Welcome to Elite Syncopations Radio, the first all-ragtime internet radio station. We feature the classic and folk rags of the 1890s-1910s, the novelty rags of the 1920s, some related stride piano and early jazz, and the best modern ragtime. From Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb, to Zez Confrey, Arthur Schutt, Rube Bloom, to Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, and Jelly Roll Morton, you'll find them all on Elite Syncopations Radio!
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Elite Syncopations News
UPDATE! The curtain falls on Elite Syncopations Radio.
As most of you know, ES Radio has been an ongoing project of mine for over five years now. I'm proud to say that since I started it, over 155,000 streams have been launched and Elite Syncopations Radio has provided over 151,000 listening hours of ragtime to people across the globe. Along the way, I've been very fortunate to have the help of many ragtime friends. I'd like to publicly express my very sincere thanks to Todd Robbins, Richard Dowling, Robert Monsen, Karen Jones, Judy Fair-Spaulding, Fred Hoeptner, Russell Ball, Jon Weaver III, Jerry Goggon, Stanley and Ruth Kaplan, Steve Cole, Dave Ales, James Baker, Russell Shablow, and others who have given generously to help offset the very real expense of maintaining ES Radio, and many others have written to me with their words of support and encouragement. I am also especially grateful to my friend Rob Schwieger who was instrumental in helping to establish ES Radio in the first place.
I started ES Radio hoping to provide more public exposure to ragtime music and, in particular, to offer a showcase for today's ragtime musicians. I believe that the healthy future of ragtime requires more than festivals and nursing home performances to sustain it. We have to find new and creative ways to bring ragtime music to audiences. In the days before YouTube, there really was no place where interested persons wanting to learn more about ragtime could go--day or night--to hear "real" performances of the music. Of course, a number of sites provided ragtime MIDI files on demand, but there really was no place where one could listen to hours of hand-played "live" recordings of ragtime. So, from the beginning, I decided that ES Radio would differentiate itself from other sites by supplying only "live" recordings 24-hours-a-day. Ragtime is so much more exciting and alive when it has that human component--there's just a vitality and musicality that no computer-sequenced MIDI can achieve. I think that's what made ES Radio a little special.
As the years have rolled by, I've watched ES Radio grow and grow. Some 5,000 people have now added ES Radio as a preset in their Live365 player window, and over 150 people have tagged it as their favorite Live365 station. I have received countless e-mails through the years from people around the world who heard a particular recording on the station wanting to know where and how they could purchase it. That was always my goal--to introduce people to the music of many of today's talented ragtime musicians and hopefully offer some support to those musicians by encouraging CD sales. I have also watched as listenership has declined over the past year as a result of increased royalty rates and the growth of sites like YouTube. The swift hike in royalty fees online broadcasters must pay has meant that Live365 has had to severely limit the amount of time that free (i.e., non-paying) listeners can hear. Since broadcasters now have to pay substantially more per song per listener than they did last year, this has resulted in more advertisements interrupting the stream and listening sessions that time out after only 20-30 minutes. I feel the experience of listening to Live365 today is much less satisfying than it was a year or two ago. At the same time, Live365 has drastically reduced the number of simultaneous listeners allowed for each station. In addition, in the past five years, Live365 has done very little to upgrade their broadcasting software or the clunky broadcaster user interface. They have done all this while significantly increasing the cost broadcasters must pay. And even as computer memory has become cheaper and cheaper, Live365 has done nothing to expand their broadcasting packages--meaning that I actually pay more now per month for the same pitifully small 500 MB of online storage that I did five years ago! Quality audio files take up a lot of space, and trying to run a 24-hour station with only 500 MB of MP3s on the server means way too much repetition. Refreshing the entire online library with new tracks is a time-intensive process, and I just don't have the time right now to devote several hours every few days to updating the online library to keep ES Radio sounding fresh. In the face of rising costs and falling quality for listeners, I feel that the time has come to exit.
Today, sites like YouTube provide an ever-expanding offering of on-demand ragtime performances old and new. Online music services like the iTunes music store and CD Baby offer listeners the chance to find and sample thousands of ragtime recordings in a way not possible when I launched ES Radio in February 2003. I still think that there is a place for a 24-hour streaming music service like ES Radio, but unfortunately, I just no longer have the time or money to run such an operation by myself. I am grateful for the support so many of you have shown in those years, and I will treasure the e-mails and letters that I have received from listeners who have told me that ES Radio brightened their day.
My friend and fellow pianist Martin Spitznagel has suggested switching to an occasional series of podcasts to feature ragtime music from today's ragtime musicians. Of course, this has its own share of legal tangles that would involve getting direct permission from all artists to use their music (Live365 previously handled all licensing) but for the moment I think it sounds promising. If enough musicians are willing to share a few selections from their CDs, free podcasting might be the way to go as a viable means of introducing people to ragtime musicians they might not otherwise hear. As time permits, I'll look into this and will report back at a future date. In the meantime, if you are a ragtime musician and would be willing to share some of your recorded performances for a series of ragtime podcasts, please let me know.
In the meantime, thank you all for years of support and encouragement. Please continue to support ragtime music into the 21st century!
-- Bryan Wright
Pictures from the 2007 Peoria and Sedalia ragtime festivals!
Click here to see Bryan's photos from the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest in Peoria, IL (May 25-27, 2007), at the Scott Joplin house in Sedalia, Missouri on Memorial Day (May 28, 2007), and at the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri (May 30-June 3, 2007).
Join the Elite Syncopations Discussion Group! Love ragtime? Want to talk or learn about your favorite composers, pianists, or bands? Do you compose ragtime? Have a burning question about ragtime? Join our friendly e-mail discussion group and get to know others who have a passion for ragtime. Joining is free and you can unsubscribe at any time. Click here to sign-up. Or use the handy button below:
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