WFMU Archives: a Real Audio-free Future

Beginning July 12th, WFMU's new archives will no longer be available in 20k Real Audio, and this change will affect archive listeners on a dial-up connection. Going forward, all new archives will be available in the higher quality 64k AAC+ format, which sounds fantastic with our new Pop-Up Player. If you listen to our 128k MP3 archives, fear not, no changes are being made in that dept.

How will the change affect your archive listening? (Read more)

If you have DSL, cable, or a T1 internet connection:
For Pop-Up AAC+ archives to work, Javascript must be enabled (info here) and you need Flash Player plugin 9 or higher. Pop-Up archives can only be played inside your web browser (they load in a pop-up window, try one out here). You can still listen to our 128k MP3 archives using external programs like iTunes or Winamp (although these archives expire after 4 weeks, as they have done in the past).

If you have a dial-up connection:
Due to the higher quality and higher bit-rate of our new archive format, your internet connection speed will not be able to accomodate archive listening going forward. Rest assured that we will continue to offer our live streams in Real Audio and Windows Media, at bit-rates appropriate for dial-up connections. All of WFMU's Real Audio archives prior to July 12, 2009 will remain available on our website for your listening pleasure, but new archives going forward will no longer be offered in Real Audio.

Comments

[aphid]

eat flaming death, fascist (real)media pigs
looks like a step forward more vorbis please!

[name]

great job on the flash player. it's very well done. i love it. great for archives as well as live listening.

[Clax]

good riddance!

[folksnake]

Amen!

[Craig]

Choirs of angels are singing in my head right now.

[Jim]

I never had a problem with RealPlayer.

[brian doohan]

I guess, like HDTV and other hi-income media,WFMU now thinks it's cool to throw its techno-peasant dial-up listeners overboard and gentrify its demographics. While the nation and world get poorer and poorer, the corporations and governments keep pandering to that shrinking slice of elites... too bad that you've joined the scumbags. I'll miss you...

[Liz B.]

Brian, contrary to what you might think, WFMU still offers MANY ways for dial-up listeners to tune in:

- Not one, but TWO (2) dial-up friendly live streams, Real Audio and Windows Media (plus 32k MP3 if your dial-up speed is superb).

- Over 7 years of radio archives in Real Audio. That adds up to more than 400,000 hours of listening.

It would certainly be cost-effective for us to eliminate these options, but we didn't want to leave out the 3% of our listening audience who use dial-up. We want WFMU to be accessible to everyone.

The decision to move away from Real Audio archives was simply to make WFMU sound better for the vast majority (97%) of our listeners, and was not part of an elitist conspiracy to join the scumbags. Let's face it, the scumbags would never listen to Sun Ra, The Monks, Konono, or Wing anyway.

We would love to be able to offer everything to everybody, but unfortunately the financial and logistical realities of doing so are prohibitive. Instead, we try to offer a solution that will work best for the largest sector of our listening audience, while still providing many listening options for folks on dial-up. Hopefully you can understand the reasoning behind this approach and not consider us scumbags for using our limited resources to best serve the majority of our listeners.