Sorry this post is a bit long, but we have a few tidbits of news for you; consider this our State of the Station address. Please read to the end, especially if you’re a Cladrite Radio listener:

The company we paid to handle our licensing went under (absconding with a month’s fee in the process) so we had to quickly make other arrangements. We’re now with a streaming provider called Live365, which is a good thing but it also presents some challenges.

Good things first:

1. There’s a new way to access our site, at Live365.com and via the free Live365 app, a free download in your favorite app store.
2. The old ways of accessing the site still apply (except iTunes, as explained in item 3 below), though we’re still working to update our stream info on some of the third-party apps. On two or three of them, you’ll still hear the old stream for now (not that it’ll be apparent to you—the streams sound similar).
3. Those who listen to us via the iTunes Internet Radio feature will soon need to find a new way to listen, as iTunes is being discontinued (click on How to Listen at the top of the page—you have many options). You have some time yet to pick a new app; our iTunes stream will fade into history in about three weeks.
4. Because of the updated stream URL, if you listen to us via the Simple Radio app, you’ll need to delete us from your favorites and restart the app. That’ll ensure you’re receiving our new stream (you can then re-add us to your favorites).

Now, the bad news (it’s not so terrible)…

Live365 is a solid service, one we’re happy to be with, but they charge according to how many listener hours a station accumulates per month. This is a factor we’ve never really had to concern ourselves with before, and it’s a bit counter-intuitive: Of course we want as many listeners as possible, but we’ll be charged more if our numbers climb.

Since we have patrons who send us a bit of money every month via patreon.com, we think it’s important to have transparency about our finances. We don’t aim to make money with Cladrite Radio—we’re happy on those rare occasions when we break even. But we have two major areas of expense: Stream hosting and licensing (this keeps us legal in the eyes of ASCAP, BMI and the other licensing agencies) and web site hosting for our blog, which features lots of content related to the popular culture of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s (we share much of that content with you here on FB).

Our move to Live365 will cause our licensing fees to rise a bit, by about $50 a month or so (and possibly more if our listener hours exceed expectations, but that’s a concern for another day, another post). We could lower that increase a bit by including commercials in our programming—not the vintage radio ads we share with you for entertainment value, but two minutes of contemporary paid advertising that Live365 inserts twice an hour. We are trying to avoid this option, as we feel that modern advertising kind of spoils the vintage mood, the old-fashioned atmosphere we try to maintain on Cladrite Radio, but if that’s the only way to cover the bills, we’ll resort to letting Live365 insert the ads.

The one way we can avoid airing those ads is an increase in support at patreon.com. If you are currently one of our Patrons and you can afford to send us a bit more each month—every dollar counts—that would be greatly appreciated. And if you’re not yet a patron, but you’d be willing to support our efforts to keep the toe-tapping tunes of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s alive and streaming on Cladrite Radio, please visit patreon.com/cladriteradio and sign up. You can be a Cladrite Radio patron for as little as a dollar a month, and we have thank-you premiums at every level of support.

If you’re currently a patron and are willing to chip in a bit more, you don’t necessarily have to jump up to the next level (from $1 monthly to $5, for example); you can up your contribution to two, three or four dollars, if you wish.

We have every hope and intention of sticking around for many years to come, but this is one of those occasions that we must turn to you, our listeners, readers and followers, for help. If you can contribute even a dollar a month, it’ll be a huge help and make a big difference. Again, our patreon page can be found at patreon.com/cladriteradio.

If you enjoy our posts on Facebook and here on our blog, if you listen to Cladrite Radio even occasionally, please consider showing your support for our efforts at patreon.com/cladriteradio.

Thanks!