Hey P1’s, I know a lot of you have made comments, sent emails and all regarding being unable to listen to archives. We weren’t WFAN’d by Cumulus (yet). My BOTTOM is ok. And I always lose listeners, although you’re not really listening to me! Here’s the deal…
Our bandwidth use has gone through the roof and the datacenter is tapping the brakes on us. This little site project I’ve always taken the costs involved in the shorts because I’m just a fan of the station and know it helps displaced P1’s in the military, those that have moved because of work and a ton of other reasons. Currently, I’m at a point of being unsure which way to turn. I’m not looking to make money, mainly because it’s not right to profit off of another persons work. However, I’m also not looking to spend the crazy money they’re suggesting to keep things going as it has been.
Lots of people commenting/emailing about a kickstarter project to put towards things. Also considered a monthly small P1 charge to put towards the bandwidth. If none of these work, we’ll just keep theunticket.com with audio clips and kill the full show archives and suggest people sign up for uSave.it account. But, before I did anything, thought I’d test the waters with the P1’s and see what you guys all think. Chime in fellow P1’s!
[poll id=”8″]
Is this type of project even eligible for Kickstarter? And isn’t Kickstarter “all or nothing” — meaning if you don’t raise x-number of dollars, the project all at once folds? I think Indiegogo is more donation-like, if you will.
If any of this runs afoul of Cumulous’ rules (raising money off their content, even if it isn’t for profit), I’d vote to have more segments through the blog (i.e., Gordon’s segments, any non-sports talk segments on other shows, etc… as delayed Rangers recaps might seem irrelevant).
Related… Using a podcast client (I’m on iOS’s Instacast), I can’t get the RSS feed from the UnTicket blog to show actual mp3 content. It recognizes the feed, but it comes up empty. Thoughts?
Yeah that’s my only concern is I don’t want to make Cumulus or any of the Ticket hosts feel I’m trying to profit off of their work. And Kickstarter is an all or nothing, btw. I’ll look at Indigogo. Someone else told me about patreon.com, which seems similar.
We’ll figure something out.
Will the full shows still be available on iTunes?
I rely a lot on the full show archives because I commute out of town at strange hours. I’ll definitely contribute to a Kickstarter if it will guarantee they remain. Thanks for all that you do!
Does the Usaveit iPhone app let you play back and manually delete recordings in a user-friendly interface? (The embedded player through Safari mobile is painful.)
What does the free account get you?
The $5/mo. plan doesn’t offer podcasts (which I assume just means no RSS feeds generated?) I’m cool with this if the app is convenient. (see my first question)
What if you did a yearly drive to cover the costs for the year. Like pbs. I have no doubt if we pulled hard (oh yeah) for a couple of weeks per year, we could keep this treasure afloat.
I’m now on the east coast and can’t listen to the station. I remember how happy I was when I found this site. I’d hate to see you get rid of the full show archive. If the Kickstarter plan doesn’t work, I honestly wouldn’t mind paying a small fee.
I think segments are the Unticket’s greatest asset. I totally understand the desire for full ep’s, but my P1 friends go to your site for segments and bits. I think you could just keep a few special full eps. Maybe keep the prior week of full episodes and continually purge. I also think if Cumulous would ever have a problem and order a C&D, it’d be more to protect episodes than segments. Just my two cents. Asking for money in any way might also be a red flag to “power of radio”.
Just an idea. Amazon streaming is ridiculously cheap. Not sure where you are hosting now or what you are paying, but look at an AWS option for the full show episodes.
Only keep full show archives for a couple weeks, month or whatever. Only save classic bits that make the top 10 in archives indefinitely. Any shows I’ve ever listened to I’ve never gone back more than 2 or 3 weeks to hear it. I am willing to contribute a small fee rather than see full archives go away though.
This. (Or an even shorter purge window is fine. 1 week?)
Excactly. I mean…
I just think that… yeah. Kickstarter is a great option!
I listen to the previous day’s full show archive nearly every day. I am willing to pay a monthly fee for it or pitch in to a kickstarter, but please don’t kill it. If it makes any difference, I rarely if ever go back more than 2 or 3 days. So if deleting the older archives is a solution, I would be in favor of that.
Thanks
I’d like to see full eps stay, if only for a week or two after they air. I can’t always catch the orphanage on Saturday mornings but I always catch it on the player when I can get to it. Would hate to lose that option.
Like others, I’m down with a Kickstarter. There are other similar websites that may let you keep whatever you raise (if you don’t hit your goal, which I imagine you would.) But purging after 7 days or whatever time frame you pick is an option, that would be good and not risk profiting off of The Ticket.
I use the full show archives as well and I go back as far as a month. Personally, I’d hate to see a smaller window than a month. I’m fine with contributing a monthly fee. Thanks for the service and I hope you get it all figured out!
I think it would be a shame to lose the full archive. It’s so awesome and helpful to be able to find older audio. I’ve frequently gone back over a year to find stuff. Maybe offer access to the full archive as the top perk of the campaign so that those like myself that use it the most pay a premium for it. I’d donate in a heartbeat. It’s worth it.
I am also an out of town P-1 and really appreciate this site. I agree with most of the comments I have seen. I would be willing to contribute to kickstarter or even a monthly fee. I too rarely go back more than a week or two into the history so I wouldn’t have issues with losing older stuff.
Thanks for all you do..
Please don’t kill the full show archives. I mainly use the unticket for the full shows. I love downloading episodes from the previous year and just flashback to what I was doing during that time.
I would gladly contribute to a kickstarter or anything that will keep the full show archives up and running!
Thanks for all that you have done so far DP!
Someone earlier suggesting a regular purge of the full show archives is something I’d get behind. Leave them up for two-three weeks, maybe even a month, and then take them off the website. If someone requests it, you could link them to a download file or repost it so they could download it off a special channel. Give them a time frame to acquire it within. But as far as the donation strategy I think that wouldn’t be the worst idea. Maybe do it like Baseball Prospectus and many other websites. For free you’ve got access to the general site, all the bits the staff posts. Create a couple levels where you could either go month to month like Spotify or Netflix, or maybe do an up front a la the WWE Network. The versatility of a site like this which isn’t under corporate control would be the ability to give flexible options to test demand and see what’s out there. Especially since you’re not aiming to make a profit in either short or long term, just cover your costs.
Small donation is totally doable. I search for and relisten to things that are several years old, and always send my pals here for schtick they may have missed. But you gotta do what you gotta do, I’ll remain an UnTicket P1.
ive got 20 bucks
/\/\ ahhhh, yes /\/\
What, um, is there a happy medium? Just put up show archives for a week, maybe a month?
Thanks for what you do.
I’m hungry.
I think you guys should do a kick starter project but I am being 100 serious when i say I’d pay a membership per month to have you guys Podcast the 4.5 FULL hours of the musers every morning…
I think purge the older episodes and a donation would be great. How much are you thinking dp?
I’ll gladly give you guys 8 dar.
I agree with anything to keep this site up and rolling. Especially the full episodes. As another person who lives outside the market, tries to stream as much as possible but uses the full episodes to catch up I would support you guys.
Keep it 1 hundo.
I’d also suggest looking into Patreon. I support a couple podcasters through that. They might take a smaller percentage out than Kickstarter but I have no clue how that works. I’ve had a few similar media sites sites shut down on me because the traffic just got too high and no one would donate a little bit. It would make me sad if that happened here too.
Is this just the usaveit or would it have an effect on podcast because I have started just using the podcasts (because the player through safari on IOS is awful… is there a way just to do that instead… dont know much of the tech side of it
HEY HEY … Wanted to reply on this thread for those of you who were interested in helping the full archives stay alive. We’ve come to a decision/solution and have detailed it all on this page. Go check it out.