Today, we've had some intermittent internet routing issues between our sending data center and the Virginia data center that hosts the 64k and 32k streams, causing dead air on those streams at times. If you experience this in one of our apps or in the multi-stream flash player on the website, switch to our 56k, 48k, or 24k AAC+ streams, as those are hosted in different locations than the affected streams.
For the second time, The Blast, aka "Blastrock from TheBlast.FM" is a semi-finalist for the award of Best Single Stream Webcaster in the RAIN (Radio And Internet Newsletter) Awards, which will be held September 17th in Orlando, Florida. In the bigger station and network categories, heavyweights such as ESPN Radio, Tune In Radio, and iHeart Radio are nominated. For more on the story, see RAIN's website: http://www.kurthanson.com/news/here-are-rain-awards-single-stream-webcaster-semifinalists
Find out what Disciple's Kevin Young thinks about the effects of illegal downloading. Here him talk about the next record and its progress. Disciple's front man and The Blast founder and afternoon on air personality Colin Cruz sat down over the weekend at The Blast booth at Lifelight Festival and caught up. Listen in Monday at 2 pm Eastern Time/ 11 am Pacific Time.
The new multi-stream flash/HTML5 player is having issues and is not currently working in some browsers. The most popular stream that normally works in that player is the CD quality 64k AAC+ stream. We have re-loaded the legacy 64k AAC+ flash player on to the website in case the multi-stream flash/HTML5 player does not work in your browser.
We have added our transparent CD quality 192 kbps mp3 stream to our Android app. That moves in to the app without you taking an app update. Just close and re-open your app. Clear the cache, clear data and force stop, if necessary, to see it.
In other Android app news…
The problem of invisible…to barely visible…metadata in our new Android app…a problem seen in at least the Samsung Galaxy S-4…has been fixed. If your Android phone is not on auto-update for apps, please take today's update. If you notice any other bugs or quirks, fill out a Blastback form: http://www.theblast.fm/wp/blastbacks/
Only the Sturgis Rally and Races draw more visitors to South Dakota every year. Expecting to top 100,000 people once again at this free fest, The Lifelight Festival is held every Labor Day weekend in southeastern South Dakota, just east of Worthing, a small town not too far from Sioux Falls. It draws people from as far away as central Canada and both U.S. coasts.
For those waxing nostalgic for the late, great Cornerstone Festival, this, too, is held on a large, dusty (but constantly watered down) farm with plenty of corn in sight. Blast bands this year include: Disciple, For Today, Thousand Foot Krutch, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Flyleaf, Phinehas, From The Eyes Of Servants, Southbound Fearing, Plumb, Silverline, Seventh Day Slumber, Ashes Remain, Fireflight, Random Hero, and Behold! The City.
Once again, The Blast will have a booth at the festival nearest our world headquarters, the Lifelight Music Festival near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Labor Day weekend. We are looking for cool, hip, young Blasters to help give out Blast Cards and Blast stickers at the booth, get crazy on The Blast megaphone, and help with the games and any dance parties we decide to throw. You may even get to meet some band members as we plan to do a bunch of band interviews over that weekend. If you'd like to volunteer, fill out a Blastback form here: http://www.theblast.fm/wp/blastbacks/
After doing an overhaul of our website, the regular donation links are having some coding issues that our web team needs to solve. In the meantime, we have a temporary Donation button now on our website that will work. It is on the right side, just under The Blast Map.
Got A Request? Use the Request Portal in the Multi-Stream Flash Player on our website.
Let's face it, the Android operating system is extremely fractured. App A may work better on one phone type; while App B may work better on another. Some app developers have "this" figured out but not "that", and for other app developers, it's the other way around. And on what is generally regarded as the latest and greatest Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S-4, the metadata on our new app is showing up as very dim and hard to read. That is being looked at by the app developer. Well, we have a solution for our Android users who have any trouble with our new Android app. You can now download our original Android app and have both our new app and the old one in your Android device! This gives you even more stream choices, too. Here is how to get it. Go here and download it. You will probably need to temporarily tell your Android device to accept apps from non-market sources long enough for this app to load.
Get the old Blast Android App, just click here! You may need to change the settings on your device to allow it to download and install from other sources first. After you have loaded the app, change the settings back the way they were before.
Or here: http://www.theblast.fm/wp/downloads/
