As many of you will know, I set up a 24 hour radio station featuring over 5 hours of tracks from all albums.
I actually decided to take the station down after finding out that the company that was providing it was using Bots to use up bandwidth.
The way that the station worked was that tracks were on a server and were played on rotation 24 hours a day. When listeners visited the station the tracks would be served to them and I would be charged for the bandwidth used. It was a great feature to be able to offer and one that many people got enjoyment from.
What are Bots?
Simply put, bots are programs that in this instance were specifically used by the service to use up bandwidth while appearing at first glance to be listeners. When I first set the station up there was almost no sign of any of this type of activity and the whole thing was very cost effective, but as time went on I began to notice anomalies in the stats and realised what was going on. Although having a substantial listenership around the world, and contacting the company in a failed attempt to address the issue. I decided to pull out of the service as while I love for people to have access to my music, I'm not in the business of merely feeding the machines and found the practice unethical.
I hope to find a solution to be able to provide a station again soon as I thought it was a great way to share my music but in the meantime if you'd like to listen, you're welcome to use the web player at the bottom of the page on this site.