Following on from the celebrations of a triumphant 1st year since Mixcloud’s launch, we thought it would be appropriate to shine the spotlight on another fine new proponent of the internet radio revolution; Seeks Music.

We aimed the classic questions at Station Manager Rich Martin, who filled us in on the who, what, when and why…

Can you give us a brief history of the station?

We started Seeks Music as a bunch of music fans, bloggers and creators who were pretty dismayed when the BBC started talking about closing down the only decent music station out there, BBC 6 Music. We thought that if they weren’t gonna do it then somebody has to, and it may as well be us.  Our remit is slightly different to theirs however; there is no point in duplicating what they do (as if we could) so we try to be a little bit more obscure, whilst remaining accessible.

Why did you choose to put the station on Mixcloud?

We knew that we wanted to start an internet radio station, but at the same time we knew that a linear stream of music in itself wasn’t enough. It’s not the only way we listen to radio any more. If we’re near a computer we’ll time shift; using listen again services and downloading podcasts.

Mixcloud was the only viable solution for us to provide a listen again (or rather listen when you like) service. The option to embed the shows into our site meant that we designed our site specifically to take advantage of Mixcloud’s great looking embedded players.

The other key factor was that they took care of the royalties for us. We are proud to be a legal station and it’s only right that musicians get paid if we broadcast their music. Licensing and logging is a minefield, and we’re delighted that Mixcloud takes the pain away for us.

How have you tried to make use of recent advances in online technology and social networking?

We have a Facebook and Twitter presence where we are pretty active, we promote our shows there and interact with our audience. It works well and we’d be on there anyway so it’s a natural part of our online lives.

What are your opinions on the state of web radio in general?

I think that there’s a lot of static out there, and it’s tough to cut through the noise of people trying to make a buck out of music online. Our strategy is to be reliable, consistent and distinctive. It’s fortunate that we’re driven by our passion, rather than a need to make a livelihood.

That said, I think that the only way is up. Mobile internet can easily cope with streaming music. DAB is a lame duck, and the general public will switch from their precious FM radios straight to internet based radio, in all of its rich and varied forms.

What more would you like to see from the Mixcloud service, how can we improve?

Move away from flash – I’d like to see iPhone/iPad functionality, but more than that I think that Mixcloud could exist happily on the new generation of wi-fi enabled radios, with something akin to Facebook/insights to let us know who is listening and where.

What’s going on at the station and website in the next few months?

The site’s in beta, so we’re still learning how to run an internet radio station, but it’s all exciting. We’re continuing to build our roster whilst trying to maintain our ethos of great eclectic radio as we grow.

We’re talking to some high profile blogs about having shows, and we’re talking to artists about giving some exclusive sessions, and the like. But if it’s all the same to you, we’d rather not jinx it for now.

After the runaway success of the Celebration of Curation, it’s back to regular business again on the Mixcloud Blog, and yet another Mixcloud member doing sterling work being given their time to shine courtesy of the Spotlight.

This week we’re shining our light on pirate turned legit local radio station, Kane FM, so without further a do, here’s Managing Director Ian Handy giving us the lowdown:

Why did you choose to put the station on Mixcloud?

There are many services, in particular emerging ‘cloud’ services, which offer artists the opportunity to share their music across the web. However there are very few that specifically provide DJ mixes.

With most of the aforementioned cloud services there is a trade off. To avoid UK law and complications with licensing their T&C’s request in some cases that you sign over your worldwide rights perpetually. In plain English; you give away the rights for your tracks forever across the world but in a more typical example of the danger this can represent, you basically make sure you will never recoup a penny for your track each time it is played.

With Mixcloud this is not the case. Being fully compliant with UK licensing laws; each track that makes it onto the mix will be receiving the right remuneration. Making Mixcloud simply the best and only option for a law abiding radio station to support both in terms of legality and responsibility to the music and artists we represent (which is anything that is independent).

How else have you promoted the station, how have you utilised new online technologies?

Mixcloud is one example of unique new technologies that Kane FM has chosen to align with. Obviously; social networking has also taken the forefront for any self respecting ‘muso’.

Can you run me though a brief history of the station?

Kane FM started life as a pirate radio station in the early 90′s. The opportunity arose in 2004 to prove the demand for our service through an RSL (Restricted Service License). It lasted 28 days, was listened to in over 30 different countries, had 77,000 FM listeners and represented the best in independent music culture; featuring Ram Records (drum ‘n’ bass), True Tiger (UK garage, dubstep, grime) Grant Nelson (house) and Low Life Records (hip-hop), and with hundreds of other labels, producers and DJs within the UK circuit.

It has now grown into a not-for-profit community radio station to benefit the youth of tomorrow. All profits generated are used to drive social gain and community cohesion. On 24th February 2010; OFCOM Awarded Kane FM with our community radio licence, making Kane FM one of the few pirates ever to make the transition from pirate to legal radio. We have been licensed with the frequency 103.7FM for Surrey, South London and surrounding counties.

Can you describe your DJ/artist line-up?

Quite simply our artist line up represents anything independent. Just our production team alone reads like an all star cast with people such as Jazzy M (an old hand by our teams’ standards, sorry Jazzy!) and new blood such at the hardest working man in d’n’b, DJ Subterra, through to brand new dubstep up-and-comers Magic Mash.

We have over 14 producers and this gives you a tiny example of their quality, so you can imagine, given the artists we had involved in 2004 and the strength of our production team, that our line up reads like a who’s who of music in the UK across all independent genres. We are hesitant to give out any details on the exact line up prior to launch however! So you need to keep checking back on kanefm.com or listening to our mix series at Mixcloud to get an inkling of what is to come!!

What more would you like to see from the Mixcloud service, how can we improve?

Kane FM would like to see a mobile application on iPhone and just as importantly for Android platform or any other. We would like to see better systems for time stamping and improved GUI. Also the option to have a single widget embedded on a page that allows the user to search through all our content that is on our page and chose which mix to listen too would be awesome!

What’s going on at the station and website in the next few months?

The website is being finalised behind closed doors, but simplicity and functionality are key to the website side of things. Look at any commercial radio website and it is like a sensory overload attack with too much information attempting to be forced down your eye balls! We think get back to basics and we at each stage will request from our supporters, what they want. Enabling a smooth and simple website that only contains what our followers want to see.

Kfmp: Cj Mackintosh by Kane Fm on Mixcloud

Any musical highlights we should be looking forward to?

Well we have just released a CJ Mackintosh mix (the man behind the 1987 number 1 ‘Pump Up the Volume’ and 1987 DMC World Mixing Champion) as well as a Waveform Festival mix.

Kfmp: Waveform 2010 by Kane Fm on Mixcloud

The Waveform mix is a multi- genre mash-up to prepare all you festival lovers for October, when Kane FM and Archangel (owners of Waveform) join forces and cross brands for the ArcKanegel Arena at the Waveform festival. Sited in beautiful Cambridge with all the artists in the mix and more performing; so make sure you come along if you like a real underground festival. If you can’t make it then don’t worry, as some of the best bits and live sets will be going live and direct on Mixcloud of course.

In another innovative initiative we have a joint website with the Surrey Advertiser (one of the biggest local newspapers in England with a distribution of 500,000) and their online offering last year won the annual EDF Energy London and South of England Media Awards 2009. I mention this because today (25/08/10) we have uploaded our Guildford Music Awards Cloudcast. This represents three local signed artists; each respected in their own genres. There will be a vote on our joint website  Kane FM/Get Surrey that runs from Monday 30th August until Tuesday 28th September. The winner of this vote will receive the Kane FM Underground Achievement Award at the red carpet ceremony taking place on Wednesday 29th. So listen to the Cloudcast, enjoy the music and as of the 30th August pop onto the Kane FM/Get Surrey site to vote for your favourite. The event will be filmed and you can catch up with all our video and audio content via our Kane FM – official fan page on FB!

As for the future … more Kane FM Presents Cloudcasts that I refuse to tell you about. You will just need to follow our Mixcloud profile and wait to be blessed as ever.

The Mixcloud Blog’s Spotlight On: series is back after a summer holiday sabbatical and very happy to welcome another staunch supporter of the Internet Radio Revolution, Space Invader Radio, into the hot seat.

One of the site’s most prolific uploaders, with 130 Cloudcasts to date, the ‘best little radio station in the galaxy’ has come a long way in the two years since its inception. After the closure of Bristol’s Eat the Beat Records in 2004, the DJ/producer collective behind the shop moved to a galaxy far, far away, finding that the 130bpm squelchy bass noises they specialised in could be transmitted across space and into people’s ears via the wonders of internet radio.

The friendly ethos of the record store was transferred online, with an ever-expanding roster of DJ’s and artists playing the music they loved to a fan-base stretching far beyond the Bristol. The various shows now encompass everything from drum’n’bass to disco, hip-hop to house and everything good in-between.

We had a quick word with the core trio behind the site, Matt The Good, DJ Hoop and Guinness, and asked them what have become the standard Spotlight questions:

Why did you choose to put the station on Mixcloud?

All good things are built on simple yet effective ideas (Space Invader being no exception) and we like the idea that Mixcloud is built around the idea of ‘radio’, a concept we all know and love. No downloads, although being a problem for some, reinforce that idea and make it somehow more of a radio player or broadcaster. We want our artists to gain as much notoriety as possible and with networking aspect to the site and the depth of talent on Mixcloud already it seemed like the logical choice.

Do you think the service is compatible and complementary with an online radio station such as yourselves?

Yes of course. I think whilst we are growing and Mixcloud is growing it seems to be very complimentary. It’s a very simple way of rebroadcasting our content within a very unique environment and in turn hopefully allowing us to make some new friends for the station.

How have Space Invaders tried to make use of recent advances in online technology and social networking?

Everyone on the station is linking in via Twitter and Facebook and it has led to the birth of quite a little community. The Station was born out of a few likeminded friends wanting to get together more and get involved in the project despite the fact we hardly got to see each other as we are spread all over the world, so the networking sites have really helped us to make that happen. They have also played a huge part in the addition of loads of new and very talented people to our roster – almost 70% of the current shows on the station are made by folks we made friends with via Facebook and Twitter; we really do use it as much as we can.

What more would you like to see from the Mixcloud service, how can we improve?

Ahhh, the burning question…. well we put this one out to all the shows and there was a great response. I think the first thing we think the listeners would benefit from is some form of subscription (as per Apple podcasts) it’s a very logical next step, ‘nuff said!

Next we’d really love there to be closer integration between us and you and some way of grouping our shows under your banner that would help us and the other stations promote our respective brands. We have a very diverse array of shows on the station, all of which listen intently to what the others are doing, and we really think that listeners would benefit from being able to see all the recent Invader shows in one place and learn more about the station as a whole, not just as the sum of its parts. There were a number of requests for a widget/player that we could integrate into our site rather than just the listen again that would list all these shows and could then link back directly to Mixcloud also. That way we benefit from a player on our site and you benefit from a good advertising presence on the site too.

What can we look forward to at the station over the next few months?

Apart from the obvious global domination? Well we’ve just launched our shiny new site and I’m now desperately trying to convince our tech department that we need to push on with getting a full version of Space Invader on there for people to play with. We’re really pleased with it though, and we’re going to push on with bringing in new talent mainly, so let it be known we’re on the lookout for like-minded souls with good ears, so do get in touch if you think you have a show that will weave nicely amongst our current crop. We already have two shows coming in the autumn, with the start of our new show from Orsi – who already broadcasts on the Laidback network – and also we’ll be bringing back The Wireless after its long term hibernation. The Part Time Heroes monthly show has got loads of surprises in store, so check that out. Not to mention the Invader AGM in November, which is an event in itself (it took me a week to recover from last year!) and we are also working on promoting one monthly club night in Bristol and another club night in the centre of London if we can manage to find the time!