“480 Minutes” - 20 Years!
This week BAGeL Radio turned 20 years old. Srsly.
A brief (or TL;DR, you decide) history:
The stream was launched quietly on February 1st, 2003, as a way to stream my music collection from my Haight-Ashbury (SF) apartment to my desk at work. This was long before Deezer & Apple Music & Tidal, not to mention the many music streaming services that have gone by the wayside since (R.I.P. MOG, Rdio, Grooveshark, Rhapsody, Milk Music, Songza, et al), back when the iPod was still new & came with less storage than a low-end modern cell phone. Months of insomnia caused by Darth Cheney's WMD lies & their amplification by the media that lead to the illegal & immoral invasion of Iraq gave me plenty of time to try to roll-my-own internet radio station.
Even after it miraculously began working I didn't expect anyone to listen to it beyond maybe a dozen or so friends who shared my taste in music. Then a strange thing happened: by the end of 2003 there were people listening from places that I'd never heard of in the U.S. & on other continents. This prompted me to digitize the other half of my record collection so that these intrepid music seekers weren't just listening to artists whose names began with A through L.
By mid-2004 the weekly live-hosted show that would become 480 Minutes began as a nameless, mere 300 minute-long show, & I started booking & hosting live gigs around San Francisco, mostly at my all-time favorite music venue, Bottom of the Hill, featuring Bay Area & touring artists who had submitted music for air play.
In 2007 Apple briefly included BAGeL Radio in the iTunes Radio Tuner & listenership tripled overnight. Our stream host freaked over the traffic being generated & had our listing removed. Those business geniuses & several others that have hosted the stream over the years have since gone out of business. Multiple times.
In 2011 our inspirational heroes at SomaFM saved us from short-sighted stream hosts by adding us to their unmatched roster of stations. We had 10 great years with them before spinning off into a stand-alone entity at the start of 2022.
It's 2023 & here we are: age 20 & still streaming.
To thank our supportive listeners we're offering a 20% discount on everything in our merch store for the whole weekend, use the discount code: 20YEARS, and of course today we’ll offer up 8 hours of live-hosted indie rock noise pop post-punk shoe gaze psych & garage rock for you from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time — Fridays just as the FSM intended!
Today’s marathon live-hosted 480 Minutes program which runs from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. time will debut new music by AJJ (Phoenix, AZ, @AJJtheBand), The Bad Ends (Athens, GA), Bass Drum of Death (Oxford, MI, @BassDrumOfDeath), Guided By Voices (Dayton, OH, @GuidedByVoicesOfficial), LATO (Milan, Italy, @latosounds), & Yves Tumor (@YvesTumor).
Tune in & meet fellow members of our listening community in the chat room during the live-hosted show.
Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule which you can import into your favorite digital calendar. If you prefer the unhosted radio, add this calendar to your calendar so you’ll know when to not tune in.
Please help keep us on the air & commercial-free by making a tax-deductible donation to the non-profit organization that funds our efforts, BAGeL Radio Association, Inc., or buy something from our store at 20% off like this vintage flyer t-shirt:
Everything in our merch store is 20% off this weekend when you use the code: 20YEARS.
Contact the DJ during the live-hosted show hours (Fridays 9am-5pm ET):
e-mail: bagelradio (at) gmail (dot) com
Twitter: @bagelradio
Instagram: @bagelradioIG
facebook.com/bagelradio/ (comments only, no FB messenger, sorry)
chat with the DJ & fellow listeners: https://internet-radio-slack.herokuapp.com
Videos
480 Minutes / 2023 Episode 5/Overall Episode 818 - Our 20th Anniversary!
