Changes & Long Term

          We are Day 4 into working on the website. We have some massive changes coming your way folks, and honestly we cannot wait until we are finished with the renovation, but we’re just getting started. So please bear with us. You’re going to see a lot of things come and go as we continue moving forward with transitioning. So for those of you who don’t know much about maintaining a website. Things do happen, and they are beyond our control at times. We continue to maintain it for you guys, as well as for  us. So I wanted to follow up on the discussion we had earlier. Kind of talk about the station itself a bit more. So after making the decision to remove the alumni section from the staff, we didn’t want that to feel like a diss or anything. We have to protect ourselves as well as them, and with that being said we have to continue to move forward as each day does, and as those staff members also chose to.

What I did mention was that if any of the previous staff want to reach out to me, and collaborate, I would be more than willing to create a section for them on the website so that we can display it professionally for you. What sparked this yesterday, was we have an online chat that has quite a few people in it, and we had some former staff members come in contact with me and ask for us to take their content down because things in their life had changed, and they didn’t want to be associated with the lifestyle, because they had life changes. So I decided to reach out to a few others who had content on here, and some of them as well asked for it to be removed. Some of these interviews are almost 20 years old, and it’s understandable. Some people have moved on to become directors, producers, radio hosts, business managers, and others have created their own brand separate from HatchetRadio, and we get that. Last night was just a big shock because it came unexpectedly, and of course we will always, always, always, work with an artist, or a host when it comes to their material. But on the other side of the coin, we get a high volume of DM’s daily from folks asking about those who stepped away from the station. People care and that’s the kind of impact the station had on people.

Alright I think I’ve kicked that dead horse one last time, so we’re going to move onto the next big part of transparency I wanted to discuss that I brushed up on lightly during the last conversation. The renovation, doesn’t just include us working on the website, and getting things running & functional again. We are also going to be doing a very large overhaul of the radio programming over the next few days, and this could last up to a few months. Over the last few years, we have had quite a few talented shows that ran for many years, and some that are still running. Our website has a tremendous amount of space available for them, as does our AutoDJ. We took a look at the amount of time it would take to play every single one of those interviews back to back and it’s an astronomical number. So what we are going to do is we are going to do more free programming with some of these shows to fill in the gaps. We are also going to take a look at live peak times and make adjustments to certain shows that have long time played on the radio station. This is our way of giving more opportunity to more shows that might not get played as much in the spots. We will also be pruning the AutoDJ a bit more and removing some B-Sides and some of the OTHER content we have on there. When we ran with our old sponsor Shoutcast, we were required to play music from different genre’s. We had to put other music in the mix, there were heavy requirements we had to fulfill in order for us to continue to keep our Partnership at the time, so we had no choice. We will be pulling back the reigns in the near future on a lot of that “other” content.

We have been a station known for broadcasting and supporting underground, indie artists from many different genre’s & sub genre’s. We’ve done it for 20 years and even though people have claimed we are a “Juggalo” Radio station, we represent horrorcore & acid rap but we also give talent out there who’s coming up a listen to. Without people like us to support them, promotion and getting it to your ear is a little harder. When we joined the Indie Republic Network in 2010, that was the goal. That’s still the goal today, to seek out new talent, and display and showcase them, give them that something a little extra and help them float to that next level. This was from Day 1. Artists like Tech N9ne, Necro, ICP, Stumik, Z’Nuff Starr, Frankie Badlungs, Gunplay, Wolfpac, Bloodhound Gang, Kottonmouth Kings, Vanilla Ice, and many many more have worked with us in the past because we have reached out with the same message each time, and we will continue to. If you ask any staff member what our station was, past or present, they would tell you the exact same thing. Some of them were fans, some of them were Juggalos, but all wanted to play music nobody listened to or had heard of yet. THAT was the thrill of what we do, and what we continue to do. It’s just we have to change up a few things. So you will be hearing a lot less other things on the station as we will be pruning the Auto-DJ to a comfort level.

So a few years ago we had an app on Android & IOS. We then upgraded that app, and then Apple removed it from Itunes Store, and the company we were outsourcing to wanted way too much money for the next major Android update so we decided to scrap the idea due to overhead. Now when we put this into perspective. Here’s what we need to take into consideration. We don’t make any money to run this. We spend money to run this. This comes out of pocket for many of us here on the website. From the Streams, to the tools, all the way down to the chat server, and there are many people who have humbly helped out with assorted details of this network over the years. We didn’t want to take donations and complicate things, the staff has their own streaming side hustles, or real time jobs, and we come and do this for you guys and have for 20 years. So when we don’t have an app, it’s because we don’t want an out of pocket expense that we have to explain to the significant other, or to the other staff, and as life happens, things happen, and we didnt’ want to lower the expectations of our listeners with an App that was up and down, so once the app died, we had someone voluntarily maintain a lite version of one, until around 2015, then we decided to move in with Tune-In App. So you can install Tune-In on your Phone and enjoy the station from there.

So that should wrap up this update folks, we have a lot going on in the background, we’ve kept you guys in mind, and I apologize for the round of lengthy posts, I know some folks love to read, but we want you guys to know we’re thinking of you. We’ve just had a lot of commotion in the background as we start launching our own personal stuff. Until then, I hope you guys have an amazing day. Stay up, and we’ll keep you informed!