Sofaspace is a listener-supported, independent and free internet radio station. We're broadcasting out of Switzerland. Our program is fully licensed by IFPI and Suisa. The initial goal was to create the perfect Ambient radio for chilling after parties and at work. But since we startet in 2006 the station has grown bigger and bigger and is now transforming slowly into a promotion platform for the music we play. By now we're selling worldwide a variety of records which are really hard to get anywhere else.
I was never fully satisfied with the big radio stations. So I thought I'd create my own and spread this wonderful music through the net. Sofaspace is more a complementary institution than a competitor to other stations out there. We will never ride the mainstream line like others. Sofaspace is and will ever be a radio station for music lovers.
We use some unusual tools for playlist creation and maintenance. That makes it rather complicated and very time consuming to run the station but it's worth the effort. A big part is done manually. Every single track is selected by hand, edited where neccessary and then encoded to high quality ogg vorbis files. We do not just rip entire cds. Songs that don't suit the existing playlist will not be uploaded. Sure, there are some exceptions but only a few, the good ones. ;)
All tracks are classified by the overall impression they leave. If a track is slow or fast doesn't really count. It's more the feeling it gives, the story it tells. We assign colors to our tracks. The more aggressive it sounds, the darker the color it gets. The playlist is generated dynamically in realtime by grouping tracks together with similar colors. The crossfader does the rest to make it sound as smooth as possible.
I have no idea how much effort other people put in their playlists. For me it's the most important part of every radio station. The second most important thing is sound quality. We broadcast ogg vorbis streams because the sound quality is by far superior than with mp3. Everything sounds clear and crisp. Digital radio transmission is a wonderful media with huge possibilities. Why not use these possibilities? Quality is everything!
We'd like to thank all our users for the great support and wonderful feedback you're sending us every day. Keep chilling! :)
Robi Sofaspace
Software in use
- Winamp with
- Sqrsoft Advanced Crossfader Plugin - continuous track mixing
- Spacial Audio Solutions Plugins - statistics and reporting - Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) - routing of audio data between processing applications
- Shoutcast DNAS - mp3 streaming server
- IceCast DNAS - ogg vorbis streaming server
- Radio Toolbox - server monitoring
- Drupal - content management system
- Phpbb2 - message board
- osCommerce - shop software
- Apache, PHP, Mysql - site hosting and database
- and a series of AutoIt scripts for classification, rating, playlist composition and automation.
English
German
