The Blast has won a national/international radio award on Tuesday night in Orlando, Florida, at the RAIN Internet Radio Awards. The Blast won in the category of "Best Single Stream Webcaster."
The Blast founder Colin "Cruz" Strombeck is in Orlando to receive the award and says "When we were announced as the winner, I was elated. One person who heard my brief acceptance speech said my smile lit up the room."
iPhone Blasters have been waiting patiently the last several weeks while hearing that Android Blasters now have 9 streams to choose from in the new Android app. Meanwhile, the current iPhone Blast app "only" has 5 streams in it. What's taking so long to release the new iPhone app? The causes are: mainly, Apple's developer site was hacked about 6 weeks ago or so and that has delayed the release of a lot of apps, and it's delayed new developers from getting in the game. The Blast has just been approved for a developer license, so once that is finalized, we will be ready to submit the new app for approval…which can be another relatively long delay. But! It's coming. Soon. Users of other smart phone types have been crying out for an app, but funds for new projects are currently dried up, so if you want to help towards that cause, you can give here: http://www.theblast.fm/wp/donations/
What do ESPN Radio, Pandora, iHeart, Slacker, TuneIn Radio and The Blast have in common? All of these entities are finalists in at least one of the categories of the RAIN (Radio And Internet Newsletter) Internet Radio Awards 2013, which will be held at the RAIN Summit in Orlando, Tuesday September 17th.
This is the second time The Blast has been a finalist. It was a top 5 finalist in 2011, the only other year The Blast entered the contest, and this year it is a Top 3 finalist in the category of "Best Single Stream Webcaster".
While The Blast simulcasts a bunch of streams at various bit rates (to suit various intenet connection speeds, data plans, and bandwidth usage limits), it only has 1 stream of original content.
Here is the link to the story on RAIN's website: http://kurthanson.com/category/issue-title/9913-here-are-finalists-2013-rain-internet-radio-awards
A quick trip to Orlando was not in the budget. We skipped the first awards ceremony we were nominated for, for that reason. Who would like to send our founder to this ceremony and RAIN Summit? You can make a secure online tax-deductible donation here: http://www.theblast.fm/wp/donations/
We're following an issue regarding the Multi-Stream Flash Player. Right now it seems to always work in Firefox, however the Flash Plugin in Chrome and Internet Explorer seems to be an issue and it is causing the player not to load. That's the theory at the moment. The fix, is to clear your cache, specifically your plugin data. Once reset, please try the player again. If it keeps failing, please email webmaster@theblast.fm and tell us as much as you can about the browser you are using and what steps you've taken.
Today, we've had some intermittent internet routing issues between our sending data center and the Virginia data center that hosts the 64k and 32k streams, causing dead air on those streams at times. If you experience this in one of our apps or in the multi-stream flash player on the website, switch to our 56k, 48k, or 24k AAC+ streams, as those are hosted in different locations than the affected streams.
For the second time, The Blast, aka "Blastrock from TheBlast.FM" is a semi-finalist for the award of Best Single Stream Webcaster in the RAIN (Radio And Internet Newsletter) Awards, which will be held September 17th in Orlando, Florida. In the bigger station and network categories, heavyweights such as ESPN Radio, Tune In Radio, and iHeart Radio are nominated. For more on the story, see RAIN's website: http://www.kurthanson.com/news/here-are-rain-awards-single-stream-webcaster-semifinalists
Find out what Disciple's Kevin Young thinks about the effects of illegal downloading. Here him talk about the next record and its progress. Disciple's front man and The Blast founder and afternoon on air personality Colin Cruz sat down over the weekend at The Blast booth at Lifelight Festival and caught up. Listen in Monday at 2 pm Eastern Time/ 11 am Pacific Time.
The new multi-stream flash/HTML5 player is having issues and is not currently working in some browsers. The most popular stream that normally works in that player is the CD quality 64k AAC+ stream. We have re-loaded the legacy 64k AAC+ flash player on to the website in case the multi-stream flash/HTML5 player does not work in your browser.
We have added our transparent CD quality 192 kbps mp3 stream to our Android app. That moves in to the app without you taking an app update. Just close and re-open your app. Clear the cache, clear data and force stop, if necessary, to see it.
In other Android app news…
The problem of invisible…to barely visible…metadata in our new Android app…a problem seen in at least the Samsung Galaxy S-4…has been fixed. If your Android phone is not on auto-update for apps, please take today's update. If you notice any other bugs or quirks, fill out a Blastback form: http://www.theblast.fm/wp/blastbacks/
Only the Sturgis Rally and Races draw more visitors to South Dakota every year. Expecting to top 100,000 people once again at this free fest, The Lifelight Festival is held every Labor Day weekend in southeastern South Dakota, just east of Worthing, a small town not too far from Sioux Falls. It draws people from as far away as central Canada and both U.S. coasts.
For those waxing nostalgic for the late, great Cornerstone Festival, this, too, is held on a large, dusty (but constantly watered down) farm with plenty of corn in sight. Blast bands this year include: Disciple, For Today, Thousand Foot Krutch, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Flyleaf, Phinehas, From The Eyes Of Servants, Southbound Fearing, Plumb, Silverline, Seventh Day Slumber, Ashes Remain, Fireflight, Random Hero, and Behold! The City.
