stations. I rode my bicycle across Nebraska the 2nd week of June, tent camped each evening for 7 nights. I had my little transistor am/fm radio with me, and in the evenings while lounging in my tent I’d scan thru the AM just to see what I could pick-up way out there in the upper plains. FM stations were easy to find: country, hispanic, sports, religion, rock, npr.
At least for now, this is about getting the 15,000 station web sites current – not necessarily getting player information and not about scheduling (other than if you find a new news/talk station that streams I might want to add it, especially if it carries oddball stuff like Fox News Radio (John Gibson, Tom Sullivan, etc) or GCN (Alex Jones, etc)
How “deep” you want to go is up to you – there are several general areas
– resolving known problems picked up by my scanning process (404 errors, 301 redirects, etc)
– visiting radio station web sites without a known problem and looking to see if the web site matches the station and if the station has started streaming
– visiting web sites flagged as “under construction” which usually means a format change, call sign change and/or new owner – there is often a several month lag before a new web site appears
– finding web sites for stations with no known web sites
– untangling simulcasts and confirming which stations carry which programming
– monitoring radio news sites for changes
Part of the reason for the “don’t answer yet” was needing to lay the foundation of what’s involved. With 15,000 stations, to review information every six months means a pace of about 80 a day on average. My hope is for quality through a larger group working carefully – the common instinct in the past has been to want to go fast and be a hero – and get sloppy.
This process does not require streaming (beyond confirming new streaming stations). It can be done on an iPad or tablet, and done any time of day. Part of the reason for suggesting focusing on one state or genre is to keep people from tripping over each other. If everyone works from the same list in the same sequence, people will constantly be tripping over each other looking at the same thing at the same time. Another option is to randomize the station to look at next…
Art, Regarding the college radio stations that no body listens to. I believe part of the problem is the presentation here. There are thousands of them and they are burried deep.
I believe you would get much more interest if you had a page dedicated to them and grouped them by conference. Ivy League colleges and their stations, PAC 10 colleges and their stations, etc. Students like to hear what is going on at “competing” colleges, especially during sporting events…. and they like to hear what the competing colleges are saying about their colleges during sporting events.
I’m not going to discuss it.