Actually, it’s WE did it again, but then you wouldn’t have had that song stuck in your brain now, would you?
Stef and I made a new thing. It’s called Twadio – and it’s a silent radio station that broadcasts simply the name and artist of a song, once every 15 minutes, via Twitter.
People see it come up on their twitter stream, and the song gets stuck in their brain. Until we ‘play’ them another song. Pretty dumb, right?
If they don’t recognise it, or if they want to remind themselves how it actually goes, there’s a link on the feed to click through, they can hear a bit – and, if they wish, go buy the song as an mp3.
It’s basically a toy we made for our own amusement, but it’s also a great way of starting an online radio station with a clear income stream… and no royalty payments to be made or troublesome lawsuits pending over international performance rights.
We had the idea some months back, and I put a little bit of time and energy into making the playlist (1,483 songs – though I’m trimming some of the really cheesy stuff out) – but the site was built over the weekend. Stef learned a new programming language for the occasion, and apart from a bit of time, the whole thing cost us £15 for a couple of domains.
We put it online last night, invited a few people to try it out, got some feedback, made some changes today and launched it this afternoon.
Lots of fun.
Gotta say, I’m not sold on this one. I know it’s opt-in, but I still think I’d grow pretty tired of a tweet every 15 minutes.
I’m keeping an open mind on this one but at the moment I’m curious as to whether people would take this up. One of the best things about radio is being able to turn it on and off when you want – not so easy in Twitter. Besides that, I’m just not sure I “get” the concept of simply being reminded of a random hit song every 15 minutes.
Anyway, I must applaud yours and Stef’s skillz at coming up with a truly original idea and running with it so fast, and I wish you the best of luck with it. I’ll be interested to hear what others think.
Clever.
OK I’ve tried out Twadio for a couple days, I have to say (at this stage) I’m with Paul on this one… getting a tweet from a robot every 15 minutes with a song title chosen via some clever algorithm doesn’t seem to add much value to my life, (plus my current Twitter client, twhirl, just banks up all the Twadio messages and I have to scroll through them to find tweets from real human beings).
In the end I’ve probably got enough music already running through my head, or out my laptop or iPod at most times of day – I’m not sure I need Twadio telling me at 4.37pm to imagine hearing “Dreadlock Holiday” by 10CC.
But “silent radio” – definitely a cool idea. If a song plays on the internet and nobody’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?
I have been paying attention to this quite a bit even bought a tune. I love it!!!!!
What I like the most is that it runs along side my other tweets and so is right in front of me while I am online. As I run twitter while doing so many other things it really doesn’t interfere with my various projects. Being silent I can continue to watch videos and listen to songs as musicians request. If I see a song title go by that I have to remember I can click the link and get back to when I get a chance. I have to say though my wallet eventually will hate me as I could see more $$$ going out in the near future then I could afford.
It looks to me like Indie artists could get listed on this by just having MP3s for sale on Amazon which is so easy through CreateSpace.
http://blog.timelineonline.org/2008/09/put-your-demo-up-for-sale.html
Hahaha, that’s pretty hilarious. What a bizarre yet funny idea.