Just wanted to share some of the goings on here at the station.

For the past few weeks we have had some intermittent internet issues. Nothing major but it has caused a few short lived issues with the audio feeds. At this point we’re still working with Charter and have been for about a month now and while things have gotten better nothing that I know of has actually been fixed so we’re still dealing with escalations and the issue is not considered fixed.

Secondly there are some new features nearly ready for the website that have been worked on in the background for a month or two now. These new features will require registration and will allow you to comment on the news articles posted here on a daily basis. We’re down to one issue and that is being able to keep spammers and idiots out while letting normal visitors in. It’s sadly something every website out there has to deal with so I’m trying to ensure that when these features go live we’re not going to be inundated with spammers and scammers.

In the area of music there have been about 2000 new tracks dropped into the playlist since November when the last list was published. As it grew so large during that time we haven’t posted a full list of these but most shouldn’t be any surprise as they were either new releases or just file replacements of tracks we already had. I will be doing a request playlist update in the next week to reflect all the new tracks and to do our monthly clean out of the request eta list which for some reason always gets clogged up.

Not much else to mention at this point so enjoy the music and we’ll see ya soon!

Wow. I took a peek in on the blog and realized it’s been some time since I posted a bit of a playlist update so here goes…

Ten – Stormwarning (Full CD)

Skillet – Awake (Deluxe retail – Full CD)

Skid Row – 40 Seasons – Best Of (Full CD)

Sick Puppies – Riptide (Single)

Rise Against – Help Is On The Way (Single)

Rev Theory – Justice (Single)

Pendulum – Witchcraft (Single)

The Guess Who – Very Best Of The Guess Who (Full CD)

Gary Moore – Corridors Of Power (Full CD)

Foo Fighters – White Limo (Single)

Flogging Molly – Don’t Shut Them Down (Single)

Evans Blue – Say It (Single)

Clutch – Slow Hole To China (Full CD)

Various Artists – Pink Floyd’s Greatest Hits Covered (Full CD)

David Lee Roth – Crazy From The Heat (Full CD)

Mr. Big – What If (Full CD)

ZZ TOP – Chrome, Smoke & BBQ Box Set

Y & T – Full Discography

Social Distortion – Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes (Full CD)

Slash & Myles Kennedy – iTunes Sessions (Full CD)

Sister Whiskey – Liquor & Poker (Full CD)

Saigon Kick – Saigon Kick (Full CD)

Red – Until We Have Faces (Full CD)

Pretty Reckless – Light Me Up (Full CD)

Motörhead – The World Is Yours (Full CD)

Metallica – Live At Grimey’s (Full CD)

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Box Set (Full CD)

Yes – Highlights (Select Tracks)

Stratovarius – Esylum (Full CD)

Jonathan Tyler & Northern Lights – Pardon Me (Full CD)

Firewind – Days Of Defiance

Kings Of Leon – Come Around Sundown (Full CD)

There was a bunch of other stuff updated that was already in the list and quite a few random things added too.

By the time you read this the new playlist file will have been uploaded to the server for immediate request. Here’s what’s new:

Wildside – Just Another Night (full cd)

Trapt – No Apologies (full cd – new release)

Methods Of Mayhem – A Public Disservice Announcement (full cd – new release)

Brian May – Back To The Light (full cd – listener request)

Alter Bridge – AB III (full cd – new release)

Warrant – Belly To Belly (full cd – listener request)

Sully Erna – Avalon (full cd – new release)

Gin Blossoms – No Chocolate Cake (full cd – new release)

Finger Eleven – Life Turns Electric (full cd – new release)

Megadeth – Sudden Death (new single)

Jimmy Eat World – Inverted (full cd – new release)

Mushroomhead – Beautiful Songs For Ugly Children (full CD – new release)

My Darkest Days – My Darkest Days (full cd – new release)

Foreigner – Head Games (full cd – remastered)

Foreigner – Foreigner (full cd – remastered)

Triumph – Greatest Hits (full cd – remastered)

Tesla – Alive In Europe (full cd – new release)

Silverchair – Frogstomp (fukk cd – remastered)

REO Speedwagon – You Get What You Play For (full cd – listener request)

Hoobastank – Is This The Day (full cd – new release)

Foreigner – Double Vision (full cd – remastered)

Black Country Communion – Black Country Communion (full cd – new release)

Duff McKagan – Believe In Me (full cd – listener request)

Diamond Head – Behold The Beginning (full cd – listener request)

Megadeth – Rust In Peace Live (full cd – new release)

Bachman-Turner Overdrive – Forged In Rock (full CD – new release)

Stone Sour – Audio Secrecy (full cd – new special edition)

The Offspring – Happy Hour (full cd – new release)

Gotthard – Entire Discography

Thin Lizzy – The Collection (full cd)

Johnny Winter – Let Me In (full cd – listener request)

Budgie – The Very Best Of (full cd – listener request)

Modern Day Zero – Coming Up For Air (full cd – remastered)

And more great new music and great classics to come!

Been a few days since an update and if you’ve paid any attention there were a few issues with the website this past week. Here’s the dish.

Late this past Sunday evening I received an alert the website was down. Checked it and yup – it was down. Contact the provider to see what the deal is and receive a message back:

Hello,

It appears that another service ( ns1.legendsofdoom.info ) is past due. The ports on both VPS’s were been turned offline until the overdue balance is marked paid

-Stephen M

That would be fine except this is a PREPAID service – you pay IN ADVANCE so there can’t be a PAST DUE balance.

Their response:

Hello,

Cancellation requests for a service must be made at least 5 days prior to their next invoice date. In order to turn your VPS back online we will need to have the balance paid. You can simply do this through the Client Portal.

-Stephen M

Well, I suppose I might have misread something. So I went back and checked myself.

http://www.rackbyte.com/tos.html

No mention of this policy anywhere. Not more days, not less days – just says it’s a prepaid service and you can cancel it when you want. Again, since it’s a prepaid service there cannot be a PAST DUE amount.

Transactions

And that’s the paid invoice for the service that was paid for showing I have NO BALANCE. Yet even this didn’t get through to the tool they had working for them so they lost a customer.

In the meantime I had to make a quick move of the site to a new provider and having not done research I temporarily moved it to one company and had much of it back up and running two hours after leaving the old one. But their service just can’t handle a site of this nature so I moved to a second host and not liking them hit a third – and like Goldilocks the third bowl was the one. Wrapped in bacon.

As of this posting the site, blog, request and now playing sections are all restored and fully operational. And everything seems ALOT faster. And all is again good in the world of rock.

And in closing FUCK YOU RACKBYTE.COM.

Yep, that’s right. Brand new music in from Disturbed, James LaBrie of Dream Theater, Trapt, Puddle Of Mudd, Goo Goo Dolls, Stone Sour, George Lynch, Michael Schenker, Accept, Kingdom Come, Drowning Pool, Filter and more. You just won’t find this much brand new pre-release music ANYWHERE else. That’s why we’re Megarock.

Here’s a full list of all this weeks addions:

RATT – Entire updated and higher quality discography

Scorpions – Entire updated and higher quality discography

Disturbed – Asylum (full CD)**

Stone Sour – Say You’ll Haunt Me (new single)**

Trapt – Sound Off (new single)**

Y & T – Facemelter (full CD)*

Black Label Society – Order Of The Black (full CD)**

Drowning Pool – Drowning Pool (full CD)**

Filter – The Trouble With Angels (full CD)*

Foghat – Last Train Home (full CD)*

Love/Hate – Entire Discography

Puddle Of Mudd – Shook Up The World (new single)**

Kingdom Come – Hands Of Time (full CD)*

The Who – Entire updated HQ discography

The Scorpions – Entire updated HQ discography

White Wizzard – Over The Top (full CD)

George Lynch – Orchestral Mayhem (full CD)*

James LaBrie – I Need You/One More Time (new singles)*

Poison – Entire updated and HQ discography

Alice Cooper – Alice Does Alice (full CD)*

Bret Michaels – Custom Built (full CD)*

Gotthard – Entire updated and HQ discography

Don Dokken – Solitary (full CD)

Johnny Winter – Let Me In (full CD)

Budgie – The Best Of (full CD)

Modern Day Zero – Entire updated and HQ discography

Good Charlotte – Like It’s Her Birthday (new single)**

* indicates a new release

** indicates a new release either world premiered or exclusive to Megarock Radio.

See, I told ya there would be a flood of new music. I’ll update with the next batch and expect these to all be in the updated request playlist within the next few days.

Rock on.

It’s almost the weekend so here’s the week ending update:

New drive is in. 300 Gb of additional space now available to start adding music. But this is a process and it’s not a super fast one so read on.

1. Finding the music to add. There are a lot of bands that I would have had in the playlist but with limited space you go for the big guns since that’s what the majority want to listen to. Now with more space I can easily double the amount of music available to request. But I have to find it and download it to the studio first.

2. Encoding the music. It’s a must otherwise you’d never hear it. All the files are re-encoded to match the station files for audio level and quality.

3. Tag em! Each and every file has to be properly tagged for the station automation software and also so you can find it in the playlist.

4. Upload em! These files go from the studio to the station server and it’s being shot from my house by radio to the main station server which is about six miles away. It’s not fast but it does work and I generally do uploads overnight.

5. Add them to the playlist. As I’ve learned this is also something best done late in the evening since it has a habit of clogging the computer up bad for several minutes. At this point the song may play on the station but cannot be requested yet.

6. Upload playlist database back to website server which then enables you to request it.

So this will be a process that will take place over weeks of time but about once a week expect a nice new chunk of music to be available in the playlist.

Although not yet available here’s what’s being uploaded right now:

RATT – Entire studio discography to replace current files – many remastered

Love/Hate – Listeners ask and listeners may receive – whole discography

Godsmack – What If (they’re calling it a new song, I thought it’s been out..)

Union – Union (full CD)

Soundgarden – Black Rain (brand new song!)

Foghat – Last Train Home (it’s no Lonesome Dave but it’s still good – full CD)

Filter – The Trouble With Angels

Drowning Pool – Drowning Pool (new CD)

Enjoy your weekend!

The new 320 gb drive is in place and being formatted as I type this. Once it’s done new music will be added in nightly chunks so if you have some suggestions of music we should add comment here in the blogs or sumbit a ticket through the help desk.

I plan on adding a really wide variety of stuff including some long missing classic rock and a lot of new stuff that although good just wasn’t good enough to make the cut with limited space before.

In addition today the FM antenna serving our local listeners made it on to a nice 700 foot tower so even with minimal output power (8 watts is the legal unlicensed limit) we have some major coverage because of the elevation of the tower site as well as the tower itself. The feed is straight from our web feed so it’s hand in hand with what the rest of the world hears.

In addition three new supernodes – other small FM transmitters serving smaller areas going online in September. We don’t need no stinking FCC.

Let there be rock.

Doesn’t get much cooler than this. Pulled right from the log files today: Total stream launches: 10014717.

Yes, that’s TEN MILLION and some odd change. Considering Megarock Radio disappeared from the face of the planet for two solid years, losing our domain to expiration (it’s still being held by someone hoping to profit from it) and having to completely relaunch everything from scratch we’ve done quite well.

And since our birth in 1998 this station has changed little. The website has become better and there’s a lot more music to choose from now but the entire purpose remains the same – to offer a station that can appeal to every rock music fan out there.

We cover every genre of rock out there – something most other stations don’t do. We play classic rock, hard rock, metal, thrash, death, punk, modern, melodic, psychadelic and even alternative and southern rock. Everything.

We also don’t force you to register. You still pay nothing, ever. We allow requests and bring you the latest rock news 24/7. And we still hate the suits.

You see – with most radio stations the advertisers control the operation. The advertiser is the money and for the owners to get the money they have to attract the demographic the advertiser wants. They must play the music that attracts that demographic and program their station to please that group.

What if you’re not in that group? You get ignored.

So say adios to normal radio and grab a big slice of Megarock Radio! Ten million others already have and that many people can’t be wrong.

P.S. Online request playlist updated today. Lots of new stuff – check it out!

We have had three noticeable stream outages since Midnight – one at 1 a.m, one at 3 am and one at close to 11 am this morning. As the connection logs show a modem reboot request it is my thought that Charter was performing some type of firmware or other network upgrade since the modem can only be rebooted locally or by them – and considering the server that runs the main streams has no keyboard, mouse or monitor hooked to it I KNOW that no one here rebooted the modem.

As always I have submitted a request to Charter to see what the issue is as that connection has been rock solid stable for nearly three months. I’ll post more info as I have it.

In regards to the playlist expansion the new drive arrived today so I hope to have it installed to the server in the next few days and will begin adding alot more music. Being uploaded right now are the new Black Label Society album, a great two CD set from Tesla with them performing covers as well as new music from Evanescense and a classic r0cker from Great White.  Once these are available I’ll be updating the online playlist database with all this new music.

Added to the playlist today:

Iron Maiden – The Final Frontier (2010) (full CD)

Y & T – Facemelter (2010) (full CD)

Stone Sour – Say You’ll Haunt Me (new single)

Trapt – Sound Off (new single)

Papa Roach – Time For Annihilation (only new tracks from CD)

The additions will be a bit slow for the next few days until the new hard drive makes it in. Once that happens I hope to make daily additions of some sort to the playlist. If there is something you’d like to see added comment here in the blog or submit a ticket at:

http://www.megarockradio.net/support