Top o’ the morning and Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you! You’ll want to stay tuned to Cladrite Radio all day long, as we’ll be featuring classic recordings of Irish-themed songs, along with our usual toe-tapping tunes of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, well into the wee hours tonight.
It’s Halloween Eve and long-time Cladrite Radio listeners know what that means: 48 hours of toe-tapping, terrifying tunes of the 1920s, ’30s & ’40s. Enjoy it while you can, though; at midnight ET on Monday, the scary songs come to an end.
Don’t miss out on all the spooky fun—tune in now!
Recently we’ve had a couple of sizable expenses arise: We learned we owe an additional $500 in licensing for Cladrite Radio (the price of an ever-growing listenership), and it’s time to renew our internet hosting account (we generally sign up for three-year contracts, so as to avoid having to make posts like this very often, and that’s what we hope to do this time).
Some of you already support us via Patreon.com, and without your support, Cladrite Radio couldn’t continue to stream the toe-tapping tunes of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. We’re so grateful for your loyal support.
But we have literally thousands of listeners and followers (we’re about to reach the 20,000-follower mark on Facebook, for example) who haven’t yet supported us, and it’s to those folks we turn to ask for help.
We have a pair of “raffles” to entice you: Anyone who is a monthly sponsor of Cladrite Radio via either Patreon.com or BuyMeaCoffee.com as of August 1 will be entered in a drawing to receive Preston Sturges’ classic screwball comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) on DVD—this includes current sponsors and new ones.
For those who prefer to chip in on a one-time basis, anyone who has contributed at least $5 via BuyMeaCoffee or Paypal by August 15 will have their name entered in a drawing for the Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection, which includes restored editions of The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933) on Blu-Ray. You’ll be given another chance to win for every $5 you contribute.
The real reward, though, we hope you’ll agree, is that you’ll be helping to keep Cladrite Radio alive and streaming and contributing to the continuation of the vintage entertainment content that we share on our website and via social media. If you like the music we play on Cladrite Radio and enjoy the video tributes and other content we share here, please consider chipping in to keep it coming. Thank you.
The great Kirk Douglas died on February 5, 2020, at the age of 103. Here are 10 things you should know about the life and career of this Hollywood legend.
Sorry this post is a bit long, but we have a few tidbits of news for you; consider this our State of the Station address. Please read to the end, especially if you’re a Cladrite Radio listener:
The company we paid to handle our licensing went under (absconding with a month’s fee in the process) so we had to quickly make other arrangements. We’re now with a streaming provider called Live365, which is a good thing but it also presents some challenges.
Good things first:
Now, the bad news (it’s not so terrible)…
Live365 is a solid service, one we’re happy to be with, but they charge according to how many listener hours a station accumulates per month. This is a factor we’ve never really had to concern ourselves with before, and it’s a bit counter-intuitive: Of course we want as many listeners as possible, but we’ll be charged more if our numbers climb.
Since we have patrons who send us a bit of money every month via patreon.com, we think it’s important to have transparency about our finances. We don’t aim to make money with Cladrite Radio—we’re happy on those rare occasions when we break even. But we have two major areas of expense: Stream hosting and licensing (this keeps us legal in the eyes of ASCAP, BMI and the other licensing agencies) and web site hosting for our blog, which features lots of content related to the popular culture of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s (we share much of that content with you here on FB).
Our move to Live365 will cause our licensing fees to rise a bit, by about $50 a month or so (and possibly more if our listener hours exceed expectations, but that’s a concern for another day, another post). We could lower that increase a bit by including commercials in our programming—not the vintage radio ads we share with you for entertainment value, but two minutes of contemporary paid advertising that Live365 inserts twice an hour. We are trying to avoid this option, as we feel that modern advertising kind of spoils the vintage mood, the old-fashioned atmosphere we try to maintain on Cladrite Radio, but if that’s the only way to cover the bills, we’ll resort to letting Live365 insert the ads.
The one way we can avoid airing those ads is an increase in support at patreon.com. If you are currently one of our Patrons and you can afford to send us a bit more each month—every dollar counts—that would be greatly appreciated. And if you’re not yet a patron, but you’d be willing to support our efforts to keep the toe-tapping tunes of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s alive and streaming on Cladrite Radio, please visit patreon.com/cladriteradio and sign up. You can be a Cladrite Radio patron for as little as a dollar a month, and we have thank-you premiums at every level of support.
If you’re currently a patron and are willing to chip in a bit more, you don’t necessarily have to jump up to the next level (from $1 monthly to $5, for example); you can up your contribution to two, three or four dollars, if you wish.
We have every hope and intention of sticking around for many years to come, but this is one of those occasions that we must turn to you, our listeners, readers and followers, for help. If you can contribute even a dollar a month, it’ll be a huge help and make a big difference. Again, our patreon page can be found at patreon.com/cladriteradio.
If you enjoy our posts on Facebook and here on our blog, if you listen to Cladrite Radio even occasionally, please consider showing your support for our efforts at patreon.com/cladriteradio.
Thanks!