We’re quickly coming up on Bob’s 75th, and DylanRadio’s 10th birthdays, so come gather ’round, kids, and Grandpa Walrus will tell you the story of DylanRadio:
DylanRadio started completely by accident. I didn’t mean to create an internet radio station when all this began. You see, I was in my second year at seminary when a friend encouraged me to listen to Mozart while I studied because it supposedly helped with memory retention. So I tried it, without success, but decided listening to Dylan might make me mellow enough to study better. My Dylan library was so large, though, I came up with, what I thought was, an ingenious solution. Since I had a server in Missouri, I would just open Winamp at home and stream music to my server, then tune in while I was at school. It was perfect! It had the desired effect on my studying as well!
Alas, since I wasn’t overly familiar with the Shoutcast server software, I neglected to turn off the “public listing” option. Unbeknownst to me, the station was being listed on Shoutcast’s website under our original name “Tangled Up In Bob.” One random Friday evening, I rebooted my desktop computer at home which stopped the stream. The next morning, I got an email from someone asking “What happened to the music?!” and that’s how I discovered people had been tuning in to, what I thought was, a private broadcast.
Not wanting to deprive anyone of Bob, I quickly turned the stream back on, and noticed that there was a small handful of listeners. My brain-gears began to turn, and I searched around for Dylan internet radio stations only to discover none existed. Outrageous! There were several stations dedicated to various artists, but none for the greatest living songwriter today?! That will not do! So I kept the stream running and slapped up a quick little website just so I’d be easier to find and folks could contact me.
And we expanded from there! As more listeners have tuned in, we’ve been constantly upgrading. Eventually I invested in some proper broadcasting software, subscribed to a broadcast server, and registered a proper domain, DylanRadio.com, to host it on. The site still looks a little awkward because it’s basically a Frankenstein website that I’ve been adding bits and pieces to for 10 years now. And here we are today!
But the ONLY reason we’ve been able to keep this site online and broadcasting is because of YOU! I just press buttons and write code… YOU FOLKS are the ones driving this crazy train, and I can’t thank you enough for the ride!
Now, quick… go to bed before grandma finds out I’ve kept you up late for story-time.