1. Who are you?

Indie Music Sampler is operated by one guy, Paul the music lover. I live with my wife and son in Hillsboro Oregon, a Western suburb of Portland. I was born in 1956 and I am a card-carrying computer geek who works full time for IBM. I have always loved technology and music. In grade school, those passions lead me to want to be a DJ when I grew up. After 12 years in the industry, I realized that I was no good as a “personality” and moved to technology as way of making a living.

2. Why do you do this?

It satisfies a couple of passions. A love for music and wanting to help artists to be found by those who want to hear. To couple my technical skills with my love for music. This makes computer-programming really fun! Then there is my continuing fascination with radio, but on the Internet it is world-wide. In the early morning, most of my listeners are in Europe, during the day they are in the USA, and in the evening most listeners are in Asia. That’s pretty exciting stuff to me.

3. How do you produce the “Parade of New Music” podcast?

I find the vast majority of new music on Music Alley. Each week I choose 6 or 7 songs I want to feature. I convert the MP3 files into WAV files, and normalize them (which is makes everything the same volume). I use a Nady SP-5 microphone plugged into a Behringer Eurorack UB802 Mixer and record the program on a old computer running Fedora Linux with the program Audacity. (Picture below) I export the program as a WAV, encode to an MP3, upload to my host, and create the associated blog.

4. How do you produce the “Indie Music Spotlight” podcast?

My partner Drake Ferguson (who lives across the country from me) and I discuss who we would like to spotlight. We choose the four song titles to include. He does the interview and slices it up into three 5-minute segments. I record the open and close of the program. Finally, I take all the pieces and stitch them together into the final product. The program is not branded and is available for syndication.

5. How do you do the radio streams?

That’s not as easy. It discussed in great detail on this blog post. I run the Shoutcast program on a dedicated computer sitting on the floor of a spare bedroom in my condo. This simple program can only play a list of MP3 files in the order specified. I wrote the BASH (Linux command-line shell) scripts that generate the playlists. Once a day, the music from various categories are ordered and scheduled, then the spots and bumpers are scheduled. The player is told to reload the playlist, and play the first song after the current one is finished. On Sundays I run several special programs. Using time cues (cron jobs) a new playlist is written by putting the special program on top, and copying the unused portion of the playlist below it. Again, the player is told to reload the playlist. When you listen to my station, you connect directly to this same computer. You are an electronic guest in my home.

6. Who does your hosting?

This website and the podcast audio is hosted by Prolink Hosting. All the tools are right there ready to go – Web server, WordPress, MySql, PHP, etc. The radio streams are generated in my condo and broadcast from there.

7. How much does all this cost you?

As you can tell, capital expenditures were next to nothing. Most of my equipment was either cheap (like the $20 microphone) or retired personal gear (like the computer I produce the podcast on). The ongoing expense is Internet service. Since we would have Internet service in our home anyway, at $45/mo., I’m only spending $5 to $10 more per month for the business class service. Prolink Hosting costs $10/year (yes, per year). I have two associated domains (indiemusicsampler.com and paulthemusiclover.com) that cost me $10/year each. The P.O. Box costs me $55/year.

8. Will you ever charge for the service?

No. Then it would become a job. When I first used expensive,  external hosts, I made a call for donations, and got plenty. But since this is not a non-profit organization, I felt funny about taking money from people on donation basis. So, it will stay free, or go away (if I can no longer afford this hobby). I have been doing the podcast since July 2006 and the radio stream since January 2009. I love doing it as much today as I did on day one. I have no plans to quit.

9. What does your studio look like?

Not very impressive. It is in the corner of the master bedroom of our condo. The baby blanket on the wall is there to reduce the amount of echo I get from the wall.

Any more questions? I’d enjoy hearing from you at paul@indiemusicsampler.com

Studio