Uranus 56 Will Upgrade to 128k, Debut New Playlist Sept. 1
It's been six years (almost to the day) since we upgraded to our current 56k stream. On September 1, we are upgrading to a 128k stream. That means you will be able to enjoy your favorite music in CD-quality sound without all those distracting mp3 artifacts.
Upgrading our stream is not as simple as clicking a checkbox and hitting "Save." Every last audio file has to be converted to 128k and uploaded again. Once that's done, we have to take the station off the air for a little bit while we change the server settings.
We're going off the air a little before midnight Eastern Daylight Time (0500 GMT). We should just be off for a few minutes, then we'll resume playing again by midnight. Updates will be posted to our Facebook page as we go through this process.
Since we basically have to redo all of our files anyway, this also gives us a great excuse to update our playlist. We've taken many of your suggestions into account when doing this, as well as some observations on our end. Here are some things to look forward to:
- We will have a greater variety in our playlist. This goes across all genres we play, and we'll also have more electro-industrial and EBM than we were playing before. Some artists who are new to the playlist (or are reappearing for the first time in years) include Combichrist, Slick Idiot, Sheep on Drugs, Front Line Assembly, Dimmu Borgir, and Coal Chamber. All of those bands, by the way, were requested by fans on Facebook.
- The more popular songs will get more airplay than the ones you don't want to hear all the time. Right now, one song by a single artist will get as much airplay as every other song by the same artist. For instance, we play every Ministry song an equal number of times per day. And while it might be cool to sneak in an obscure track like "Abortive" or "Isle of Man" every so often, we don't really want to play those songs in heavy rotation like we would "Jesus Built My Hotrod" or "Burning Inside." Now we can do it the way we want.
- And finally, we will have new IDs and bumpers. While those aren't the things you tune in for, I know I cringe everytime I hear an outdated "series of tubes" reference.
As a side note, the updated bitrate will not come with a name change this time around. We'll still be Uranus 56, not Uranus 128. Since we're also broadcasting from Earth, that means that both parts of our name will be a lie now, but we're okay with that.
Thanks for your patience while we make this transition and thank you for listening!
Featured Video: Nine Inch Nails- Closer to God (Live)
Nine Inch Nails performs "Closer to God" (the alternate version of "Closer") live from Pittsburgh in 1995. Courtesy of aNimuS07. Be sure to check out the channel, as there are a bunch of old NIN videos on it from the Downward Spiral era.
Welcome to the New Site
This is the new site for Uranus 56. More content is coming soon, but for now you can listen to the station and access our Facebook and YouTube pages from one place.