Christmas Music 24/7

Sometime on November 7th, 2007, the Christmas Music 24/7 Traditional station had its 1,000,000th listener. Wow! The station was launched on November 18th, 2004. And even more interesting, sometime before New Year’s Eve 2007, I think the station will hit one million listener hours. Guess the date that happens, and win a prize. Simply send an email to me at one-million-hours (at) christmasmusic247.com. Simply mention: (1) the date you think the one millionth listener hour will happen; (2) your full name; and (3) your city and state, or country if outside the US. I’ll draw randomly from the correct guesses. You’ll need to respond to the email if you’re chosen as the winner. Good luck!

Yesterday was the first time of the 2007 Christmas season that the Traditional Christmas music station filled all of its 500 listener slots. One of the huge differences between regular radio and Internet radio is that on Internet radio, a webcaster only gets a certain number of listener slots. Those listeners can listen to the station for free, but they hear ads several times per hour. Once the listener spots are all being used, you can’t listen to the station until someone else disconnects. So how should you deal with this?

• Wait a few minutes and try again.
• Listen to one of the other Christmas Music 24/7 stations. On the top left of this page is a list of the stations. The Jazz/Instrumental Christmas music station is very nice, and has a lot of available listener slots.
• Become a VIP. VIP users don’t get advertising, and are not counted towards the listener limit. You also get to use the Radio365 program, which shows you the artist and song name playing while listening. If you use this link, I also get a referral fee from your subscription, which helps me to pay for the station. I also earn a little bit for every hour you listen to the station from your VIP membership, so VIP is a great option, for both you and me.

I’ve had several songs from Mannheim Steamroller to the Traditional station, and shortly they will be on the Jazz station as well. The songs are from the Christmas Song, Christmas in the Aire, Christmas Extraordinaire, and Christmas. The Christmas Collection Box Set is also available.

Christmas Music 24/7 has broken into the Top 100 stations at Live365. The station is listed as the 96th most popular station, of the over 7,000 stations at Live365.

In other news, I have a box of new music that I’ve been preparing for adding to the stations. I’ll finish ripping the CDs later today, and will start adding them to the stations tonight.

I get a daily report of how many listeners and how they long they listen to each station. Thursday, October 11th, 2007, was the first date for the 2007 Christmas season that the Traditional Christmas radio station had over 1,000 hours of listeners. That was from 1,267 different listeners throughout the day.

I’ve added two songs from Keith McCoy to the Traditional station, and to the Country Station. The songs are “When Santa Visits Here” and “Here on Christmas Eve.” More information can be found at www.myspace.com/ceoband and AstraRecordLabel.com.

I have been sick the last ten days or so. I have received a giant stack of CDs, I’ve started going through them and adding the music to the appropriate station(s). So, be looking (and listening) for new music fairly shortly. Thanks for your patience.

Leslie Harpold ran for 6 years an online Advent Calendar. Unfortunately she passed away last December after only publishing a few days of the 2006 Advent Calendar. I am planning on continuing the tradition here. I know I’m not as arty as she was, but I love Christmas, and counting down the days to Christmas is wonderful. There are only 90 days until Christmas this year!

The Advent calendar is on the upper right of each page at Christmas Music 24/7. Each day in December I’ll be releasing something. Feel free to send your ideas, suggestions, and memories to me.

Back in August I was interviewed by the local Fox affiliate, Fox-5 in Washington DC. I just found the report on their web site: Future Uncertain for Internet Radio.

Ok, here’s the deal. I’ve just completed a redesign of the Christmas Music 24/7 web site. The image on the top header now (the packages under the tree) is one I took for Christmas 2004. I’d like something new. Go through your photos of past Christmas celebrations, preparations, church gatherings and cantatas, concerts, and family gatherings. Send a few photos to me. I’m looking for photos that:

• Show the fun spirit of Christmas
• Somehow tie into music if possible (instruments? a choir? carolers?)

Technical details I’m looking for:

• Need to be at least 1024 pixels wide
• The copyright needs to be owned by you, and you can assign that copyright to me so I can use the photo on the web site, business cards, t-shirts, bumper stickers, kitchen sink, etc…. A Creative Commons license is great, as long as the image can be used for commercial purposes.

Simply email the photo to me (photo-contest -at- christmasmusic247.com). Or post the photos to Zooomr or Flickr. Tag the photo with christmasmusic247 so I can find it. Photos should be submitted by October 28th, so I can have the new photos on the site by November 1st.

Winners will have their photos featured on the Christmas Music 24/7 web site for the 2007 Christmas season. And maybe I can send them a CD or two, we’ll see what happens as we get closer to Halloween.