New Idea

I think some serious research is called for and look into any other online radio stations. Do radio stations not need a broadcasting licence - not sure if this applies to online stations.

Your research needs to cover how you are going to generate sufficient income to meet your liabilities. What do you know about the music industry that you could offer the business, other than having an interest?

Have you seen my post @ http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=7455&highlight=

Do you actually build the websites yourself? Yours appears to fail the W3C web accessibility guidelines.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.t6c.co.uk/

Those who build websites over £10,000 are 99% likely to have it accessible.

In my opinion, I would avoid affiliations at all cost because they are risky and from experience, disputes arise from these

Adam

What are you going to bring to the table that http://www.q4music.com doesn't have?

Steve

Your first problem is that it's not by a very long way a new idea. There are many music sites and have been for a long time.

Your second problem is that you have no idea about business, you haven't done any research, you have no clue how to build it and you have no funding.

That's the Dragon's Den stuff over with.

But don't dispair just get more realistic.

If you have a real love of music and find a unique idea, start small and develop it quietly. The beauty of the web is anybody can at least start......

On the validation point the error is irrelevant.

I dont care if ANY site I help create passes w3c validation, I ONLY care that it displays the SAME on ALL browsers users may use.

Does google.com or yahoo.com pass.

NO.

Plus the W3C people missed out the background tag.

A pritty basic one with 1000000 uses. It was left to netscape to add it themselves.

Validation is a good target, but nothing beats 2 or three machines set up using several differnet OS Browser combos.

BTW yes online radio needs to pay mcps and prs royalties.

You used to be able to get a dev licence for £1 for 6 months. Not sure if this is still the case.

google mcps

D

I've also been thinking about a music service site but my advice would be to target unsigned music from new bands and artists. That way you avoid the problems of copyright and also offer something different.
I would suggest specialising in a certain type of music and try and get new artists to upload music to your site.
If you set up an internet radio service you could then sell albums and singles off the back of that and because your overheads are so low you would be able to offer the artists a better percentage of the profits.

I've also been thinking about a music service site but my advice would be to target unsigned music from new bands and artists. That way you avoid the problems of copyright and also offer something different.

I would suggest specialising in a certain type of music and try and get new artists to upload music to your site.

This is a far better idea.

First of all, it's providing a service that's unique. Secondly, the big boys aren't really interested in this segment of the market, they want to promote their sites off the back of bands that are already known.

The question here is where the money;s going to come from. What you could do is have some free tracks and some "pay to download" tracks for each artist. Or a link to download/order the CD where the website would get a few quid per CD.

Done right and promoted well, this is an idea that could work.

Steve

Handson

Just because a site fails the W3C validation does not necessarily mean a site is in accessible. Equally just because a site passes validation does not make it an accessible site.

Take a look at one of your own pages for example:

http://www.handsongroup.co.uk/access.html

How exactly does a screen reader read the main body of text???

Sorry I am not trying to score points. Its just that It can be a bit demoralising when somebody posts on here and they are instantly criticized for having some minor (often irrelevant) validation failures.

I believe in trying to achieve W3C guidelines, I am currently rewriting my own site in ASP.NET 2.0 as this will remove some of the ASP.NET 1.1 proprietary tags and attributes that are currently causing it to fail. I do think however that validation is sometimes held as some sort of holy grail that must be achieved at all costs. In reality, despite the best of intentions it can often be impossible to a achieve 100% validation, all of the time, on large dynamically generated sites (especially CMS type sites that allow user to update the content themselves).

I admit that the handsongroup.co.uk website may be inaccessible. This site is old and we are currently building a new one, which will pass validation. Our more recent site is http://www.handsonaccess.com

My original point was constructive and I don't like web designers who offer a service and know little, or demonstrate little knowledge of W3C. Proof is in your own site. It is regardless whether Google/Yahoo have passed or not, but more about demonstrating good practice yourself.

I do think you have the wrong attitude because you are not assisting your clients in their best interests. A more accessible website is more likely to be search engine friendly. It is not all about 'access' but also 'usability'

My posting was not intended to discredit you, but to make a valid point. A professional web designer will have a site complying with W3C

I am sorry you think I have the wrong attitude. For your information I spent 10 years as a RNIB computer volunteer. If I had the time this is something I would like to continue, unfortunately I had to give it up to spend more time on my family and business commitments.

When I first started working with visually impaired people most of them had not heard of the Internet. As the internet developed I helped visually impaired people get access the internet. I have spent many hours working sat with visually impaired people as they used the internet with screen readers and Braille keyboards etc. My point is that just because a site passes the W3C validation does not mean the site is accessible. As you point out it is much more about 'usability'. The link to your old site has a huge block of text that is actually an image file. No screen reader would be able to read that. It would be easy to make that page pass validation but all the while the text is in an image file it will be inaccessible.

The home page to my own site currently fails because the 'FORM' tag has a 'name' attribute. This is a proprietary attribute that is used by the Visual Studio IDE to dynamically compile the code that is rendered into HTML by the ASP.NET framework. It is not meant to be read by the browser, it is more of a 'comment' for the ASP.NET framework. Microsoft have acknowledged that these tags do not render strictly compliant HTML and have rectified the situation with the ASP.NET framework. As I said I am in the process of upgrading my site to ASP.NET 2.0. Also all new sites will be written in ASP.NET 2.0.

The point I was trying to make is that REALISTICALLY, large dynamic CMS type sites will always struggle to be 100% compliant. This does not mean they are wholly inaccessible. It also does not mean that the people who write them are 'unprofessional'

Regards

Dotty

ps If anybody would like to consider volunteering some of there time to help visually impaired people please visit this link.

http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/PublicWebsite/public_v_prof_techcom.hcsp

A little time spent doing this will help you appreciate that accessibility goes beyond simply having a website W3C compliant



Edited for 'typos'