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The Edge On-Line
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A Labor of Love
 From the early times of Kraftwerk's calculator sounds and those crazy kids banging garbage can lids under the moniker of industrial, I've always liked music that's a bit different. But while I dig the style, I don't always like what they have to say.
So I started a show that played the style from a positive perspective, everything off mainstream, or in other words, on The Edge (yeah, there's a lot of radio shows called The Edge. If I say I did it for pirate marketing, it makes it clever). It was pretty niche, but it was my niche.
It started as a live-air gig on Melton 97.9FM community radio. I wanted to share the fun with my friends in the States, so I popped the fax line into the laptop, played with a few wires from the studio panel, and *presto*, I was simulcasting!
The "On-Line" part of the The Edge On-Line
This was around the time I started as a project manager at a web studio, so I figured I'd teach myself how to build a website to support the show. It was picking up, with a few dozen listeners tuning in and chatting each week, until a move back to the States pushed the pause button for awhile.
While in the States, I nurtured visions of going dedicated streaming. However, the world of web was still wary due to dot-com and RIAA was talking fines for licensed broadcast... before the licenses were available.
A move back to Australia, and I was back on air with a new website and new tunes.
After about another year of community radio, we made another move a few hours north. There weren't any stations close by I could just pick up and go with, so The Edge made the move to syndication. Each week I would pre-record the show, mix the music and production clips and FTP it out to stations.
The site was getting a few thousand visitors each day and had a few thousand subscribers to the newsletter. Each week I pumped out 2 - 3 reviews, updated 50 news items, managed 20 new gig entries, moderated the forum, processed a dozen requests, and tried to coordinate a live interview every other month or so in addition to putting together each week's show and digest 2 to 5 new CDs sent my way by eager young artists...
And it was taking about 40 hours per week to keep it all happening. So I made the hard choice and pulled the plug. I dream about starting things up again every other week or so... maybe someday.
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