History and Design

"In some ways, the station is a little ahead of its time."

Wild Bill Goldsmith

On August 2, 1995, KPIG became the first radio station in the world to stream its audio over the Internet. Since that groundbreaking moment it's been streaming continuously. www.kpig.com is the online presence for the Triple A FM radio station KPIG 107.5 in Freedom, California about 90 miles south of San Francisco. Although broadcasting at a meager 2,850 watts (a standard corporate-owned radio station in an urban market is between 50,000 and 100,000 watts), KPIG regularly gets high ratings (based on the Arbitron rating system) in the "Adult 25-54" market. Unlike 90% of the Triple A radio market, KPIG's DJs actually select the music. The station has a decidedly local feel to its programming, with an accent on local events and resources.

KPIG's Web site layout might be described as "rudimentary Americana." It reflects a straightforward design approach that is reminiscent of homespun simplicity with a minimum of glitz. The large site includes archives of live performances, listener feedback areas, Webcam feeds from various locations, and a one-week playlist archive of every song broadcast during that period.

In this extremely comprehensive playlist archive, entries are time-stamped and song titles are linked to a request button, a comment and rating form, or a link to CDNow (an online music retailer).

The site features a large archive containing numerous live streams from past programs of live performances. The individual performances are arranged in chronological order and available for anyone to access, in the same streaming formats as the regular stream programming. Permissions to make these in-studio performances available as archives are provided through the semi-official okay of the performer. Most of the featured musicians are not affiliated with large music business corporations, so including their streams into the archive is welcomed as free promotion. The station is quick to comply should any performer request the deletion of their archived performance from the server computer.

KPIG has a large database of pre-encoded music. Currently above 7,000 songs, new songs are added to the database all the time. DJs have access to the database through a computer in the broadcast booth and create almost all of their on-air programming from the playlist. Custom software enables DJs to create a song order during their shift. They can orchestrate cross fades and preview their edits before publishing them to the separate broadcast and streaming systems.

Online KPIG listeners using dial-up modems can access low bit rate streams in four flavors: a 16Kbps and a 32Kbps Windows Media stream, a 24Kbps MP3 stream that will play through any MP3 player, and the same 24Kbps MP3 stream delivered using a RealMedia metafile, requiring RealPlayer 7+. Broadband users (tuning in to the self-described "Super HiFi CyberPork" streams) can choose between a straight 128Kbps MP3 stream (for use with any MP3 player) and the same 128Kbps MP3 stream delivered using the RealMedia metafile, requiring the RealPlayer 7+. The site also has links to download MP3, RealMedia, and Windows Media players for Windows, Macintosh (old and new), and Linux/Unix (both GUI and Command Line) operating systems.

Listeners are encouraged to register to become part of the KPIG online community. Registrants can save bit rate and player settings, which then automatically launch when the Listen button on the main page is pressed. Registrants can also rate and post comments about songs, save other settings on the Web site, enter online contests, and sign up for the newsletter.

The Web site is the creation of independent consultant Bill Goldsmith (self-described "Chief Cyberswine"). As the primary architect, designer, and programmer for KPIG's online presence, Goldsmith is responsible for the layout, design, graphics, streams, automated systems, Webcams, encoders; pretty much everything. Goldsmith doesn't handle the encode/upload process and day-to-day management of the song database, but he does maintain the site systems and streams. Goldsmith claims to spend about "three to four hours" a month nudging the network and "four to five hours" a week maintaining and updating the Web site.

The KPIG stream typically has a peak concurrence load of 1,100 1,200 listeners. Monthly figures are more difficult to gauge, but it's estimated to be between 60,000 70,000 unique listeners.