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Official StillStream Time
07:38 AM CST
On The Air
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Program:   StillStream All Ambient
Host:   Wally The Ambient Robot
Listeners:   42 people
Artist:   Spheric Lounge
Track:   Whalespotting
Album:   Session 30 01.10.2005
Released:   2005
Label:   Spheric Lounge
 
Recent Tracks
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07:28 AM - Andrew Lahiff - Approachi ...
07:21 AM - CHROMA and The 17 Sons of ...
07:12 AM - Numina - Memory of Leaves ...
06:19 AM - Austere - pulse
06:07 AM - Monochromatic Strata - Ic ...
 
Next Up
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Ligand - Always Come Back
Spheric Lounge - Plastic Bat
Spheric Lounge - On Your Skin
Sulatus - The Reflexion
Spheric Lounge - Jungle
 
Our Library
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321 labels
900 artists
1,463 releases
5,826 tracks
1,069 hours elapsed

Recently New
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3 labels
9 artists
30 releases
130 tracks
23 hours elapsed

About StillStream

Summary

StillStream is an ambient, non-commercial, zero-revenue independent net radio station based in the United States. Our mission is to make ambient artists successful. We play strictly by the rules when it comes to music licensing. There are numerous people to whom we are grateful for generous support. We have been broadcasting since 2005 and hope to keep broadcasting for many years to come.

Our Story

The original idea for StillStream came from Ian Clay of Parasme Records, who felt that the ambient genre needed more radio airplay options for artists. He also felt that the world needed a dedicated net radio station that would both promote the ambient genre as well as bring together ambient artists and fans into a single supportive community. Inspired by this idea, an indie musician and erstwhile web site developer named Darrell Burgan set about to create:

After several weeks of work, StillStream first began broadcasting on March 1, 2005 and has been on the air non-stop ever since. During this time, we grew from having just a couple of listeners on an occasional basis to being a full fledged radio station with many listeners from all over the globe tuned in at all hours of the day and night. Our library grew from having just a few dozen artists to being one of the largest repositories of quality independent ambient music on the net. We even got to the #1 spot on Google for the search phrase "ambient radio".

With no false modesty, we think it is now safe to say that StillStream is one of the finest ambient net radio stations around. Though we are by no means the only great ambient net radio station (see our links page for a few more), we are the only ambient net radio station that we know of that focuses on live music and live programs. We are very proud of StillStream and look forward to many years of continued service to the ambient community. We hope our listeners find StillStream to be as fulfilling as we do.

Our Mission

We measure StillStream's success as follows:

If we can answer yes to all of these questions, then we feel we are living up to our goals. If not, well then it means we need to continue to improve our service, something we are constantly striving to do.

It is important to note that our mission does NOT include making money, making a profit, or even covering our own costs. We are intentionally and unapologetically non-commercial because this gives us the freedom to work towards our goals without any external entanglements.

The Licensing Thing

When it comes to licensing music, it is our belief that net radio stations come in just two flavors: those that play by the rules, and those that do not (so-called "pirate stations"). StillStream plays strictly by the rules, and in fact goes to extreme lengths to ensure we are doing so. We strongly support the rights of ambient artists, including their right to choose how to market their music, and how much (if anything) to charge for their music.

But let's be clear: StillStream does not pay royalties of any kind for airplay. This is for two primary reasons. First, we couldn't afford it anyway since we have no revenue, particularly since the recording industry seems dead-set on pricing themselves completely out of the net radio market. But even more importantly, we do not participate in the Performance Rights Organization (PRO) system because we feel it is corrupt and has little to do with benefiting artists. Rather, we believe that PROs are structured to primarily benefit only a small number of very large corporations, and ordinary ambient artists are left almost completely out in the cold. For these reasons, and several other smaller ones, StillStream has limited itself to playing only music that can be streamed freely and without any license fees.

How can we do this legally? Simple. We just ask the artist's permission!

There is a lot of controversy in the media about whether radio airplay has any inherent promotional value. Our position is that for ambient music, radio airplay is of tremendous marketing value, perhaps even more so than for other genres. Certainly ambient artists at ALL levels seem to agree with us, as StillStream has had remarkable support from almost every single artist from whom we asked permission (and we asked some rather famous artists indeed). In short, promotional value is what StillStream is all about, and we think it is a win-win for artists, labels, fans, and even the recording industry at large.

After much research and a couple of different models for documenting permission (including a short experiment paying license fees via LoudCity), StillStream has settled upon a simple set of rules:

You might wonder why we explicitly disallow PRO members from receiving airplay. This is not just to try to motivate artists to abandon the PRO system (although we think that is an excellent idea for ambient artists). The true reason is that, without exception, PROs worldwide do not allow their artists to waive the PRO licensing fees, even when the artist really wants to! Worse still, in some countries the PRO license fee cannot be waived even if the artist is not a member of a PRO at all (fortunately StillStream is not based in such a country). This is a large part of the reason why we feel the PRO system is corrupt and skewed against the individual ambient artist.

Important People

Well, quite honestly, we really don't have a proper staff. However, there are a large number of folks who have donated their time and energy to help keep StillStream successful:

We want to give these folks the props they deserve. Thank you so much for supporting StillStream and for helping us to make the ambient world a better place. It quite literally could not be done without you.

We also would like to thank all the ambient artists for so generously supporting StillStream. We sincerely hope that our efforts to support your music have been more than worth it to you.

Finally we would like to thank our listeners. Without you, there would be no point ...