Friday, December 8, 2017

End of 2017 Update

Hey everyone, happy holidays!

I thought that maybe this would be a good time to update everyone on everything "Indie Spotlight"

First, the live streaming broadcast, done. While I might do a random live show here or there for the hell of it, it's over, there just doesn't seem to be any interest and this is not the fault of our final hosting site, Camup has been an amazing site to host on, this is mostly because we've had to change hosting sites so many times over the last 5 or so years that we've gained and lost viewership, and overall, at least for this format, there just isn't an interest in the live streaming format anymore, at least for this kind of show.

The next piece of this, and I'd really love some feedback, is the podcasting alternative, I'm thinking a once a month, 3 hour podcast, thoughts?

Social media, well, here is where it gets interesting, Facebook doesn't allow you to play YouTube videos on site anymore, when you click the link, it takes you to the YouTube page, (Twitter still plays them onsite) so while I am going to go back to posting the daily videos I need to see if there is some interest there, yes, I need to see "likes" as well as "shares" to tell me if it's worthwhile to keep up the social media presence, otherwise, and again, hate to sound like an ass, but I'm being honest, I don't see a reason to continue on if it's not being shared around, this is the purpose of Indie Spotlight afterall, promote and fight for the little guy/gal and why not? Some amazing music has been shared on these pages, and if there is an interest will continue to be shared.

I do have to admit, that I'm very proud of Indie Spotlight, come what may with the future of it, I mean, how many people can say that they've been able to do something that they are passionate about, for any length of time, much less breathe life into it for as long as I have and it has been one hell of a ride no matter what comes of it going forward but I do hope that at least people will like, and most importantly share the daily videos, as well that the podcast.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

One For The Road - Last Call

Hey everyone, a quick update on the live streaming broadcast...

The quick and dirty is that I haven't either had the time or the energy the past 2 Sundays, and to be honest except for one or two people I really haven't had anyone hanging out of late anyway.

So, I'm thinking maybe now would be a good time to just sign it off, and focus on just sharing videos on social media.

I will do one more live broadcast, although I haven't decided on the format. I can either do one last "regular broadcast", or go out with a bang, and by that I mean a "Marathon" style show where I play one song from each artist from A to Z in one show, and set it at 12 hours which should give me more than enough time to for me to give airplay to each artist at least once.

Should I decide to do the 12 hour show, it would have to be during my vacation which comes up the week after next. I would be interested in anyone's thoughts on this, please comment below.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

One For The Road Series

I'm calling these final live streaming broadcasts "One For The Road" as I continue to wind down the live show. Starting this Sunday I'll be playing through all the music, in alphabetic order by musician.

Since I have over 100 obviously this'll take at least a couple of weeks after which will be the "Grand Finale" broadcast.

 The final show will be the most requested (along with personal favorites) songs featured on Indie Spotlight. I have to say that it's been a huge thrill to be able to do this for the past 8 years, part of me is going to miss it but it's time to move on to other projects.

The party isn't over yet folks, drop in while you can because once it's over, it's over.

Friday, August 18, 2017

Live Streaming Broadcast Coming Back One More Time...

Posted on Facebook earlier today;

So, a quick update...
The live streaming broadcast is coming back for one final engagement, Sunday night's at 9 pm (eastern U.S.) so check it out while it lasts! I haven't decided for how long I'll keep it going but once it's done, it's done.

I have (sorta) figured out a solution for the podcast, more details about that coming soon.

Don't worry I'll still continue to share videos and promote independent musicians via social media, that isn't going away, but this will be the live show's last hurrah so pop in and say hi when you can, while you can. Have a great day everyone!

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

July Update

Ok folks, so here is a quick update. The live streaming broadcast is still on hiatus, coming back soon, either weekly or bi-weekly but with a consistent day and time so you folks know when and where to listen. I will be sticking with CamUp.tv for this. More details coming very soon.

As many of you know, recently awdio.com went offline. As of right now I have no idea when, or even if they are coming back so I am working on another solution to bring back past shows so that you folks can listen to them on demand.

I was having a decent amount of success with this on awdio, and would love to find a way to bring it back. If anyone has any ideas about good podcasting sites that don't claim a "license" to the content I would love to hear from you.

That's it for now, happy 4th!

Monday, June 19, 2017

Awdio.com down. Again.

Don't blame me I wasn't trying to do a show this time.

So, awdio.com is down, something similar to this happened a couple of years ago and while I thought that they had put their reliability issues behind them, it might seem that they have not.

For those of you who might not know awdio is the site that I've uploaded the recorded file after our live streaming broadcast, this way those who missed the live show could go back and listen to it on demand, anytime. Essentially the live stream turned into a podcast and every time I'd upload a show I'd see at least a couple of hundred "listens" so obviously there was a following there.

So, does anyone out there know of a similar site that I could use? Keep in mind that due to licensing issues I can't just go and upload music just anywhere, their terms of service has to be agreeable with what I do.

Anyone have any ideas? I'd love to get these archived shows back up so that the music can be heard once again.

Thanks ya'll.

Friday, May 12, 2017

Wow, 8 Years!

8 years ago, on May 17th, 2009 we made our premier on blogtv. It doesn't seem that long, but at the same time it does seem almost a lifetime ago. The show was so different then, it's almost easier to say what is the same!

At that time, ISL was a part of a group of online broadcasters, and I'll shamelessly admit it, we were a force to be reckoned with on blog, every night one of us was broadcasting. There were musicians playing live, as well as Deb and I doing our thing with the radio style format and even between us there was variety, with me playing more progressive music and handling the interviews, and her with the musicians that she met on YouTube that she somehow encouraged to come on and play live music on her show. As a group we were a fun crowd and you never knew what was going to happen at any particular show.

I miss those days, it was a ton of fun and if nothing else I'm glad that I got to be a part of it.

----------------------------------------------------
Show updates;

I do the Tuesday morning show when I can, I have to be honest, while the format works, I'm not much of a morning person but at least one Tuesday morning a month I have done a live show. Right now the focus is on sharing videos that I find on YouTube. I'm not promising anything but I would like to see if I can find the time over the next week to do a show and celebrate the 8th anniversary of the show.

Maybe play clips from past shows, we'll see, especially since we've made some new friends on camup, I think it would be a neat way to define our past as we point our way towards the future.

Wherever that may be!

Sunday, April 2, 2017

April Update

Show update as well as rambling thoughts, all because I can :)

I haven't done a live streaming broadcast in a couple of weeks, while there was some interest in the morning "coffee" broadcast I wasn't able to stick with it. However many people have told me that the morning show was easier for them to listen to live, so I think I will bring this back at some point, maybe just not so early in the day.

Speaking of interest, our page on awdio.com has really taken off. Of late, I've used this as an archive where I've converted shows to mp3 format, and uploaded them there sometime after the live broadcast. These shows have had hundreds, if not thousands of clicks and listens. Just in the last week I had 30 likes, 4 new followers and 3,202 listens. I can't ignore numbers like these, there is clearly an interest in Indie Spotlight on there now. My thoughts on this is to continue to upload past live shows, but to also create and upload shows that will be exclusive to awdio. This could work out better for me as well as the show because I could record portions of the show at a time, and to maintain consistency always upload to stream it at the same date and time every week. Awdio has always been pretty good about front page features, so the exposure will still be the same, and if I also happen to do a live show that week, it'll be a bonus show for the awdio audience.

While I've always enjoyed the live streaming broadcasts I haven't been able to commit to them in any meaningful way, and when people don't know when to find you, they won't. While I had an increase of viewers during the Morning Coffee broadcast I wasn't able to stick with it, and there is an obvious interest on awdio.com that I would like to capitalize on, so as to continue to give the music and the musicians more exposure.

This is what Indie Spotlight is all about, it's not about the host, it's about the music hosted.

Thanks for reading, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter for more current updates!

Sunday, March 5, 2017

March Update

My desktop that I use to broadcast the show was starting to get a little sluggish so I decided to do a "Windows Reset" which is Win10's version of a wipe and restore. It went well except that now I'm in the process of rebuilding my music library, as well as learning how to use the updated version of OBS.

In addition to that, I've decided to change things up a little bit, and do shows in the morning instead of Sunday night. After I finish configuring and learning OBS I'll be launching the coffee broadcast this week, shooting for Tuesday (3-7).

Follow the Facebook page for more details.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Updates and Links!

Happy February everyone!

Since I haven't posted anything to this page in a hot minute I thought I would take a few minutes and do a quick blog update.

In my last blog post I was still undecided as to the future of Indie Spotlight, the show, as well as the brand itself. Since then I've resumed broadcasting live on camup.tv on Sunday nights (9 p.m. EST) and uploading the audio onto awdio (say that 5 times fast) to be played on demand. In fact as you read this you are listening to the archived show right now, pretty nifty huh?

So in short, I've been keeping the show going in much the same format, if you haven't checked it out recently I've added over 100 artists since the blogtv days and I would encourage you to drop in and say hi sometime.

Here are some links, which I'll also update in the sidebar when I have time;

Sunday night live streaming broadcast is here;

 camup.tv/users/indie-spotlight-live

Archived shows, you can click on the player or here;

awdio.com/indiespotlightlive

The "Official Facebook Page" which I update far more often than the blog;

facebook.com/indiespotlightoncamuptv

Yes, even Twitter;

twitter.com/riskybusiness04


Thanks for the continued support.