Progress Still At A Standstill

My bank has still not been verified with Amazon Payments so I am still at a standstill.

Oh well.  I guess it's all good since I got a lot done today.  I had worked on the logistics of several music segments.  I feel I have come up with some pretty good ideas.  I definitely want some that will glorify certain years or artist.  For example I could go on the air and say "Coming up for the next hour is nothing but music from 1992" or "The next hour is going to be nothing but Outkast".  I know segments like that would be popular.



Aside from that I continued to put together my advisory and complied an email list to blast when the project is ready for launch.  I have a pretty impressive media contact list.  I am optimistic that the advisory will create a decent buzz for the project and bring many readers to not only the kickstarter project, but this blog as well.

 

Writing, Writing, & More Writing

Lately it seems as if I have been doing nothing else except writing.  Writing this blog, writing emails, writing on the stations Twitter, writing down ideas and concepts, writing potential scripts for station imaging, and I even began writing the official advisory that will publicly reveal the project in its entirely.

Whew!

I don't seem to be spreading myself too thin, however as a precaution I feel the need to get organized before disarray takes over. My problem at the moment is that there is so much to do I find myself jumping from one thing to the next.

Obviously, multitasking is nothing new to me.

Today is Monday.  The beginning of a new week.  I'd like to set a few goals of what I would like accomplished in the week ahead.

First and foremost I would like my bank verified so I can close setup procedures for Amazon Payments.  Once that is completed I would like to tie up any loose ends regarding the projects presentation.  Once I feel the project presentation is acceptable I would like to submit the project to kickstarter for approval.

I am unaware of the turnaround regarding the approval proceedings.

With the major hurdles for the week out of the way I would continue to update this blog and continue working on my advisory.  Surely there is more to be accomplished than that during the course of this week however that is still unknown at the moment.

Busy busy bee.

Blog

When I decided I would create a progression blog I did not know how much I was going to keep up with it.

Here I am, the project hasn't even been submitted for review yet and I find myself continuing to blog away. That is alright. I think it is safe to say I am going to keep up with it. When I started the blog, I started it on a wordpress with the settings set to private. I have always had mixed feelings towards wordpress, but I just did not like the feel of it.

I decided to ditch the private wordpress I created (duplicate of this blog) so I could begin one on blogger. The ONLY downside of the new blog was that I could not make it private due to certain circumstances.

It was a risk since I was risking someone seeing this blog before the kickstarter was launched but I had no choice. Hopefully by tomorrow my bank account will be verified and I will submit the project for review. I do not know how long it takes to get approved or not. If I get approval, I will finally publish the project and begin promotion of the station funding.

All in all, it should hopefully be only a few days until I can begin sharing this blog as well. It should be fine.

I have a good feeling about this coming week.

Moment Of Clarity

I had a pretty busy morning.  I had some other things to take care of that was not related to the station. 

Since my last post I revealed that the project is in limbo at the moment so to speak.  I admit, I was impatient.  I wanted to get the ball rolling, even if it meant doing some of the smaller task that needed to be done.  I just want to make some sort of progress towards it.

First things first, I needed to submit my project and get it approved before I even think about what it is going to take to get it to succeed.

Once a project goes live, according to the guidelines of kickstarter.com, if you do not meet your funding goal you will not get any of the funding that had already been pledged.  When the time frame of the project is over, even if you were a dollar short of your goal, all the money gathered up to that point would be returned to the people who supported the project.    That was when an awful thought somehow made its way into my head.  I am already in a type of “go all out” mode and am ready for the massive amount of things that need to be done to make this station a reality.  In fact I have already began proceedings on several aspects even though the funding isn’t guaranteed through kickstarter.com.  For a moment I thought, what if this project does not meet its funding goal on www.kickstarter.com?  Would all my work be in vain?

I am not a pessimistic, I am a realist.  For whatever reason, I had a moment of self-doubt & I quickly dismissed it.  I realized this station is far bigger than me.  If I were to fail on the initial attempt to get funding for it is not a good enough reason to give up hope.  I made a decision.  This station IS happening whether I make my kickstarter funding goal or not.  Sure the funding through kickstarter would make it a hell of a lot easier.  However if I fail on the funding aspect of the project I am still going to pursue in creating this station.

As I have said previously, this is going to be something special.  The people who miss they music they grew up with on the radio deserve this station.  The people who have grown sick and tired of today’s Hip Hop in 2012 deserve this station.   I wanted to be the one who was going to bring it to them.  I have to admit, not coming through with funding would be a huge blow to the project, but it is not something that is strong enough to kill the project overall.

In the end, I am kinda glad I had that small moment of self-doubt.  On the tail end of it I received a moment of clarity and realized my resolve is much higher than it was before.

This IS going to happen.

Stuck At The Moment

It appears my progression towards the project is temporarily stuck at the moment.

During the process of creating a project on www.kickstarter.com you must meet a certain criteria.  Some of the guidelines required is verifying a phone number, and signing up for Amazon Payments to name a couple.  In lieu of signing up for Amazon Payments you have to verify your credit card and bank account.  I was hoping the verification would be instant but unfortunately it was not.  So now, I have to wait for my bank account to be verified before submitting my project.  This could take up to a few days so I had no choice but to be patient. 

The project is stuck since Amazon Payments is a requirement of kickstarter.com and the project cannot be submitted without it.

Once a project is submitted for review, the people at kickstarter will review it.  If it is approved, the project will be ready to go live when I am ready to reveal it to the public.

Just because the logistics of the project are on hold, that does not mean I have nothing to do.  I still have a ton of other things that I can work on.  I have been looking more into securing some call letters from the N.A.D.B. [National Association Of Digital Broadcasters].  That in itself it also holding me back to an extent since I need an official name and official call letters in order to begin working on other aspects of the project.  Hopefully in a few days I will put my own money towards securing some call letters.  Only then I can finally start on other things such as creating a logo and securing a web domain for the web page.

COME ON!  I HAVE LITTLE PATIENCE WHEN IT COMES TO THINGS I AM EXCITED ABOUT!  I WANNA GET THINGS ROLLING ALREADY!

Inspiration To Pass The Time

Just a few classics to pass the time....

Starting The Kickstarter Project

There has been more than one occasion in my life when I began something new, I would cross the line into obsession.

Almost immediately, this became one of those incidents.

What started out as research and a rough draft kickstarter project turned into an obsession.  I had started out still unaware if I wanted to devote the time and energy into such a project but that indecisiveness quickly faded when I felt a long dormant passion that I have for radio emerge.

Sounds cheesy doesn’t it?  It does.  But that is what really happened!

It had become clear that I had made my decision.  Despite possibly throwing away my career on a traditional FM station, I had no choice but to chase this dream of mine into making this station become a reality.  This was not something I just conjured up on a whim, I have wanted to do this for years.  My decision had been reached and there was no going back.  I was all in.

In the first 24 hours since beginning the kickstarter project, I had easily spent over 17 of those hours researching.  Looking up what permits and fees that needed to be paid, what equipment I needed to buy, what music to play, etc.  I even started this blog as a progression blog to keep “backers” of the project well-informed.  When I forced myself to sleep I would toss and turn with the curse of continually thinking of new ideas that could contribute to the project.  Obsession had taken a hold of me.

When I finally awoke the next morning, I was back at it again.  I had a lot more work ahead of me.

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.

Introduction

My name is Dominique Garcia.  I have been a music lover my entire life and am quickly approaching my 12th year anniversary as a radio personality.

At this very moment in time I find myself in between stations [unemployed] and not in the radio industry at this very moment.  It happens to every jock out there.  No job, station, or situation is ever permanent.  Unfortunately there have been a lot of great jocks who have fallen victim to layoffs and firing thanks to the dwindling economy that has nearly destroyed the radio industry.  A shell of its former self is the best way I can describe it.

Needless to say, the industry isn’t what it used to be.  I was fortunate to initially get into this business and blessed to have been apart of it for so long.  I have seen many changes within this industry and while some of those changes makes my heart heavy, I have no love lost.  No matter how much I am displeased by some of the transformations it has gone through, there are very few things other than radio that I see myself doing with my career.  I love it.

For months I have been frantically searching for a new radio station to hire me with no avail.  Not only is competition ridiculously fierce, stations simply aren’t hiring or have placed their stations on hiring freezes.  Despite the constant let-downs of no one hiring me, I still have a station or two that claims to be interested in me.  Interested, however no one has officially hired me.

The thought of rejoining the radio industry puts a smile on my face however the talk of wanting to hire me simply isn’t enough.

I was sitting around stressing about not having a job when I had the idea of creating my own radio station.  This is not a new concept for an out of work radio personality as they have all had at some point in the career the dream of what they would do if they were ever given the title of radio station owner.

This was an idea that had been a dream of mine for a very long time.  I admit, it was one that would rear its ugly head quite often.  However the end results of the notion would always end the same way.  I had no choice but to reject the thought since it was far too impractical.  I did not have millions of dollars to invest into a radio station of my own.  I want to be clear, I am a realist, I was not being pessimistic.

I then thought about creating an internet radio station despite the fact that creating and promoting a successful internet station would be no easy task.  Being who I am, it would have to be a Hip Hop station.  I then thought, even if I did create a station, what would make it any different from every other Hip Hop station out there?  Creating a Hip Hop station would impact my industry about as much as throwing salt into the ocean.  Then I realized, did I honestly want to creating a Hip Hop radio station?  After all, I honestly do not feel a lot of today’s Hip Hop music. I have been a Hip Hop head my entire life so feeling that way made me feel ashamed.  However it is true.  The feeling is justified because I know for a fact that I am not alone in thinking today’s Hip Hop is in no way of the same quality of the Hip Hop from back in the day.  I am not saying all Hip Hop in 2012 is horrible, but a lot of what passes for Hip Hop these days just kills me.

I then thought, what if I were to bring back all the music that I grew to know and love?  An oldies Hip Hop station perhaps.  For years I have partaken into countless conversations with friends and fellow Hip hop lovers about a station that plays nothing but old school music that we all grew up with.

I then had a chat with a friend of mine about the idea and he gave me the inspiration I needed.  His wave of optimism gave me the confidence that this could actually be possible.   Why couldn’t I create a radio station?  Why couldn’t I do all the things I always wanted to do if I was presented with the title of radio station owner?

If I were to create a regular traditional Hip Hop internet station, I felt it would have been doomed to fail.  However the idea of an oldies Hip Hop radio station is something different.   An idea had formulated.

More to come….