Setting up a successful - or at least potentially successful - Internet radio station is a complicated business, if you want to take it seriously and do it properly. In this week's podcast we examine the critical points: How much time do I have to invest in my radio station? Is it going to be a hobby station, or a professional one? Who will my audience be, and where do they live? How much do I know about them: their education, work, interests ...? Equipment: without going overboard, what will I need? What genre/s of music will I play? What will be the ratio of music to talk? Will I have co-presenters, DJs and interview guests on my station? Can I cope with disillusionment or disappointment when no one listens at first? Music licensing: expensive and troublesome - this is what can kill your station Setting up and running an Internet radio station can be a wonderful creative outlet, especially if you have some experience of radio. But it involves more research and work than you might imagine. There are many rewards, but there are also pitfalls that can torpedo your new station before it even takes to the air for the first time. Music licensing is one of these. In this podcast, we take a frank look at it. The key to success is a broad understanding of the industry, its practices, and how Internet radio actually works.

INNFIELD Trains of Thought

Don't start an Internet radio station!

Continuing from where we left off last week, more of my impressions of London when, as a boy of 15 brought up in Cape Town, South Africa, to always think of the UK - and London in particular -as 'home', I was turned loose in the big city when the 'Mersey sound' was turning popular music on its ear and London was the world capital of teenage culture.

London for Beginners 2

Moving from one country to another - properly handled - can be a breeze. But when the wheels come off, for whatever reason or reasons, it can be the sort of experience that makes strong men hide in dustbins and children run screaming for their mothers. Innfield and Mrs Innfield's move, together with our two cats, from Cape Town, South Africa, to Germany was one of the latter. No two countries could be further apart, either geographically or culturally. Listen and find out why.

The Trouble with Germany is that it's full of Germans

As a boy in the mid-60s, in South Africa, my British parents had always spoken of the UK - and London in particular -as 'home', and so I guess I'd always seen it that way too, and accepted that one day I would somehow end up there. When I saw London for the first time, at the age of 15, it was - strangely - just like I had always imagined it would be. For a callow little Cape Town boy to suddenly be turned loose in this fabulous melting-pot of music and all that was dear to the heart of teenagers the world over, was an overwhelming experience. Share it with me? Come on, then ... let's go.

London for Beginners ...

For my sins, which I dare say are numerous, until recently I've been a national network radio host with a daily three-hour show for much of my working life. No, not the BBC - but an organisation much like it in terms of culture and operations. The TRAIN OF THOUGHT podcast is born of all these years of broadcasting, journalism and reporting in general. It is episodic - there's no sequence you have to follow. It will cover all sorts of topics - travel, consumer journalism, social issues, nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia (... did I mention nostalgia?), music, theatre, films - anything that suggests itself as worth a mention, really. I have a dry, tongue-in-cheek, although warm and fairly intimate presentation style, and can demolish so-called celebrities, reality TV, conspicuous consumerism, self-serving and/or crooked politicians and the like with charm and style, so I've been told, even sometimes by the victims. On TRAIN OF THOUGHT we'll travel to interesting places together, do and see interesting things, and spend quality time in a new podcast that'll probably give you a chuckle or at least a wry smile, as well as give you things to think about.

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INNFIELD Trains of Thought

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