What Has Happened To Highlander Radio?, This listener feels cheated.

Macfive, What has happened to Highlander Radio? I can no longer tune in to my favorite, indeed my only, internet radio station. Now when I attempt to tune in, I get this popup from "live365.net" saying it will cost me $3.65/month to continue to listen to Highlander Radio. I made a sizable contribution to Highlander Radio just a few months ago, when you needed support for continuing your free services. Now your services are no longer free. I feel I have been cheated!

Perhaps the trolls have erected a troll booth?

or they are out on strike and want higher wages

Revolution up in this here biotch!!!

Wolfman, I can't speak for Macfive, but there's been a lot going on; there's information in the following threads:

Highlander Radio Is Offline and We Are Back!

Live365 does NOT cost anything; but they try to get you to sign-up for their "premium", i.e. ad-free, service. You can still listen to Highlander Radio for free, but you'll have to put up with audio ads to do it. Still, it's better than no Highlanded Radio at all, which is what we had for a few weeks last month.

Hi Wolfman,

There have been a number of changes since your donation back in August of 2003. We have tried to keep all listeners and members updated through the last few months and we believed that everyone was well aware of the changes.

Your donation was much appreciated and went towards the cost of paying for bandwidth for this site and the streaming of our broadcast. It is very costly to do run an internet radio station.

Because of changes in U.S. copyright law, we were faced with royalty and license fees that we estimated could easily amount to $5,000 - $10,000 a year. In fact, if you review our new broadcast stats page, the cost could in fact be $20,000 or more per year since it is based upon song performances.

It was with hesitation that we transitioned to Live365, but if we did not this site and broadcast would have disappeared because donations alone could never have made the gap.

Live365 was able to provide us with modem and broadband streams for a little over $700 a year. But even so, we still have web costs over $100 a month to pay to keep this site going. We have hardware that fails which needs to be replaced and services that are a benefit to all users.

I am sorry that you feel cheated. If this is a very big issue for you, then of course we can refund your donation. However, it would seem that from August to February you did enjoy our previous shoutcast stream and it would seem that your donation to help and contribute to the continued success of this site. If you consider the cost of a paid internet radio subscription being about $5 a month, then your donation more than paid for the use of the service during that time period.

I have stated this before to individuals, if you have any hestiation about donating please do not donate. This goes for any website on the internet today. I think though, that if you ask various members on this site for some feedback on me personally, you will find that we have tried our best to make the best possible use out of donation funds and have tried to use technology to provide the best service at the lowest possible rate.

Please contact me if you have any further issues. I am going to send you a support email on live365.