KAHM 102.1 AZ last of the EZ BM stations stops streaming

Has anyone noticed KAHM stopped streaming? Was it a cost cutting decision? Site states they stopped in September.

Don't know anything about KAHM, but reportedly another EZ/BM exile is almost ready to restart as an on-line outlet only. Tom Jones sold off KNXR Rochester MN, but you can keep tabs on his 97Five project here: https://www.facebook.com/97Five/

KAHM lost it's founder and general manager, Lew Silverstein, in January 2015. Long time announcer, Veronica Tyler left on an extended leave of absence in July and returned just yesterday, November 6th. She has been with KAHM for nearly 25 years. The station stopped streaming on September 14th. It was reported that another streaming site had stopped their BM offering. Those listeners switched to KAHM.INFO, causing the server and site to crash, it has been reported. Finally, a new station, licensed to Bagdad, AZ, about 70 miles West of Prescott, at 101.7 fm has required KAHM translator, K269EE, also at 101.7, to transmit in a more NorthEasterly direction, away from Bagdad, AZ. The music continues instrumentally based with some newer and older vocals interspersed to keep things interesting.

Prescott Joe said:

KAHM lost it's founder and general manager, Lew Silverstein, in January 2015. Long time announcer, Veronica Tyler left on an extended leave of absence in July and returned just yesterday, November 6th. She has been with KAHM for nearly 25 years. The station stopped streaming on September 14th. It was reported that another streaming site had stopped their BM offering. Those listeners switched to KAHM.INFO, causing the server and site to crash, it has been reported. Finally, a new station, licensed to Bagdad, AZ, about 70 miles West of Prescott, at 101.7 fm has required KAHM translator, K269EE, also at 101.7, to transmit in a more NorthEasterly direction, away from Bagdad, AZ. The music continues instrumentally based with some newer and older vocals interspersed to keep things interesting.

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The reason given by KAHM for ending the station's online stream was the large influx of ESCAPE listeners that began listening once SiriusXM dropped the channel from their lineup and moved it to an online-only venue. A friend of mine and I spearheaded a Facebook group to convince SiriusXM to bring ESCAPE back to the "bird", but by the time they decided to bring the channel back, the damage had been done...being KAHM was unable to afford the costs of the additional ESCAPE listeners and opted to end their online stream. However, it might have been a case where KAHM had been considering ending the streaming for financial reasons, anyway, and the addition of the ESCAPE listeners was just another reason (or excuse, maybe) to pull the plug on the stream.

According to one my Yahoo groups KAHM will resume streaming. But you have to pay.

Beginning February 1st, 2016 KAHM, FM 102.1, will indeed be available
online by subscription. The cost will be $20.00 per month, payable by
credit card. Unfortunately, many of the past online listeners will have no
way to know this, unless they check back to the official KAHM website.

Prescott Joe said:

Unfortunately, many of the past online listeners will have no
way to know this, unless they check back to the official KAHM website.

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Presumably the station management was looking at options when they killed the original stream in September. What they should have done was, starting right before they shut it down, put an announcement at the website (as close to the "listen now" button as possible) that the stream would probably have to cease due to royalty fees increases, ISP costs, whatever reasons applied, and give the listeners a little one line form (the HTML code is incredibly easy) to give their e-mail addresses if they wanted to be advised of a possible resumption of same. Had they done that, they'd have a whole file full of people they could send an e-mail blast to.

As it stands now, only a portion of their former listeners will know, as Joe points out ... and how many of those will feel inclined to ante up $20 a month to hear a single stream?

Six months from now, I will not be surprised if a new announcement about the stream ending will be made, as the management wonders where everyone went, and they could have planned for it better.

Prescott Joe said:

Beginning February 1st, 2016 KAHM, FM 102.1, will indeed be available
online by subscription. The cost will be $20.00 per month, payable by credit card. Unfortunately, many of the past online listeners will have no way to know this, unless they check back to the official KAHM website.

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Who will be fool enough to pay $20 a month for an internet audio stream? No way will the market support that.

If music royalties have come to this (and why else would they charge?), something has to be done. Not good for KAHM or any other station that's trying this,. Not good for the artists they play or those who wrote the songs they perform (since few will likely buy, therefore they won't be paid as much). Not good for the listeners. Not good for anybody.

I'm on a limited budget, so these stations think they want me to pay $20 bucks a month for listening to a single stream? Not on your life! I'll endure short commercials if I want to listen to great music online! This Copyright Royalty Board decision to raise rates for small webcasters really sucks!

Twenty dollars a month for a single stream? Even SiriusXM charges less than that for a month and they have Escape and many other channels. There are many Internet stations playing beautiful music. Who would pay $20 a month for ONE station? What are they thinking?

benale said:

What are they thinking?

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I'm sure they're thinking that they are so "special" that their devotees will surrender any amount of money to listen to them.

It's the same kind of "special" that people like Jim Bakker and Robert Tilton thought they were.

Living and working in Australia for over 5 years, I listened to KAHM online virtually everyday.
While the music might be available elsewhere, the local Prescott news, commercials and
announcers were not. Listening helped relieve my sense of homesickness on many, many
occasions. Thinking about the little KAHM Studio buildings along Henry St/ 6th St, having
visited there many times, gave me comfort. There's a reason why Prescott is so often
named one of the "Best Places to Live" or "Best Places to retire."
Is $20.00 per month too much for a single stream of music? Probably.....
But why do people buy high end, luxury cars when they can get something else for far
less that does essentially the same thing??? Fortunately, I do not have to make the
decision whether to subscribe to KAHM online, since I live in Prescott.
But.....I'd gladly pay the $20.00 if I lived outside the range of the Mingus Mtn transmitter.
Whether this is enough to warrant continuation of the KAHM online stream is anybody's
guess.....

Prescott Joe said:

I'd gladly pay the $20.00 if I lived outside the range of the Mingus Mtn transmitter.
Whether this is enough to warrant continuation of the KAHM online stream is anybody's
guess.....

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The question is, how many listeners are there who, like you, are willing to pay?