Update: On Monday, August 23 at 6:00, KXCI Music Program Archives resumed. Our playlisting service Spinitron has added a two-week archive of each music program episode at the top of every playlist for two weeks after its broadcast.
Visit your favorite music program page to find its Spinitron playlist button to browse playlists and listen again.
Or visit the program schedule to see what was played and listen again.
We are still in a testing phase right now, but it seems really promising. And the two-week archive started on August 23, so it will take some time until there is a full two-week archive.
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On August 13, 2020, KXCI received the following email from our archiving service provider Radio Free America. We received no other notice. This is a service they provided to us for free for well over 5 years. You can read on to learn more from them.
We will be exploring other possibilities, but it may take some time before we have an operational alternative.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. Thanks for all you do! We will all get through this together.
Sincerely,
Amanda Shauger
RFA will be ceasing our archiving service effective Saturday, August 15th, and suspending our website and associated social media accounts.
From our inception, Radio Free America has always been guided by a core set of goals:
- enlarge the college and community radio ecosystem by making station content available anytime – for free
- introduce new listeners to the diversity and richness of noncommercial radio through discovery and convenience
- create and maintain a service platform that frees up station management to focus on building capacity and serving their communities
We have always seen ourselves as partners in the success of each of our member stations and in larger efforts to advance the principles of independent, noncommercial, locally programmed radio. Conversely, we’ve also had the perspective that stations have had an inherent stake in the success of RFA.
As we’ve continued to navigate the complexities of serving the mission of nonprofit organizations – while at the same time operating as a for-profit company – over time, it’s become clear that our “free service” model could not be sustainable without a very high listener adoption rate. Our hope was that station-based audience growth would combine with the platform synergies of content from over 150 stations to drive on-demand traffic to the level we needed for sponsorship and other continued investment in the company.
Recently, we proposed to pivot to a two-phased approach to maintain viability by 1) putting forth a “monthly contribution” model based on a station’s ability to pay and 2) drafting plans to transition to a nonprofit organization. The ultimate intention was to ask stations to share in the real costs of making terrestrial content available to their listeners in a digital, archived format as well as to allow for funding possibilities not typically available to for-profit companies.
It is now apparent that this plan for continued viability is, unfortunately, coming at the wrong time. After careful consideration and much deliberation, Radio Free America has simply run out of options. We no longer have investor backing to adequately fund the company and do not anticipate a sizeable enough commitment from stations to continue our operation going forward.
Thus, RFA will be ceasing our archiving service effective Saturday, August 15th and suspending our website and associated social media accounts.
As a previous station manager, I know the challenges you face every day are real and they’ve probably never felt more acute than right now. For myself and our founder, Kenneth Pushkin, we deeply regret that we cannot continue to serve your station – particularly during these especially turbulent times. We’d love nothing more than to continue to shine a spotlight on the fantastic, rich, diverse, compelling content that your station works so hard to produce. This desire, however, is in conflict with financial realities.
Please continue to do your great work and be that beacon for your communities that you all aspire to.
Best Regards,
Jeff Abrams
Station Relations Manager, Radio Free America