Future of pirate radio

[Woody]

So I have been looking into pirate radio and the culture. My question to anyone involved in it is this, where do you see the future going. With the advent of online radio, and youtube and etc why not go there were you can reach the globe. Where its legal to broadcast? A lot of pirate radio stations already do this.

[ff]

Hi Woody-  I believe that there are many different views on this - probably as many as there are pirates.  We each have different reasons why we do what we do, different priorities, and different ways of calculating our risk/reward scenarios.  Personally, I stay away from Internet broadcasting.  In that realm, one is in competition with literally MILLIONS of other attention grabbers.  You might be heard worldwide with pristine stereo reception, however,  you might still have absolutely NOBODY listening to you.  And the few that actually find your station amongst all that choice (other than your buddies), quickly tune away, for there are so many more things to be dazzled by. 

Also, the only way to be completely legal broadcasting on the Internet is to use absolutely NO copyrighted material of any kind.  There goes just about all of your music.  Personally, I would rather duck and dodge a disinterested FCC than to take chances with legal teams from BMI and ASCAP.  You might go unmolested for years - BUT - that possible lawsuit could truly destroy you.  They went after the Girl Scouts for their Campfire Songbook a few years back, and won.  If they feel its worth the fight, they will come after you too.  BTW- the royalty rate for Internet broadcasting is actually HIGHER than for terrestrial broadcasting...

My biggest reason for pirating on shortwave is for the audience being played to.  It's always dangerous to generalize, however, the typical SWL has a MUCH greater attention span than the typical INET user who uses their mouse much like a couch potato uses his/her TV remote.  SWLs search the bands and get a thrill receiving an interesting signal.  They will hang with you.  They will listen.  Often, they will attempt to make contact with you.  And often I make another friend.  Anything that is easy tends to breed boredom and jaded behavior.  Shortwave pirates might only be serving a small niche group but its a group of like-minded people who enjoy the challenges and surprises of communicating on Mother Nature's terms. I for one, am here to stay...

[atrainradio]

Hey Woody. Well, I am a firm believer in the line "as long as there is radio, there will be pirates on it" because there are people like myself and hundreds of others that strongly feel we are filling a void that the corporate radio stations will not. See, as we all know, it is nearly impossible for a regular guy to get a full powered station of his, and even harder to get one on shortwave. Yet that wouldn't stop us, so we make with we got and proceed to broadcast what no one else will because they do not have the money to do so. Do you think stations like WWCR are going to have an in house jockey to play music like any other local FM station? Hell no, because 1) They're christian and rock is the devil's music and 2) They would have to pay him, so they put nut jobs on like Brother Scare and Mr Jones on and make money off of hateful bigots instead of actually trying to be a self respecting station and stand out from the rest! They have the the watts to actually make a difference but dare not to. It's sickening, so that is where pirates come in. We're not out to interfere or disrupt (well, 99% of us aren't out to do that), we're not some anti-government nut jobs either, expect for Toynbee Radio (by the way, where the hell has he been?), we just wanna play music we like and fill the void that other stations won't.

So yes, pirates will always be on the airwaves, as long as I live at least. I do also stream online but I mainly focus on my over the air signal the most. And as any other long term pirateer can tell you, internet is a far cry from the fun and excitment of REAL pirate radio. What's so cool about a stream when you can hear the hum of a transmitter and (depending upon which bands you transmit on) people emailing in saying they are hearing your signal from far away? Pirates belong on the actual radio bands; we only use internet for those shmucks who don't want to use a real radio to hear us.


LONG LIVE PIRATE RADIO!


this is my 700th post by the way. how fitting?

[Pigmeat]

This will sound like a smartass answer, Woody, but I did it because it's a helluva lot of fun. There's nothing like the rush of firing up the transmitter on any given night and seeing where it goes.

I was a music pirate. Going legit on the internet? The royalty payments alone would break me. I would rather take my chances with the FCC.

[jFarley]

My biggest reason for pirating on shortwave is for the audience being played to.  It's always dangerous to generalize, however, the typical SWL has a MUCH greater attention span than the typical INET user who uses their mouse much like a couch potato uses his/her TV remote.  SWLs search the bands and get a thrill receiving an interesting signal.  They will hang with you.  They will listen.  Often, they will attempt to make contact with you.  And often I make another friend.  Anything that is easy tends to breed boredom and jaded behavior.  Shortwave pirates might only be serving a small niche group but its a group of like-minded people who enjoy the challenges and surprises of communicating on Mother Nature's terms. I for one, am here to stay...

Well said, ff.  As a listener, the unpredictable nature of pirate broadcast reception - due to both the vagaries of propagation and also the sporadic nature of the show scheduling - is what makes this so satisfying.  When you go down to the shack and strap the entire globe to your butt, you have no idea what you are going to hear.  Surprise me!  And when reception blows, the challenge is in using the tricks you've learned, the experience you've accumulated, and possibly even pushing the gear you built yourself to try to flush that signal out of all the Random Processes of the Universe aka noise and QRM.

And the funny thing is: the tougher receptions which make you work harder and concentrate more are the most satisfying of all.

As for attention span, I think that varies with the listener.  My personal belief is to try and listen to each show to the end once I start reporting, no matter how many other pirates I can see firing up on the SDR screen.  I just kinda feel obligated to do that.

[Woody]

So basically its the enjoyment and thrill of the radio itself not just the act of broadcasting? Interesting. Ive been toying with the idea for years ever since I was in the Navy working with microwaves and a little AM. The wife is making me put up the still, as in distilling, so I need a new hobby.

[Skipmuck]

When I first started listening to shortwave in the early to mid 1960's, there was a special feeling of fascination in hearing a radio station broadcasting from thousands of miles away. I was too young to understand the complexity of propagation, but was quickly caught up in the "mystery of the far away". There was childlike delight in writing to these stations and having them answer with a QSL...it was an accomplishment to have them acknowledge or verify my reports. Then there was the other things that arrived along with the QSL...stickers, pennants, calenders, etc. In the early 1980's I rediscovered the shortwave hobby at a time when the bands were literally jumping with hundreds of stations from every imaginable part of the earth. Pirate radio was a sideshow that added a little extra spice! The quest to hear and verify these became an adult obsession. I enjoyed every minute of it until life changes and just plain burnout pushed me once again out of the ranks of listening to the mystery of the far away. It was 23 odd years later when I once again took up the hobby only to find out that the internet had caused the shortwave broadcasters to close down en masse. It was no longer necessary to spend huge sums of money to bounce a signal off the ionosphere to reach a target audience. No need to hire people to handle the mail, read the listeners response, or cater to the QSL afficionados. After all, you could put everything on the internet and not worry about whether or not the audience was hearing your signal. The ionosphere was no longer necessary. The internet rendered it obsolete and the world was seemingly at one's fingertips at the drop of a mouse and the tap of a keyboard. But wait...what happened to the mystery of the far away? Well, it is still there and at the ready. All you have to do is acquire a suitable radio and slap up an antenna and there it is...those faint signals fading in and out of the noise from far away. Not very much to hear on the International Broadcast bands these days, but still plenty of other things to hear. Shortwave Pirate radio fills that special niche for me now. And it is doing rather well as anyone who takes the time to check out the sheer number of loggings of both North American and European stations! No, the ionosphere is not obsolete quite yet, and the mystery of the far away has not faded away. It's still there....just tune around and you'll hear it. And it's free

[redhat]

I for one like standing next to the transmitter with a pair of cans on listening to a song I love go echoing into the ether under the stars.  It doesn't get much better than that.

+-RH

[John Poet]

Confessions of a Radio Pirate
http://www.tcsshortwave.com/p/confessions.html


The decline of shortwave radio begins to seem irreversible---
with the exception of the shortwave radio pirates!

We do what we can to fill the programming void left by the demise of so many licensed stations...

[OldSeaRock]

My biggest reason for pirating on shortwave is for the audience being played to.  It's always dangerous to generalize, however, the typical SWL has a MUCH greater attention span than the typical INET user who uses their mouse much like a couch potato uses his/her TV remote.  SWLs search the bands and get a thrill receiving an interesting signal.  They will hang with you.  They will listen.  Often, they will attempt to make contact with you.  And often I make another friend. 

And that's why we listen (unless the propigation is for ~~~~, like it's been for me this Summer). 

[Zazzle]

Oh, phew, it's late but I want to write something now. The thoughs my be lost tomorrow. Taken away by sleep. Bear with me about typos, OK?

The Short answer is: there will always be Pirate Radio. In every imaginable way. SW/FM. Audio, Data, Beacons. Technology may change. Laws may changes. Humans passion hardly change.

Peope who share a certain mindset, interest and fascination will always do the stuff that triggers them. Sword are are out of date since... dunno how many hundread years. Still there are poeople who learn this beautiful art (well... let's see it as art, not a way to murder people).

There isn't much Pirate activity on the FM Bands over here in Germany. So I can't relate to that. AFAIK, the government plans to shut down any Analog Broadcasting until 2024. They did that already with Analog TV Broadcasting years ago. Still, I think there may be people who send out a signal, just to see whether there may be someone who hears it. Curiosity kills the cat... and drives our imagination.

SW is way more interesting and will hardly die. Low power transmissions can travel hundreads and thousand of miles. Hardly anyone monitors those bands and may kick your ass (except whenyou interfer with other stations, government used Bands or well... transmit with, like, 10kW... or play up-to-date chart hits nonstop). I there's a certain fascination to SW Broadcasting. A big point is the question "how far can I get?". I think that operating a stationon in the SW Band is like allowing our inner child to come out and play. When we were young we wrote 'messages in a bottle'. Now we manage to ship bottles through the air.

Of course there may be political message that go along with it. But let's be honest: that doesn't change anything. People who broadcast and listen to pirate stuff are very prone to already have a very healty mind that can't be fooled by the government. I think it's just the feeling of "not feeling alone, sharing opinions and knowing that people understand them" is the key here.

(Side note: I think the government accepted piracy on a certain level and lets us play on our 6-7Mhz Band, knowing that we have a playground where we will stick to, causing no trouble and where we can be monitored.)

There may be many individual reason for someone to give in to this facinating - but illegal - hobby. Okay, listening can't be counted as illegal. But on thd large scale I think it boils down to having friends and sating the hunger for adventure and longing. Maybe also a bit of "taming the Beast" (RF stuff is not easy to play with).

In my case: the word can turn as digital as it wants. I know there are folks out there who enjoy the old-school art of radio building and classy operation modes. And I know there are people who're looking for Pirate Ptations. Like they know that there are people who operate such stations. It's a way of comminication. Unidrectional and low level, but with a deep understanding of the longing behind.

okay, I'm not a Radio Station Operator. Several reasons. I may change that one day. Dunno. So, the question is "Why did I buidl 'common and Presious' and why do I work on my next Beacon project already?" Many reasons. Many are on the emotional side who can't be explained that easy and can likely only understood by a sould that feels the same way.

It's some way to break-free. Like urban exploring. Leaving the civilisation, the dayly "be a good worker and live a by the law"-life. I don't hurt anyone. I rob no one, I don't steal (okay... I've to be honest with myself... a tiny bit of energy.). It's my personal aventure. I'm not a Princess in her tower but a Prince (just for the figure of speech, mind you ;p) who screams "I'm here! Find me! Get me outa here!". For many many centuries, people explored other countries... etc. It's my modern way of exploring. Sending a signal (like a dove) and waiting for a message to return.

It's often that I sit on the window bord before I head to bed and look into the sky, full of stars and clouds. A soft, gentle feeling full of longing takes me over in those moments and I wonder where the signal may travel. I get the same sensation when standing (especially during night) next to a broadcast Antenna/Pole/Tower. It's hard to describe. Maybe you understand.

My Beacon is my personal "Candle behind a Windows on the top of a huge tower". Something that can be seen from dozen and dozen of miles away... and you want to go there. You want to know what that light is. It's some dream I have every now and then. There's a huge plain with grass. As far as the eye can see. And far, far away there's a slim but tall black tower that rises into the sky (has anyone seen the movie "The Place Promised In Our Early Days"?). There's a small light that can be seen in the night. It's a candle or something . At the top of the tower, behind a window. Why is it burning? Who lives there? I can't have a tower. But I can have a Beacon that says "Start a journey. Find me. Know me".

And, yeah, I was one of those poor souls that were unfortunate enough to be given an old Tube Radio/Shortwave Receiver during childhood. "Oh? There's MORE than we're-the-best-radio-station-ever-with-the-best-mix-but-we-play-the-same-f*ing-14-tracks-allday-long-like-all-other-stations-and-our-moderator-thinks-he's-funny-FM stations? I WANT MORE!!"

Right now I'm sitting in my hammock in the garden. It's past midnight and warm. The wind is whispering in the leaves and I know that my Beacon beeps it's way through the night. Bridging cities, countries, continets, languages, religions, political systems. There's nothing to it but a simple message "I'm here. Common but precious. Like we all".

Kind regards,
~Zazzle

[BoomboxDX]

I wouldn't knock the US domestic broadcasters too harshly for what programs they play (Brother Stair, etc.). They have to pay their bills somehow just like anyone else with that kind of facility. If you don't like their programs that's what the tuning dial on the radio is for.

Global 24 didn't last very long with their attempt at having music programming, even though their programming was pretty good. The money just wasn't there.

It's not like electricity is free.

RE: Pirate radio: it will always be there, just as ham radio will always be there. As long as there are people with HF receivers and transmitters, people will try to get on the air, just to see if they can get out and be heard.

[ChrisSmolinski]

I'm curious how large the general SWL audience is, here in the USA. Any estimates out there?

[BoomboxDX]

I'm curious how large the general SWL audience is, here in the USA. Any estimates out there?

Using Google, I couldn't find any U.S. figures, but according to this article printed by Radio Miami International, the international numbers are actually a bit staggering: at any moment, 200 million SW receivers worldwide are tuned to SW broadcasts.

The problem with the article isn't the source, or news sources -- it's not dated. Hard to tell how recent the article is. But it's post 2000, at the very least.

http://www.wrmi.net/pb/wp_4eba3427/wp_4eba3427.html