First of all, I’d like to preface this episode with information about choosing your own independent lifestyle.
What Is Lifestyle Design?
It may mean something different to each and everyone and it’s an idea everyone can adapt to. In my opinion, lifestyle design is where you choose the perfect way of how your life should be everyday. Planning your day the way you want it. For example in your ideal day you’d wake up and have Corn Flakes for breakfast, and then go for a jog because you like jogging then you might get back and do a little bit of work for yourself or work for a company you love from home. Whatever it is you can create your own lifestyle. I think it is a new trend that is emerging for the last decade since the internet has blown up and possibilities of connecting to people around the world has gotten better. Izabela thinks that lifestyle design has been around for quite a while as writers, painters or creative workers in general have always been able to work from home.
Radio’s Future
I remember how Rob Greenlee from Microsoft in podcast episode #66 described radio’s future as a local phenomenon. He was suggesting that there’s going to be local travel, news, weather on the radio with locally based output on FM or DAB. At the moment, Izabela accepts that there may be truth in this but stays open minded to it as we are not sure what could really happen to radio. We both agree that the main point of this is the ability of every DJ, presenter or host to work from home if they have decent equipment at home there would be no reason to go to a radio station.
Broadcasting In The Comfort Of Your Home
The biggest advantage of working at home is that you can work in your pyjamas and you can work at your own pace as long as you get the work done. Which is something I always wanted to do in my life. Generally the way people work in radio is to travel many times to get gigs. Though sometimes the reason behind this is the fact that not every DJ has the equipment or even the facility to record at home. However, let’s say you are young and you live in your parent’s house or perhaps you’re renting a room or sharing a room with someone and you don’t have the necessary space to broadcast which is a point to consider. To have a good quality show you need a quiet place away from street noise and the like. Izabela denotes that working at home may be ideal for some but not for everyone. From a radio business perspective, it wouldn’t be easy for all the radio presenters to broadcast at home as it would need massive structural changes in order for that to work.
Our Travels In Radio
Back in 2007, when Izabela and I met in Slough (UK) I was a DJ at a night club for the radio station I work for. Izabela’s friend got my number which I wrote at the back of my business card and willingly gave, you now know DJs have a stack of business cards with them. As the night progressed and Izabela had a few drinks she decided to text me. The reason of the story is how we’ve met while I was working in radio and how I continued working for a radio station during our first years together. My work in the radio station consisted of travelling across the United Kingdom and other countries. I’ve had radio jobs from Manchester to Australia then New Zealand. We had working visas in New Zealand, Izabela was a banker while I was applying for radio jobs like crazy. But then we decided to come back and moved into Kent and I started to work in London for talkSPORT from there I started to work in Sevenoaks. Literally our lives were thrown one place to the next just because I work in radio.
All those times we were running Music Radio Creative in the background but we were hoping that the big radio gig will happen. The moment Izabela and I realised that this is not what we wanted to do it was the moment when Music Radio Creative was born and we’ve put everything that we can possibly give into it. In general, we think that there are many people out there who moved from one location to another in hope that that next move is going to be that next big gig.
Radio Technology: Is It Possible To Run A Traditional Radio Station Remotely?
There are many great remote voice tracking software products where you can dial in and do your radio show remotely. I’ve had a look at some of those on our YouTube channel in the past.
On the other hand, Isle of Wight Radio in the UK have a system in place provided by RCS a huge radio automation company and they have software called iVT (Internet Voice Tracking). I disliked the fact it only worked in Windows and you had to use it in Internet Explorer which means I had to add a virtual machine on our iMac for me to be able to use it. It was great software as it allowed me to hear the intro, outro of a song, get the next song and talk it up, you can also hear the sweepers and the ads. Everything was there and I even had the facility to remotely record shows for the radio station from home. So the technology is definitely coming up for that kind of stuff to happen on traditional radio. However, I think we are not quite there yet.
On A Side Note: Fitbit
One of the biggest problems for anyone who is working from home is the fact that we are not moving. We are just sitting behind our desks. One of the things that really helped us was Fitbit or the step tracking device. Fitbit is a wireless-enabled wearable devices that measures data such as the number of steps walked, quality of sleep, and other personal metrics.
Technology And The 21st Century DJ Working Remotely At Home?
We didn’t really come up with a conclusion on this as we both have different opinions. That’s why we want to hear your opinion in the comments below.
