As I sit here early this morning with a long set of Hot Buttered Rum playing, I am almost overwhelmed with what has happened.
First a little history.
I think back to the humble beginnings of 'The Blockhead Rod Show'. Yep that was the name of it way back when. A friend of mine (Gena from the Creative Animal Relief show Mondays 7pm et on BHR, yep we got her and Tammy on BHR now.) knew I was a pro blogger and told me about this Internet radio platform. I tuned into one of her shows, called in, and I was hooked. The next Monday I did my first show. I was so nervous I dropped the phone during the show. You can ask Sew Happy Designs about that, she was there. I settled down after that and really enjoyed doing the shows promoting artisans and trying to help them out in any way I could. It was a good show, but kind of Steinish (yes that is an official BHR term) I knew something was missing. Then one Monday night some flaky chick called in and crashed my show......did it again the following Monday. I figured for the sake of the show I would just put her on as a co host
......welcome Witchy.
From there we grew to 14 live shows a week and maxed out what we could do on that platform. We talked about it and decided we would launch our own station. Hey I can do that no problem. ROFLOL it was fun. After looking around I went the independent route. Really wish somebody would write a book on it.......I just wanna know how we did it. Blockhead Radio is now a live streaming 24/7 Internet radio station exposing artisans to the world with a blend of music from the top indie musicians.
Where are we at now.
16 live show from artisan shows to in the garden and growing. We have several shows in the works and still looking to add more. All the shows center around from being and artisan, to family, to life. It is still a kid friendly station. Hey, we might have slipped but we can control ourselves.
Last week we officially partnered up with Artfire.com. This wasn't a spur of the minute decision and not one we did for money. I am so impressed with what John and Tony had put together for the artisan. They really do put the artisan first. Artfire has a new site launching here soon,
http://handmadenews.org and there is a button that launches the player. That was awesome. Now we can reach more artisans and more buyers.
Witchy, Huck, and I have been hanging out at a new site over the past couple weeks.
http://byhand.me Yes mama, I know you told me about it, but I was still in the process of figuring out which wire went where. Thankfully an artisan in the Artfire chatterbox told Witchy about it and we were hooked. Infivison and Soapdeli have put together an outstanding site for artisans. So Blockheads being Blockheads we went on air telling everybody about this site. That's what we do. Over the weekend they added a really cool banner link to Blockhead Radio on their site. Thanks to both of you.
I got up this morning to 3 emails that really brought it home for me. Sometimes I get so busy coding, getting shows together, and promoting I forget about the impact we are having.
The first was from Soapdeli.
"Take a look at
http://byhand.me and tell me if you see anything different." I went to the site with my first cup of coffee in hand. Right there on top is a button (really cool looking I have to add) to launch the player. That almost put me on the floor. I had to ask myself.......'are we really that good?'
The second email was from an artisan.
"I am a new listener to Blockhead Radio and haven't ventured into chat yet. I haven't made a sale yet but have now got inspiration again." All I could say was come on into chat, Witchy is the only one who bites and I've got all her shot records and they are up to date.
The third one was from a listener and I get quite a few that go along the same lines every week.
"Dude your station rocks. I heard about it in a forum and tuned in one morning. You and witchy had me laughing so hard that I had tears rolling out of my eyes. I love the music. I can't believe these bands are indie. I never knew about this handmade thing and started checking out some of the links. It is so cool. Thanks for the music and rock on." Dude, got my bic out held high during most of the songs too. Glad you love the music....we got more indie musicians getting ready to join us.
So are we really that good? I don't know, but we sure have fun doing it. We put something together here that hasn't been done before. Every day I work at improving the stations quality and making it easier for people to listen in. As Mike Burnes said, "You've started a revolution in the radio and music industry". Oops. The majority of internet stations work under a commercial site. Not us. Hey we may have hiccups every now and then but that's half the fun...not really,
it drives me nuts.
The best thing to have come from this venture are all the new friends I have made.
I want to thank our listeners, stalkers, and friends. We do this for you. (and beer money) Really, it has been through your support that BHR has become what it is.
Have a Great Day and ROCK ON DUDE,
Blockhead
