Web Design: Helping The Trumpet Channel Soar | B Smith Solutions

I recently had the honor of working with Jake Sommers, a good friend of many years, on a project near and dear to both our hearts. Jake and I share a lifelong love of jazz and big band music, and he?has loved the trumpet ever since we were in school together.

Among other things, Jake broadcasts The Trumpet Channel, an online radio station devoted to jazz trumpet music in various styles, from bop to big band to smooth and even cutting edge. Loudcaster had hosted The Trumpet Channel, but that site announced they were going out of business at the end of September, 2012. Jake needed to find a new home to stream his station, and fast.

Old and busted

Jake went to another Internet site that streams online radio stations like his and signed up. Sites like these perform an important function by acting as an intermediary between the broadcasters and rights management companies like the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). The stream licensing sites track music that is played to ensure that the creators of the music receive royalties due them when their music is streamed on the Internet.

There are two primary business models such sites use. One model is for the streaming company to charge the broadcaster a fee based on the amount streamed. The other is for the site to stream the music for free and include lots of advertising on their player page. The site Jake initially went with makes its money the second way. Another issue is that the site uses an embedded Flash player, so if you want to listen some other way, tough luck.The page looks something like this.

The old Trumpet Channel.

I?ve removed all the logos and branding in an attempt to keep the site as anonymous as possible. The ads (which would display here except the Flash player croaked before I got the screen capture) are competing with his own broadcast requests for donations (Jake doesn?t accept ads for the Trumpet Channel). It doesn?t help that the station is showing Jake?s competitors right there for the clicking. Finally, the only genre listed is ?Smooth Jazz.? Jake?s own brand logo (that little trumpet player just to the left of the pause button) is overwhelmed by the other content.

This is where I came in to the picture. Jake contacted me and told me his problem. I did a little research and got the scoop on his streaming service. When I told him that they were essentially competing with him for revenue, he decided to go in another direction and signed up for a subscription-based service offered by StreamLicensing, LLC. The good news was that this would give Jake a lot more control over how his site looks to the world. The bad news was that Jake simply didn?t have the time to do it himself.

Tuning up

Jake already had his domain registered with GoDaddy, which was fine with me. My initial plan was to create the pages we would need, test them, and then upload them to his site. This is where I encountered the first surprise: Jake?s account doesn?t include web hosting. His plan includes GoDaddy?s Website Builder application, which is designed to make it easier for non-technical people to create their own basic web designs. It handles all of the web page publishing, file uploading, and so on, behind the scenes. This meant I would use Website Builder instead of building pages myself. Fortunately, the Website Builder tool is easy to learn and use quickly. Jake had already started a basic design and provided me a new graphic to use in branding the site.

The next thing we had to negotiate was compliance with copyright requirements. In order to be compliant, any streaming audio player has to launch from StreamLicensing?s domain, rather than from The Trumpet Channel itself. This is necessary so StreamLicensing can accurately track and reimburse the copyright holders. StreamLicensing provides all their broadcasters an area on the StreamLicensing domain where the the broadcaster can upload.branded content. That way the broadcaster can link to StreamLicensing?s domain, yet make it look like the listener never left The Trumpet Channel. Since I wasn?t actually creating and saving an HTML page by hand, and time was pressing, I decided to use a strategy approved by StreamLicensing where I could upload a single page to their domain that frames a player page on the Trumpet Channel domain that I created and hid.

I was able to create the site design very quickly, using a minimalist approach and focusing on the shades of blue in the new trumpet player graphic Jake had provided. GoDaddy?s Website Builder worked out well, allowing me the ability to hide the player page I had created from site navigation on the Trumpet Channel domain. It even gave me an option in the background to request that bots not index the player page, although I think some of them still did. It even included functionality to create a basic guestbook for listeners to sign.

The last stumbling block I ran into was when I tried to use Website Builder?s built-in widget to create links for people to share the site on Facebook, Twitter, and so on. The widget was hard-wired so that when sharing from the StreamLicensing domain, the link went back to the hidden player page on The Trumpet Channel?s domain, which risked putting us out of compliance with copyright requirements. Fortunately, Website Builder provides the ability to plant HTML and JavaScript into its pages, and I was able to insert code from Facebook and Twitter that linked to the Trumpet Channel home page (where we want new listeners to start anyway) instead of the hidden player page.

New hotness

After overcoming these problems, it was simply a matter of doing a little formatting, adding some graphics, and voila! Here?s a screen shot of the finished product.

The new Trumpet Channel.

This is not the whole page; there?s some information not shown here that?s required for legal purposes. The gist of it is here, though. There?s no more competing content. When you click the ?Listen Now? button, you go to the StreamLicensing domain but it looks exactly like this. The only difference is that the ?Listen Now? button is replaced by a choice of players. ?You can choose to stream The Trumpet Channel though any of several players that may be available on your device, including WinAmp, Windows Media, QuickTime, and RealPlayer. Best of all, The Trumpet Channel?s trumpet player branding is prominently displayed.

It?s been an honor and pleasure to help my good friend Jake out on this labor of love, and we?re not finished yet. Website Builder provides the ability to specify meta description and keyword content for the site as a whole and individual pages, so I?ve been working on tweaks to try to improve the site?s organic search performance.

Source: http://www.bsmithsolutions.com/2012/10/web-design-helping-the-trumpet-channel-soar/

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