Should Umphreak’s Anonymous revive their livestreaming radio project?
In early 2016, we killed off a pet project that we adored, but had neither the time or funding to support properly, Umphreaks Anonymous Radio. Inspired by Sirius/XM’s “Grateful Dead Channel”, SCIRadio.com and other similar projects, we created a 24/7 online streaming hub where fans could tune in from anywhere and hear Umphrey’s AUDs of new shows and SBDs of classics, alongside original podcasts, special events broadcasts, and more. However, because Umphreak’s Anonymous is a fan administered volunteer organization which focuses on celebrating the fanbase AND the music that we love, we soon found that we could not self-fund UMANON Radio. We considered selling advertising time to Pinjas and other scene related artists as a way to keep the feel of the radio within our culture and not have it be some ugly Google Adspace (our website contains no advertisements, either), but the organization this would require was nearly impossible for our small team in 2016.
Now, we are punting the idea of reviving Umphreak’s Anonymous Radio, seeing if the community would have an interest in kickstarting the project. For around $200, we can likely revive Umphreak’s Anonymous Radio and provide the team enough resources to purchase the multicast space and create original podcasts (likely once monthly) for a year. If it goes well, we could likely create more podcasts, and accept fan created podcasts of quality to put on the stream.
However we’ve been wondering if this is something the fanbase would even be interested in? One thing we know about Umphreaks, they love their favorite shows or listening to the most recent one the whole way through. Umphreaks also already have many options to get their music, including Nugs.Net and UMLive and our souce, Archive.org. That also brings up a point as well, the Radio is powered by Archive.org because we do not own the rights to broadcast new Umphrey’s SBDs across the globe – that would probably require several hundred, or possibly thousand, more dollars. Not all the audio is crispy (though some is quite crisp), and tapers are a megavital resource to keeping music alive and FREE for the public, and the band certainly seems to recognize, respect and love it. Either way – is this, a 24 hour streaming Umphrey’s station, something Umphreaks would even use?
As we move into 2017, Umphreak’s Anonymous has big plans as part of a refocusing of our resources. We’re moving our website away from its previous social structure (though there are forums there), and refocusing on multimedia that highlights the fanbase and those who are addicted to the facemelting jams we crave. This likely means the active return of the Umphreak Collective (our creative online fanzine), and our humorous blog The Utopian Blur. This also means continuing to feature absolutely gorgeous photography from some of the best who capture our favorite band, like Tara Gracer Design & Photography. We want to be more than your standard community fanpage. This amazing band has some amazing fans, and as a community we can create some cool shit – we’ve never asked those that follow this page to fund any of our projects before, and we’re not certain the community would even want to create this tool or if you would rather see us focus on something else (and if so, what?!), but we want to put these concepts out there incase it’s something you’d like to help us create. Should we?
Happy new year, all! Lets rage together in 2017!
[photo from Tara Gracer, New Years Eve Run 2016]