Now What?

I entertained the idea of how I could create this radio station for several days.  I am no fool.  I knew it would be a hell of a lot of work.  And by saying that, it still does not justify just how much it was going to take to actually pull this off.  I had the idea, I knew it was going to be a lot of work, but how could I seriously make this happen?

There are a lot of options for someone who is looking to create an internet station.  I could have easily created a live365 radio stream or something similar.  I felt that wasn’t good enough for me.  By all means I was not putting down those type of radio stations, it just wasn’t for me.  I wanted a real station with a real studio that I could broadcast from.  Not just a computer tucked away in a corner of my home.  I wanted to do this for real.  I wanted this to be a station that people fell in love with.  A station that could be enjoyed by all, not just those who are in one particular city like a traditional FM.  I wanted this to truly turn into something special.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine and he had mentioned starting a kickstarter for the project.  I knew of kickstarter.com and had wanted to eventually try the site out.  However at that time of initially looking into it, I did not have an idea for a project that I felt was worthy of my time.  This time around, this was different.  A kickstarter for this project was absolutely perfect and definitely worth my time and energy.

However an issue arose.  I was still being inconspicuously considered for an on air position with one or more radio stations around the country.  Clearly if I were to launch my own radio station it would be a conflict of interest.  Not only that, it would have most likely burned a bridge or two from my friends at the local Hip Hop station in my city.  I have never been one for burning bridges but this was something I really wanted to do and was something I knew deep down in my heart that I could be successful at.  I could only hope my friends at the local Hip Hop station would understand and not take offense at my project.  To me, I was not their competition.  My station would not be on the FM dial and my format would be completely different.  I would not be playing Hip Hop music, I would be playing oldies Hip Hop music.

What about that station or two (not saying which ones or which city they are located in) that was potentially interested in hiring me as their new on air personality?  My dilemma was that I could do something that was safe [having a real job with a real income] for X amount of time if and when they ever hired me, or I could chase a long-lived dream of mine.  It was obvious I was going to have to do some research first and then later decide if this was something I wanted to commit to.  The idea was there, in fact it has been there for many years.  However I was not certain I wanted to kill my chances of joining a station on the FM dial.

I felt not only did I deserve a station like this, but hip Hop fans everywhere who have grown sick and tired of today’s Hip Hop in 2012 deserved it as well.  I used that notion along with a great old school Hip Hop playlist on my Spotify for some much needed inspiration.

I decided I would begin to put together a kickstarter project to see how it would look.  Whether or not I would actually go through with it was still up in the air at that moment.