Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Status Update

The station is just a little over a month old, yet I've been amazed at the popularity of it so far!  Considering I've barely done any advertising, I'm really happy to see so many people listening to the station and making it a preset!  I've even managed to break into the top 40 in the genre, which includes all pop stations.  Pretty impressive for something that plays such niche music.  Thanks a lot, and I'll do my best to keep the station running!

Of course, with such loyal listeners I've occasionally noticed that the station has hit the limit for normal users. There doesn't seem to be any consistent time to when it happens, and I also have no idea what the stats are like when I'm sleeping.  The majority of listeners are from Japan, so I'm going to have to assume that it isn't as crowded during the off-hours here.  Either way though, I'm unsure of where to go at this point.  I'd love to upgrade the stream and increase the listener slots, but you barely get any extra storage space and the price is over double what I pay now.  It's still reasonable enough that I could do it, but at this point I'll wait and see how things keep going, if the stream keeps getting overcrowded on a regular basis then I'll spring for the next level.  Anything beyond that would be too expensive to run on my own, to upgrade it I'd probably either seek sponsorship from some local stores that I frequent (which would require me to add advertisements in some way), or take donations.  Either way, I might be thinking too far ahead at this point, so let's see how things go for now.

Anyway, thanks again for listening!  I also occasionally get requests from the message system the site has, I do pay attention to them and add those artists to the stream, so keep them coming!  I've also been trying to do more live streaming, if I go out for awhile I'll usually switch to live mode, but obviously I can't make any schedules with such a system, and it also makes it difficult for western listeners to catch them.  I also update the main playlist every week or so, switching songs.  I'm thinking of doing a total renewal every few months or so, switching out the majority of the playlist, but we'll see what happens.  I'm pretty happy with how the playlist is now, but I do know how it can be boring to listen to a station that never updates.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Welcome to Jpop Legends!

Hey everyone, thanks for listening to my station and viewing my site!  Nothing too fancy yet, if there's enough demand I'll try and make it fancier and possibly post about retro music and the scene in Japan.

I created Jpop Legends for fans of 80s and 90s Jpop, an era that I consider to have sparked a tremendous amount of originality and talent for the genre.  I'm a huge collector of CDs and other formats, and always wanted a way to share it with other like-minded people.  I live in Tokyo, which gives me plenty of great opportunities, from going to concerts held by the older artists to visiting retro-music themed bars and talking with the patrons.  I also am always on the hunt for CDs, searching for and checking out used shops.

As of now, the station is just an experiment to see if there's enough interest.  I signed up for the cheapest plan, which gives limited space and listener slots.  I'm currently focusing more on uploading mainstream popular songs from the era, although if I have the chance I'd also like to put in more obscure artists that I'm fond of.  The limited storage space is the main problem, I want to eventually focus on live broadcasting which will help with that, I do have a spare PC which I'd like to use as a broadcaster 24/7, but at this point I'm not sure how feasible that would be.

Any comments, suggestions, or requests would be greatly appreciated!  Feel free to post here or shoot me an email, and thanks again for listening!