KVXN Back On The Air

 

After being offline for months, yesterday on Monday Nydia Tungsten announced that her SL station, KVXN, was back and operational.

 

KVXN is back in SL where I started all those years ago, feel free to tune in to the Randomness that is "The Vixen of Vixen Radio" http://acastream.us:7223 No DJ's, No Commercials, No Drama, just what I am listening to. Feel free to tune in and sing along with me to our old favorites! 

KVXN Radio began in 2011, a 24 hour SL stream for the Happy Vixen and other clubs under White Vixen Enterprises to play between parties.

Farshore Radio Now Has A Country Music Station

Cynthia Farshore is known for her Farshore Radio station (24/7 Internet music stream), which delivers a great mix of classic rock hits and more recent tunes. But this is not all she has to offer. Late on Sunday night, she announced the opening of a new station: Farshore Country.

Farshore Radio Has a New Stream

The Goat you got is happy to announce that Farshore Radio-The Goat has added a new stream! Farshore Country - http://69.175.94.98:8074/stream  with your favorite country stars from Hank Williams to Garth Brooks.
 The Goat, Farshore Country where you feel right at home.

Farshore Radio's main station is continuing to play it's classic rock at http://198.178.121.76:8420/stream . Cynthia also has a Steampunk-themed music station at  http://67.212.165.106:8074/stream

Leading Youtube to Music File Conversion Website Shut Down By Music Industry

In a development that's clearly of interest to music lovers, youtube-mp3.org, once the top website for converting Youtube videos into MP3 files, was shut down earlier this month following an out of court settlement between the site's owner and the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA. The website www.youtube-mp3.org had been one of the most visited websites on the Internet according to an article in Torrent Freak magazine. But checking the location only shows a dead link, the site having been taken down.

About a year ago, Philip Matesanz of Germany and PMD Technologies UG, the owners of the website had been sued by a number of record companies, charging that the "Defendants are depriving Plaintiffs and their recording artists of the fruits of their labor," while raking in money from advertising. In the agreement between Matesanz and the companies, the domain had been handed over to RIAA and it's owner making a payment of an undisclosed cash settlement,  the recording labels agreed to halt further prosecution, and the defendant accepts the blame of the charges against him.

While this is the end of www.youtube-mp3.org, these music companies feel the problem of "stream ripping" shouldn't have gotten so far to begin with, complaining that Youtube needs to take more responsibility in trying to stop them.  As it turns out, Youtube did threaten legal action against the website, as well as the video downloader TubeNinja.

For those whom had been depending on youtube-mp3.org for their music, such as possibly some Second Life DJs, they will now have to find another way to get new music.

Sources: The Next Web, Torrent Freak

Bixyl Shuftan

KONA Radio is Back

Good news for fans of GoSpeed Racer and KONA radio. The "cleverly named" DJ recently informed the Newser that her radio stream is back in business. "We are now affiliated with SONIXCAST.com out of Canada," she told us, "They pay royalties to SOCAN which is the entity that collects and distributes royalties in Canada. The station is now free of many restrictions including not having to run ad breaks. Also, more good news. We are now listed in iTunes under the '70s Retro category."

For GoSpeed Racer, this is the best news in months. In January, facing skyrocketing "insane" royalty fees, she made a deal with Radionomy to keep broadcasting, But as she stated in the KONA blog, it "hasn’t been a fun ride to say the least" with server outages and poor communications. Finally a lawsuit by Sony resulted in Radionomy blocking it's stream to a number of countries where KONA had listeners. So GoSpeed reluctantly made the decision to close KONA as a station. But it was just days later she made a deal with Sonixcast, "They are a Canadian based company that provides streams and royalty coverage. It’s not a free service but the monthly cost are very reasonable compared to the other alternatives. We are looking forward to spending many productive years with them and keep sharing the music!"

For more information, or to just hear the tunes, check http://www.konastream.com/.

Bixyl Shuftan

Responding to Readers: Why Is Second Life Banned on Twitch

One of our readers, followed by a few others, posed a question on Facebook recently: "Why is Second Life Banned From Twitch?" For those who don't know, Twitch is a streaming service aimed at gamers. But not everything can be streamed on there, as one New World Notes reader commented in a letter she shared in which Twitch temporarily banned her for streaming Second Life. Taking a look at the Kotaku article cited by our reader, and the list given by Twitch itself, Second Life finds itself among some rather odd company with games such as "Battle Raper" and "The Guy Game," which involve lots of sex, violence, or both.

So why is Second Life on this list? Sadly, it has to do with the griefers and trolls.

Most every experienced Second Life user is familiar with griefers harassing people and trying to shock people with adult content, such as the obscene particle attacks that yours truly has witnessed at a few sandboxes. Unfortunately, not content just to troll people, sometimes the griefers post their dirty deeds on youtube. Plus there have been a few instances of live recording being interrupted by such griefings, the most known example being the "flying penis barrage" that happened when CNET tried to interview Anshe Chung, the noted Second Life Land baroness. So despite everything else that had, and has, been going on here from charities, to Dungeons and Dragons style roleplaying, to education classes, what Second Life is best known for to many who have yet to set foot inside and know about the virtual world only through what they've heard now and then through social media is that people use the place for "strange and weird porn."

Twitch would not respond when New World Notes tried to contact them, though Hamlet Au commented that they had a former employee of Linden Lab among their staff shot down arguments that Twitch was operating solely through bias, saying despite places being designated as G-rated, violent and pornographic content can potentially appear anytime and anywhere, "no matter what the region rating." But critics of the ban who are familiar with MMO survival gaming can always point to Rust, in which players start out nude, male characters with their genitalia exposed, and the game is not banned from Twitch.

Fortunately there are other options for streaming. Ciaran Laval pointed out one named "Hitbox," which did respond to questions about allowing content from Second Life, "We are more than happy to allow broadcasters to stream Second Life on hitbox granted they are responsible about the content being presented to the viewers. We don’t tolerate our broadcasters to present mature, sexual content that isn’t the intention of the game. ... we are okay with broadcasters streaming Second Life as long as it’s done responsibly."

But for the use of the more popular Twitch, the issue seems not up for discussion, which is a shame. Just as there's more to Amsterdam than it's red light district, there's a lot more to Second Life than just the shenanigans of a handful of trolls and griefers.

Sources: Twitch, Kotaku, New World Notes, Warcry, Ciaran Laval,  

Bixyl Shuftan

GoSpeed Racer's KONA To Halt Public Broadcasting

Yesterday, the staff of the KONA radio station in Second Life and Internet radio stream announced they would no longer be continuing as they were, bringing their broadcasting to a close.

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With a sad heart we must inform you that KONA Stream will cease broadcasting publicly. Due to the unfair royalty rates imposed by the CRB we've had to leave StreamLicensing.com and shift to Radionomy. Now a lawsuit by Sony has forced Radionomy to restrict their exposure leading them to geo-block wide portions of the globe. Countries like Canada, Ukraine, Brazil, Japan and many others cannot tune in my station. The station listener level has dropped some 60% since the start of the month. I simply do not see the point of continuing operation in this environment. Once certain parties are notified I will stop the stream and delete it from Radionomy.

  Is this the end of KONA Stream? Hopefully not. While it looks bleak now there may be hope. There is some effort to get the voice of the small webcaster heard by the Copyright Review Board. A few US Senators have heard of the plight and there may be legislation forthcoming. Cross your fingers. In the meantime we will investigate other ways to share our music. There are other music services that we could operate through but we want to be sure that the station's character is not fundamentally changed by massive omissions to the playlist or burdensome ad breaks. If you want to keep informed of our status then you can continue following us here on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/KONAStream/), Twitter (https://twitter.com/KONA_Stream), or contact our virtual secretary, abba@konastream.com so we can update you directly by email.

  So why is it a big deal if small webcasters are shut down? It boils down to diversity, exposure and preservation of music. Small webcasters play a wide variety of music not commonly heard in larger media outlets. We are also a great venue for emerging artists to get heard. A lot of commercial stations simply will not play an unknown artist. Finally there is a huge back catalog of music that no longer gets played on mainstream stations. KONA Stream has a Classic Hits format (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_hits) and we play a very wide a deep selection of music from those decades. The larger and more popular stations using that format have only a few thousand tracks in their playlist. We had over 15,000 tracks (Plus over a 1,000 Christmas tunes) that a true music lover would envy. All that will be lost to the general public.

  For our Second Life fans do not despair. We will still be active as DJs and be available to DJ your community events and private parties. Just let us know what your needs are and we'll fill them to the best of our ability.

Sincerely,
 The KONA Stream team

* * * * *

In January, Second Life Newser talked to GoSpeed concerning the huge increase in fees for broadcasting radio streams due to regulations, which did not distinguish large and small broadcasters, KONA now having to pay more than double what it had before. While KONA cut a deal with Radionomy, which covered their fees, they had to raise their listenership by about 50% if they wanted to remain covered. KONA was just one of a number of Second Life radio stations which had to adapt to the skyrocketing fees.

Contacting GoSpeed, she explained she would be continuing as a DJ, and her performance at Bay City on May 15, four days from now, would continue as scheduled.

KVXN Vixen Radio

DJ and club owner Nydia Tungsten now has a new title, radio station owner. She calls it KVXN Vixen Radio, and it can be heard at her clubs or on the Internet.

Nydia told Second Life Newser she had first got the idea when, “I had finished a marathon set of 8 hours and told Rita (Rita Mariner the Sunweaver Estate owner) would just let the stream go, and she told me ‘go ahead, hardly any of the radio tabs work anyways.’ And I started thinking since I stream to my parcels almost 24/7 anyways, might as well call it a radio station.”

“I had forgot about it until a few days ago when I was with some friends and it came up (in conversation), and we began throwing out funny slogans, like ‘KVXN Vixen radio...Rita's other white meat.’ Daan (Daaneth Kivioq, a leader of the “Passionate Redheads” RFL team) was throughing them out so you KNOW some were off the wall, ‘KVXN Vixen radio...we may not be better than sex......but it's hella foreplay.’ “

“Soo the other day, I decided to go ahead and do it. If it does well, I will get a larger stream. ... I have a few people listening right now. I have a little bit of everything.” She told me her listeners were all at the Cutlass club for the moment, who wanted 80’s music, so the majority of her tunes at the moment were from the 80’s. Besides Nydia’s venues, residents of the Sunweaver Estates, have started tuning their private homes to her stream. Nydia says she may also put up a few ads in the near future, though they'll need to be catchy and entertaining themselves to hold the audience.

For those who want to hear Vixen Radio outside Nydia’s places, there is a KVXN group one can join for the stream URL, or just bookmark it here: http://www.st-media.ca:8110/

It should be noted Nydia is sometimes known as DJ “Naughty” Nydia as some of her music can be a bit riskee at certain times, “KVXN Vixen Radio where the random tunes are ..... random.”

“KVXN Vixen Radio, it isn’t just for foxy people any more.”

Bixyl Shuftan

*Edit* Stream location on Internet later moved and article edited to show.