KZIONradio

Book, piano suite explore diverse LDS experience

LDS music is more than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Janice Kapp Perry and Jon Schmidt.

Mormoniana, a coffee-table book and companion piano suite pairing composers and visual artists who share LDS roots, defies expectations with its diversity of styles. Hymn settings and travelogues by “old guard” composers such as Robert Cundick and Crawford Gates are nestled among avant-garde works by the likes of Christian Asplund, co-founder of the Seattle Experimental Opera, and a jazz-influenced piece by Lisa DeSpain.

We had another power outage today I don’t know what the problem is with our power company but my PC barely started up when I got home this afternoon. The hard drive just clicked and spun for the first few minutes. Then I got an error that some file needed to be reinstalled because it was corrupted. I then tried restarting again and this time the hard drive would get to a certain spot and make a clicking noise, then restart again. Third time was a charm and she fired right up but it’s time to try to get a new hard drive.

Dixie Escalante? My computers cannot handle too many more of these power surges/outages.

In case you were wondering…There was a power outage at the studio this afternoon which shut down KZION for about five hours.

I will be out of town until Saturday night, the 19th of February. I will answer support requests and other email when I return. KZION should be good to go until I get back.

I added some discussion forums to the KZION website. I used to have some before the redesign and not much ever happened on them. We’ll give it another shot.

You’ll see them linked from the top of every KZION web page or from the community links sidebar.

Part of my KZION business plan is creating a better experience for the listener. I receive quite a few emails wondering when KZION will be available via satellite or in some other form besides the Internet. Satellite is probably not going to happen for some time. I got to thinking that there are alternative ways to deliver KZION other then through the stream.

Podcasting is becoming quite popular. If you’re not familiar with Podcasting Wikipedia has a nice description which in part says:

A podcast is much like an audio magazine subscription: a subscriber receives regular audio programs delivered via the Internet, and she or he can listen to them at her or his leisure.

KZION could easily supply 2, 4, or 6 hour segments of music available for Podcasting. I could even deliver specialized segments like the top 100 songs of the week, month or year.

How cool would it be for a family who is traveling by car to download a segment and burn it to CD then listen to KZION while in the car. Or maybe someone wants to listen to KZION at the gym and so downloads a segment to their iPod or MP3 player. KZION could make segments available on a regular basis, perhaps weekly.

I’m almost positive that audio segments would only be available to paying members or sponsors. It would take time to create these segments and provide technical support. There would also be an additional cost in bandwidth charges. I suppose I could attract advertisers to sponsor the segments and make them available to everyone.

But I think it’s a solid idea that would be of benefit to KZION listeners. I think I’ll pursue this a little further.

Carmen Rasmusen, local American Idol finalist and rapidly chart climbing country singer, will perform for the Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, the largest and most prestigious convention for country radio broadcasters nationwide.

Carmen was been invited to sign autographs at the BMI booth in addition a performance for BMI executives and guests as well as two other performances open to the entire convention.

After a successful reign on American Idol and a gold album under her belt for the 2003 American Idol love song collection, Carmen released her first solo album in January, simply titled “Carmen.”

A “country rock album with a little bit of bluegrass,” as Carmen calls it, “Carmen” features her original composition “Photograph,” which has begun a buzz among country executives and radio personalities alike. In the album’s first week of release, Carmen’s single, “Photograph” had become the most quickly added song to radio rotations nationwide and was also listed on Billboard chart expert, Fred Bronson’s list of top-10 singles.

Carmen will leave for Nashville after beginning her tour throughout the western United States but will quickly jump back into touring after the convention. The Country Radio Seminar runs March 2 – 4, 2005.

I don’t have all the specifics together yet but I wanted to give some advanced notice. I am looking for an investor/business partner for KZION. I have been treating KZION as a hobby for over four years, and I’ve finally decided that I want to work KZION for a living but I can’t do it by myself.

If you’re interested you can contact me at john at kzion dot com. Please don’t write me and say, I am interested. Let me know your background, what you see for the future of KZION, where you would like to take KZION, what you have to offer, etc.

I will be posting an official job posting but for now I can tell you I am looking for someone who lives in the states, preferably in northern Utah. I need someone who can meet with recording company executives and other potential partners. I prefer someone who has extensive Internet experience and ideally has programming and design experience. My partner also needs to be intimately familiar with KZION.

I am going to require some form of buy-in for two reasons. I have spent thousands of dollars to create and operate KZION over the years. There is value in the KZION brand including a detailed database of over 5,500 LDS tracks, custom software applications, hardware, customers, etc. I also want a partner that is serious about this relationship. Being financially vested in this partnership weeds out those that are not serious or unwilling to make a long term commitment.

KZION is a pioneer in LDS music and LDS radio and I believe now is the time to build on the foundation that exists. More and more money is being spent on Internet advertising and KZION could be the perfect vehicle for advertisers. There are also vertical markets that can be explored that could be easily adopted into a KZION business model.