We recently posted a poll asking the good P1’s how they thought they could help us continue to provide the full show archives to those who get use out of them. Our web host, as would any, was hit with a pretty sizable overage bill due to the bandwidth used. This is being pushed down to us and financially it doesn’t make sense currently.
Many gave lots of recommendations of how to reduce the use and several confused hard drive space with bandwidth. Currently we’re not running out of hard drive space. That hardware is pretty cheap these days…thankfully! The part we’re getting hit with is people listening to the full length shows, streaming them through the internet from our site(s). It’s called ‘data transfer‘.
Now let’s put that in simple to understand terms. Most web hosts allow 4-5 megabytes per second of data transfer. That is an average over a given month. The archives have pushed us to an average between 70-80 megabytes per second over the month giving an overage bill in the thousands per month. I love the P1, but not that hard!
I’ve forked the bill for theunticket.com since 2007 and have never made any money on it. It’s never been my intention and it still isn’t. However, I’d go straight to living under a bridge if I continued on as is. I posted a poll a while back and most opted for some type of kickstarter project and others went for a monthly option or killing the archives altogether.
The kickstarter idea would be helpful now, but what happens down the road when funds run out? Ask for more money? It also provides a way for some to pay for others and while that’s awesome, we’d rather just say if you plan to use it, help pay for it. Of course, we’re always happy to take donations if you like what we do anyway! For donations, go here and save a bit!
Anyhow, after lots of thought and consideration, we think we’ve come up with a win-win for everyone. As many know, we are the ones behind uSave.it. It was built to make archiving audio for this site easier and it is now going to be used to help our situation further. We’ve built a special P1 Offer that you can subscribe to in order to continue having full access to the archive feeds and other audio. We priced it at a great $13.10 per month and this is what you get with it:
- A uSave.it Personal Account ($10/mo value)
- Full access to all unticket archive feeds ($49/mo value)
- Access to all archives and audio of Ticket shows/clips
- The ability to set your own recordings
- 250 hours of additional audio/recordings
- Access via the web or through the uSave.it iPhone app
- Most important: You help keep the archives alive!
In addition to the items listed above, we will continue to improve what we can offer P1’s through the uSave.it account, as well as the mobile app. There are many other ideas/plans we’ve wanted to do, like ringers and drops for example, but it came down to time to create and manage it all. If you make the decision to subscribe to the streaming and cloud service we are offering, we will continue to improve what we provide to make it even awesomer!
Before going any further, I want to make sure everyone knows we encourage you to listen to The Ticket on the radio. The last thing we want to do is affect the best station out there. They survive on ratings and it’s the P1’s job to continue helping them dominate. So listen first…always. We also want you to understand you do NOT have to pay to listen to them. They have their own podcast section that has actually improved quite a bit lately you can use. You can get most of your enjoyment there, as do we encourage it. There’s also the killer Bob and Dan site that can feed your ears with midday audio. Last thing is, we will also continue to post audio clips and segments on this site for no cost. If you can satisfy your Ticket fix with one of these many options, there’s no point of you continuing to read! You’re GOOD!
You might ask why we give every opportunity to not pay? It’s simple. We are not looking to make loads of cash to buy a remote island off of the shores of Lake Lewisville…we’re trying to fix the bandwidth issue we’re currently faced with. If you really can’t listen live and can’t record for yourself but want to listen to the full shows when you want, then this option is for you. Plus, us not giving everyone full access to every show whenever they want might even help force people to listen on their radios!
If you have questions that weren’t answered, feel free to email me at dp@theunticket and I’ll do my best to answer them. If you’re a Cumulus operative and feel this is going to affect your $1-B-Billion current revenue, this is for you. If your name rhymes with Ceff Jatlin or Ban Dennett, this one’s for you.
If you’re still thinking a P1 uSave.it account will be required in your life, then here’s what you do. First, and most critical FOLLOW THIS LINK TO CREATE AN ACCOUNT If you don’t follow that link, the P1 Offer isn’t going to show up. The link will take you to a page to submit your email. Once you enter and then validate your email, login to your uSave.it account and finish filling out your info. At this point, you still haven’t paid anything. We’re giving you a free 30 day trial. You will still have full access to the archives via your account (feeds not included) for the 30 days. During your 30 days you have the option to click the ‘UPGRADE’ button and select the “P1 PERSONAL” option for $13.10 per month. At that point, you’ll have the option to pay and upgrade to gain access to everything mentioned. If you choose not to upgrade, you can continue on with our free 10 hour per month uSave.it account and setup your own recordings of your favorite Ticket show and delete when done (feeds and archives not included).