A warm welcome for SAM VIBE and some FAQs
First of all, thank you very much for a nearly unanimous positive welcome for SAM VIBE! We’ve been working really hard for more than a year with the dedicated efforts of nearly 10 developers to bring what we think is the easiest yet most powerful radio automation application available in the cloud.
On top of being incredibly easy for beginners, it’s also the only broadcasting software that was envisaged from its inception to be visual-friendly, accessible and compatible with screen readers. Since the launch, we have received comments like, “For first time online radio station starters without sight, SAM VIBE offers an accessible and well-designed learning experience.” and “It was only 11 minutes later that my first ‘radio jingle’ was playing to the world!”. These quotes are pure joy for a team that worked incredibly hard to make SAM VIBE a reality.
The most popular questions we have received during the last few days:
Q: Will SAM VIBE replace SAM Broadcaster?
A: NO! SAM VIBE caters to needs that SAM Broadcaster is not fulfilling.
1- It’s easy!
One broadcaster reported starting his radio station in 11 minutes, from sign up to streaming! Can you beat that?
2- It’s robust!
Totally in the cloud, which means you don’t have to worry about your PC performance and reliability of your internet connection. Once you have scheduled your station, just turn off your computer and SAM VIBE cloud takes care of the rest.
3- It’s visually impaired friendly!
Radio broadcasting is a very popular hobby for blind and visually impaired people. We want to bring this hobby to another level by simplifying everything. We want all ages, from children to the elderly to take up broadcasting, we want schools for the blind to use SAM VIBE and teach students how to manage a radio station. A lot of sighted people can’t even use radio automation tools… imagine when you are blind!
Q: Can we do live shows with SAM VIBE?
A: With SAM VIBE, you can’t talk live. You need to upload content to the cloud (it then needs to be transcoded and optimized by SAM VIBE) before you can stream it. It’s true that more and more professional radio stations are using voice-tracking to do their “live” shows (especially at night and weekends), but we know the difference is easy to feel. The best of both worlds would be using SAM Broadcaster to broadcast live and SAM VIBE to automate your station the rest of the broadcast. That will be possible with SAM Broadcaster 2013. More will be announced soon!
Q: Is SAM VIBE just another Auto DJ?
A: Oh, SAM, please don’t cry… I’ll explain to them.
SAM VIBE comes with numerous radio automation features that you will never find, even with a “advanced” Auto DJ. Playblocks, separation rules, tasks, event scheduling, and many more which means you have total control over what you play. Music library management is simply powerful and SAM VIBE can easily handle more than 50,000 tracks. On top of that, the same music library can be use to manage 100+ stations!! What a relief for station managers. SAM VIBE will soon share new DJ features with SAM Broadcaster (more to be announced soon). That means your DJs can manage a single or multiple stations, and you could even limit their access to certain specified schedules. The web widgets (now playing, last played songs, song requests, etc.) can be implemented easily by pasting a few lines of HTML code on your website. Who said Auto DJ? 😉
Q: What about that green color? That’s not a usual color for broadcasters…
A: The colors, the display, the font size,… nothing was done to please “experienced broadcasters”! 😉
Our objective was to make SAM VIBE as accessible as possible. That particular green color provides a great contrast for color blind users. Large fonts and an uncomplicated interface makes it friendly for both visually impaired and novice broadcasters. It’s even completely compatible with major screen readers, so blind users can manage SAM VIBE with only a computer and a keyboard. No monitor, no mouse!! Give it a try!
But don’t worry, if you are looking for a more “professional” user interface, it’s already in our plans.
Q: Can SAM VIBE stream to my current streaming server?
A: No. Currently, SAM VIBE can only stream through our proprietary streaming platform, one of the biggest and most stable on the planet. Why? Because we want SAM VIBE to be rock solid before opening it up to other streaming platforms. Then, we will know it’s not our fault if your service goes down! If things go well, SAM VIBE should be able to stream to any Shoutcast server by the beginning of 2013.
Try it out
So, have you tested SAM VIBE yet? What are you waiting for, it’s free! Sign up at http://samvibe.com and see for yourself how easy broadcasting can be!
For those of you who are wondering how SAM VIBE and SAM Broadcaster 2013 will work together, that will be revealed as soon as we will launch SAM Broadcaster 2013 in a few weeks.
This blog post is the first of what we want to be a series of regular communication between us and our large community of users. Louis Louw, our CTO and co-founder is preparing the next one, SAM Broadcaster 2013 – Sneak Peeks. Until then, stay tuned!
Pascal
Managing Director
Spacial.com
