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Frequently Asked Questions

Can you make the song titles display in my mp3 player?

Unfortunately, no—but you can find out what's playing by checking the playlist on our radio stream page and looking where the red line is. Usually (but not always) the current song is in the middle of the red line area. The basic reason why titles can't be shown is that we record all the shows live, resulting in a continuous 2-hour track. The songs are not separated, so during playback the streaming system has no way of knowing when one song ends and another begins. You may have noticed some other radio stations do display titles. Their streams are mp3 jukeboxes, with no human mixing involved. Real live mixing = no titles in your mp3 player.

You guys should have a 128kbps stereo stream.

That would be nice. A few important factors prevent us from streaming at higher bitrates: 1) Streaming becomes less reliable at higher bitrates, especially for our international listeners, 2) Each show would require over 100MB in storage (we have hundreds of shows archived), and 3) Our hosting capacity would be much lower, because of the greater file size and bandwidth per show. We truly squeeze as much sound quality as possible out of a 64kbps stream. Try listening to some other 64 or 56 kbps shoutcast streams—we're sure you'll hear the difference.

The show archive skips over a few shows, what's up with that?

A few shows just didn't get recorded, due to technical problems or absentmindedness. Hey, we're allowed a mistake now and then.

What about shows before 168?

We started broadcasting WEFUNK on FM back in 1996. In 2001, one hundred sixty-seven shows later, we began permanently archiving WEFUNK shows. To listen to any WEFUNK show since then, dig in to our show archive.

I want to start a radio stream too, where should I start?

If you want to dip your feet in the water before setting up something entirely on your own, Live365 makes it easy and doesn't cost much. If you're building from scratch, you'll have to 1) Buy stream hosting. If you're adventurous, you can roll your own (Icecast, Shoutcast) on a dedicated host with lots of very stable bandwidth. 2) Run a program like the Winamp shoutcast plugin, SAM Broadcaster or Ices to send the stream to your streaming server. 3) Pay royalties to the necessary licensing organization(s) in your country. In the US you will need to deal with SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI, and maybe SESAC; for small broadcasters, LoudCity is a service that can handle all those licenses for you. In the UK, the MCPS/PRS. In other countries, try searching google for "music licensing". 4) Find listeners!

I have a radio stream. How do I get listed in the iTunes radio directory?

Yes, this is one of those great mysteries. Apple copied our listing from the Shoutcast directory way back in the early days of iTunes—we didn't ask them to be listed, though obviously we're very happy to be included. Many people write to us to ask how to contact Apple to get listed. As far as we can tell, they rarely, if ever add stations to the iTunes radio directory. And from what other broadcasters have told us, they do not often respond to emails from people asking to get listed. Generally, the stations listed in iTunes are ones with high listener capacity, solid programming, and a large listener base. If you have a stream that fits those criteria you might get lucky—try emailing iTunesRadio/at/appledotcom.