From its tiny studio tucked away in a corner of Pearlstone Student Center, Goucher Radio is now audible on itunes, the music program ever-popular with college students.
Goucher is one of 12 colleges in the country to be accessible on the "college radio" portion of itunes. At press time, there were 13 streams on the program - the last is the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System which continually rotates between the programming of the other colleges.
Where Goucher's DJs once only reached a hundred listeners through QuickTime on its website, it now can reach anyone, anywhere. "Everyone seems to be really happy about it and it's crystal clear to listen to it," Peter Danilchuk, '10, the radio's director of programming, said. "Everybody has itunes now anyway. As long as you have itunes and internet, you can listen to Goucher radio. It's making it easier - we've gotten so many more listeners just from that."
In the first 10 hours it went live, the stream had several hundred listeners from around the world, ranging from Canada to Sweden to China. According to George Capalbo, vice president of Backbone Networks Communication - the company which provides the radio's software - the station will get 600-700 listeners a day where before it reached about one hundred.
"We're still doing the QuickTime stream but something that was kind of bad for us was that 70-80% of our listeners would be able to connect flawlessly but some people had issues with QuickTime and it was always a problem that we had," Simon said.
The new network will increase visibility for the station, the college and the individual shows, he said. It is also easy to use. DJs don't have to do anything differently - everything happens through the software.
"What's so special about it right now in particular is that there are only, I believe, 12 stations up under college radio, so basically if you go to the radio section, you'll see a college radio tab and you double click it and there Goucher radio is," Rich Simon, '08, said. Simon holds an overseeing role at the station though he was director of programming in years past.
Eventually, Capalbo sees the network expanding to include all of the IBS - a thousand colleges - but Goucher was one of the first five to go live.
"You guys really use the software to the fullest," Capalbo said. "You guys are really interested in radio down there. We thought we'd say thanks for being such good customers."
For six months, Backbone was talking to Apple to get the network up and running. A few weeks ago, it got the green light and Capalbo contacted Goucher radio about getting onboard.
"It's huge because you have millions of people using itunes whether it's on Mac or PC," Simon said. "Itunes, as far as I know, is expanding its radio station and through our good relationship with Backbone and IBS, they hooked us up."
According to Simon, all Capalbo asked for was two sentences about the station to get them on the stream.
"We're working to improve the radio experience for everybody," Capalbo said. "[Apple] likes the fact that more people will buy ipods if they support college radio…It's a win for everybody. It's a win for schools like Goucher."
The itunes stream is not the first time Goucher radio has been a testing ground for new technologies, according to Danilchuk.
It also has pioneered remote broadcasting. The radio station broadcasts basketball games from the Sports and Recreation Center and away games. One of the shows, Dead Air Radio, even broadcast from New York City when at the annual IBS conference earlier this semester.
The station was also one of the first to have a picture for the show currently broadcasting on the QuickTime stream. That feature will also soon be coming to the itunes website.
Nor will this be the last new feature to come to the radio station. Danilchuk is already planning a blog for the DJs to post and receive listener commentary on. If all goes as planned, it may be up and running as early as the end of this semester, though nothing has been officially announced.
Although the college radio stream has only been up for a short time, neither Simon nor Capalbo foresee any problems with the software.
"As George always says, itunes is just so damn steady - it's just really steady and there hasn't been, as far as I know, any issues with radio application for itunes," he said. "Essentially, it's just a little bit of code and it's connected right to our station so you just double click and there it is."
Capalbo said college radio is a good place to be, as that is where new talents and bands are discovered.
"College radio is where all the new stuff comes from," he said. "It makes it fun for us."
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