Let’s see what we’ve done so far after turning the page on our new chapter. I wanted to review with you the changes we’ve made. As mentioned, the changes weren’t anything major, but subtle adjustments that should all culminate in our goal of a very engaging and easy to listen to source for Country Music.
What You Hear
We have discontinued the 90’s shows on the weekdays, The 90’s @ Noon and The 90’s Drive @ 5. We discontinued the Zero-Talk Four-Play that had us playing four songs without any interruption at the top of the hour. We stopped overlapping station IDs and other elements on top of the song intros. Our purpose of making these adjustments are under the main goal of making our station easy to listen to. So each time you tune in to us, you get the same station. Not talking over the music is key to our focus on story. The story of the song. Just like you’d not be able to enjoy a book if you lost the first couple chapters, a lot of the song’s story is presented and set up in the song’s intro.
We’ve also made some slight adjustments to our music rotations again, to smooth out the listening experience.
The Story
America’s Country will be a library of stories. The stories of the artists and their songs. The stories of you, our amazing friends and listeners. And our own story that brings this all together.
We’d like your stories to be on the air. If you’re feeling brave, you can call our Listener line at 801-788-4916 and leave your brief story with us. These recordings will be, at your permission, played on the air. We’d ask you to leave your first name, the town you’re from, and just a quick bit about who you are and your story.
If you can’t reach this number for some reason, you can record it yourself and email it to us at studio@americascountry.us. Contact us directly if you have questions.
I’m excited to see where we go with this new chapter. So far, things feel better. Our overall numbers have increased. If you’d like to share our story, please send this short URL to whomever you’d like: https://bit.ly/listen2us
America’s Country has been an amazing adventure for me for these past eight years. However, my history with Country Music spans at least 30 years. I started listening to Country music in the early 90’s and immediately fell in love with the feel, textures, attitudes, but mostly, with the story telling.
No matter what the current trends in Country Music are, there is always an underlying story being told. Even with “bro country”, the lyrics and music might have been a bit of a departure, but there’s still a story being told. I would be ignorant to say other types of music don’t tell stories. They all do. But what always keeps me coming back and keeps me “in the saddle” is that Country Music is completely driven by stories.
Early this year, we’ll be making some minor adjustments to how we present the music. We’re not changing the music. We’re not moving away or towards any kind of Country. We’re just changing how it’s presented. Because everyone likes a bit of mystery and intrigue, I’ll not post all the spoiler info here.
Keep an eye on our Social Media and keep an ear to your music player. You’ll soon start hearing our change in narrative.
As always, thank you for listening and I will be really hoping and praying for your continued feedback as we make some of these changes. I want to know if it’s garbage. I want to know if you love it. Post here or on any of our Social Media with your comments.
Hey friends! I’ve been considering adding a new category of music to our playlist. We’ve been playing the Texas Country Music Countdown every weekend for many years and it’s gotten some really good feedback. Due to the growth of this sub-genre of music, there’s been a bit of excitement about it in the industry. It comes across as very honest, raw, and genuine. There’s now several high-profile music monitoring and charting companies that are tracking airplay and downloads.
I’m currently working out the details and connecting with labels and artists to get ahold of some of this great music. Once I gather a good library and come up with a good way to present it, I’ll be adding it to our regular music rotations.
Based on some feedback, recently, there’s a general distaste for some of the modern, poppy country music. I strive to make America’s Country as appealing and enjoyable for all of you. Everyone’s a bit different and has a different background and come from different places in the world. I can’t ignore what’s making it big and what a lot of people want to hear. But I also like the idea of some good variety. We’re not a big, corporate owned station. I have some freedom to have some control over what goes on the air. That’s a lot of the reason I play a lot of 90’s Country. I REALLY like it! I think a lot of you like it as well.
Keep an eye here and on Social Media for more information. I hope to get this setup and organized quickly. Thank you for listening and making America’s Country part of your lives.
Yep! We’re moving… Kinda. We are moving to a new stream host server. Hopefully, this will not cause any interruptions to our streams. Because this is technology, it may and we appreciate your understanding.
Why? We are moving to a new system that will provide a better overall experience. The servers are in a world-class data center with redundancy and fail-over capabilities so we can keep streaming with very little to no interruptions. This is also under a new non-profit organization. This saves us loads of money as the billing structure is quite different for non-profits versus standard music streaming on the internet.
As silly as it sounds, our commercials should also be better. We still need to pay so there will still be advertising on the station and on our website. Please visit our sponsors and click on the banners to support our operations and keep us on the air.
Our stream launch page will be going away, for now. We’re trying to figure out a way to bring it back and we’ll let you know when that happens. Meanwhile, we’ll update our links as soon as possible and you shouldn’t notice anything. You’ll not have to change your links or favorites. One casualty of this move is we’re losing our station listing on Apple’s iTunes Internet Radio. Apple is slowly discontinuing that service and as part of that process, they are not allowing new listings or changes to existing listings. You can still listen to us through iTunes, by pasting our URL in File > Open Stream.
We will continue to have our station listed in as many listing services as possible. Mainly, TuneIn.com will be available and is the most popular site for streaming radio. We’re also listed at nRadio, Streema.com, and many others. If you know of some more listing sites, please let me know.
This transition should take only a couple of weeks and again, you all shouldn’t notice any of these changes. Please move from iTunes to TuneIn or some other listening page. As we notice things that may disrupt service, we’ll try to keep you informed.
As always, thank you so much for listening and being part of our family!
Hi friends! Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve made a new post here. Most of my attention is on our Social Media. Please be sure you hook up with our accounts at Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. As far as things that are happening, well… we’re just trucking on! Nothing major to announce. We’re just playing your favorite tunes and hopefully entertaining you.
We are loving the John & Heidi Show weekdays from 6-10am (Mountain). We also love our Texas Country Countdown on Saturdays at Noon. And, finally, we absolutely are thrilled to present Dana Williams (yeah, that guy from Diamond Rio) and his show Radio Rehab, Sundays at Noon. Please be sure to listen and let them know you’re hearing them on America’s Country.
We are constantly tweaking with our sound processing. You might have heard some improvements or changes over the past few months. Sometimes, that improvement requires brief stream interruptions. I try to do that later at night to minimize the impact. I appreciate you always coming back!
Please let me know how we can be better. Let me know better songs, better rotations of different kinds of songs from different eras. Let me know about new shows I could consider to add. Let me know about great artists you’ve heard. We want to be your favorite place for great Country Music! Help us be that place!
From our family to yours, we, at America’s Country, wish you all a very merry Christmas. I love this time of year. There are so many opportunities to give and to be generous to our neighbors, family and friends. Here, in Utah, it snowed overnight. This is the first significant snow in the area and it always inspires such wonderful feelings. Add that and our mix of great Country music and classic Christmas tunes and you get an amazing experience.
I have not yet begun to start planning for our 2018. I’ve been very grateful for what we’ve accomplished in 2017. Just recently, we added our new show, Radio Rehab with Dana Williams of Diamond Rio fame. That has been a perfect addition to our existing catalog of entertaining shows including our daily morning show with John & Heidi, and our good buddy Kenny Schneebeli’s Texas Country Music Countdown.
Your response to these shows has been great! I hope you’ll keep listening to these outstanding productions. I am always looking for new shows to bring you but we want to be sure they are of the highest quality and provide great entertainment and expose you to new and fun music and personalities.
For the remainder of 2017, we are planning to continue adding more Christmas songs to the mix and finally, 48 hours of commercial-free Christmas music on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We will then return to our normal programming on the 26th. Again, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
