I normally just let the shady people go on being shady but I have come across some behavior going on in our industry that will affect both my business (the online radio industry) and could certainly take some of my colleagues for some cash by misrepresenting the truth. We passed some information along to one of the people associated with the company in question that this was going to be exposed if they did not quit these practices but apparently they didn’t care.
I am involved with RoundersRadio.com. Before we launched there was only one other site that was really doing what we do (poker talk radio) with any success. This company is HoldemRadio.com.
When we launched, Wade, the owner of HR publicly bad mouthed us and our company on his station. We felt there was no need for us to take any action and have remained silent in regards to HR for over a year.
Recently Hold’em Radio went through a tough spot and closed their site for about a month. Before this closure, during off peak hours they had between 2-14 listeners. Upon their return you would think it would take them a bit of time to build back up to their original listenership. Well, when we noticed they started right back up with 3 to 5 times as many listeners, we became curios as to how this was possible.
Since the site closed down they no longer have the services of their tech guy and have an issue with their stream just about every night where the audio gets scrambled beyond recognition. I don’t know what the real term is but we had this issue a bit in our early stages and we called it the “aliens” because it sounds like the movie scenes when aliens are speaking all garbled. This is not corrected for hours until someone came back to the studio.
We looked at their stats during this time when their radio feed is inaudible and there were anywhere from 20 to 35 listeners still tuned in. This is odd because the sound is unbearable and I know we lost every listener when this happened on our station. This did not make any sense at all. So are they number padding? One person can open multiple streams and it counts each one as a listener. It also counts each hour for the overall hour stats.
Online radio advertising is sold by impressions and a station’s overall success is counted by average listening time and total listening hours over the last 30 days. So if they are boosting the amount of streams by opening multiple ones, they would pad their impressions and listening hours. Now let’s look at the average listening time. Currently their average listening time is 8 hours, 46 minutes and 47 seconds. Really? The average listening time for terrestrial radio is 5 minutes, online radio is much higher than that but there is no way the average listener is on for that long unless they once again just open those streams and leave them running all day.
I have the proof below.
Click the following link to hear a sample of the garbled sound they were broadcasting and you can probably listen to live in the wee hours of the morning:
http://roundersradio.com/HoldemRadio2-11-2008-207am.mp3
Here is a screen shot of the stats page from that same time:
http://roundersradio.com/HoldemRadio2-11-2008-207am.jpg
Here is a screen shot of the backend page showing they supposedly had 97 listeners but only 37 were unique.
http://roundersradio.com/HR-2-14-08-Shoutcast.jpg
Another time with 54 listeners and 20 unique:
http://roundersradio.com/02-14-08353am.jpg
Here is a link to the stats page for them so you can see for yourself….at least until they read this and quit doing it.
http://70.87.85.162:8002/index.html
Once again I think we need to protect our industry from all the companies out there that are not doing things on the up and up. It is a shame that people feel they have to try and cheat people when the effort spent going around the system could be focused on the business and giving the quality product that will make you the money but also keep your integrity.
OK folks, I normally don’t respond to sour grapes but this is a bit to much….
I’ll go through this item by item and respond to this nonsense…
First thing, in regards to the accusation about me “badmouthing” rounders, I did that in response to the folks from rounders that spammed the hell out of one of our tournaments and in our chat room. After that, the spamming slowed down but did not stop. I had to take time out block folks from coming into the HoldemRadio chat room and spamming away… very childish behaviour in my opinion. That’s all I have to say about that.
In regards to how I am streaming and selling advertising, I could care less about impressions. That is not the model we use here. I will not go into specifics about how we sell as every time I come up with something new it suddenly appears somewhere else. I will say I have multiple streams running and will continue to do so. These multiple streams are for the benefit of our listeners and if folks can’t figure it out, so be it.
Before I started HoldemRadio I was a Network Administrator for a very large international company and my experience with the internet is extensive. I also worked at one of the most successful data centers in the country during the dot com boom and know stuff about the ‘net that most folks do not.
Go ahead and post all the stats pages you want from shoutcast… lol I don’t pay any attention to those either as for the most part they do not apply to HoldemRadio. I’m using special techniques to stream with that most folks do not know about. I learned a lot from my past experiences in the dot com industry…
I for one do not “cheat” people. HoldemRadio was the very first of it’s kind and there have definitely been some ups and downs. There will probably be more. If I was cheating people the folks I deal with on a daily basis would pitch me out in the street. The folks I’m talking about are casino owners, Professional poker players, etc. and I would not have been able to registered in the State of Nevada by the Nevada Gaming Commission to be a tournament Director. That requires a background check which I passed with flying colors.
That’s it from me…… I prefer to spend my time preparing new shows and goodies for our listeners, not dealing with folks that really don’t know what we are doing here and prefer to waste time with suppositions and make believe…
Sincerely,
Wade Andrews
HoldemRadio.com