Interview: The Womb - A digital rebirth of sound
By: L33tdawg
For those of you that haven't been kept in the loop, HITB has decided to start up a new monthly interview section in our e-zine. We started this last month in our Interview with the father of the Internet. This month we managed to get in touch with John Westley, Operations Director for The Womb (a site offering a pretty nifty streaming video/dance audio feed 24x7), to ask him more about the site and the technology that drives them.
How long has The Womb been in operation, and what was the reason for starting up a site of this nature?
The Womb started in 1997 to provide an outlet to nurture creative artists, performers and electronic music.
The Womb seems to be but one of the projects on your site. Could you perhaps tell us a little more of the other offerings, and how they all tie in together?
The Womb is striving to be a highbred production, recording, broadcasting and distribution company. We produce and record our artists tracks then provide them a broadcast and marketing vehicle to showcase and sell their work directly to our audience. We are also working on providing live club broadcasts and music videos on TheWomb.tv The 24/7 shop to provide digital downloads of our artists music is set to launch later this month. The store will allow the DJ’s to play their tracks, announce the name of it, and encourage anyone who likes it to click on the website to immediately purchase a copy electronically in the format of their choosing. This provides an instantaneous sale that hopefully will make us a market leader monetizing the distribution of music over the internet. The tracks will be priced at around $1-2 USD depending on length. This also will give listeners the convenience and time saving of downloading music of known quality and without having to encode them into different formats.
It seems like a fair bit of money has been put into the hardware, software, and maintenance cost, approximately what is your burn rate per month and how precisely are you guys paying for all this gear?
Our main revenue sources are from the syndication of our programming thru the Terra Lycos Networks. That is being supplemented with our sites advertising and music sales. Our burn is less than 10k per month and we are presently operationally revenue neutral. Most of the equipment and technology was purchased with funds raised from the majority ownership group of which I was the lead investor.
Could you tell us a little more about the hardware that you guys use in the studios (turn tables etc), and also about your servers? What software is used on these machines?
The needles are Ortofons-the cartridge, stylus and tables are Technics-the cd players are Pioneer CDJ100’s-the mixer is a Vestax PMC25. The signal is then compressed with an Alesis Dual Channel Compressor, encoded into Real and Windows Media and sent to servers around the world.
According to your site, you guys have made use of both Linux and NT servers. Any particular reason for the choice of machines? Why not have gone with an entirely NT based setup or an entirely Linux based outfit as opposed to the mix and match method?
We are currently switching over to all Windows servers to eliminate the mix and match compatibility issues.
Do the DJs that come on to spin get paid for the time that they’re there? How would someone go about getting onto The Womb to showcase his or her stuff?
We have a barter arrangement with the DJ’s to keep our overhead down. They each perform weekly 2 hour show in return for access to our studios and broadcast network to promote and sell their projects.
I’ve noticed in most cases, there’s usually an iMac in the studios. What is this machine used for in terms of the sound mixing process? If the iMac is used in the sound mix process, what software do you make use of?
The iMac is used for our DJ’s to receive email at Live@TheWomb.com and feedback when they are on the air. It is also used for tags, drops, and station identifications via the line-ins on the mixer. It is running OS9 and I believe the software playing them is what came bundled with it.
Considering the fact that most users around the world don’t have access to a lot of bandwidth (at least not yet), do you think the fact that The Womb consumes quite a high amount of bandwidth is a hindering factor to an increased number of users tuning in? Do you think that video + audio streaming is the best way to go with dance music, considering the fact that most users would perhaps be content to just listening to the stream without the visuals? Why?
We have worked extremely hard to provide a high quality broadcast while conserving bandwidth usage. To that end we have also started an audio only broadcast in the 28k range that dialup users can use. We are planning on splitting TheWomb.net off as a WAP for wireless users as soon as the new 2.5 & 3G networks become available. There is a certain voyeur factor involved in what we are doing. We have found that people want to see who that is(particularly with our female talent)and watch some of their mixing skills. We are best served by providing as many choices to our audience as we can to enjoy our programming. Also, Terra Lycos has us branded as their 24/7DJ and offer us as part of their DSL/Cable systems in different parts of the world.
Are there plans to cater to users who want a high(er) quality audio stream without the video?
We are doing that currently in the 28k WM format on our site. We obviously need to make that more visible and easier to access.
Do you think that with the increase in the number of always-on, high-speed connections, that more users will turn away from downloading pirated MP3s and instead move their attention to streaming audio?
They better since I got a lot of money on the line. Seriously, The ease and convenience of listening to and downloading the freshest music gathered from around the world without searching thru the Web Jungle is one of our best selling points.
Do you think that streaming audio will be sustainable business model considering the fact that most users would not be willing to part with their money for a subscription based service?
We are also planning on trying a trial subscription that is more like a membership. Anyone will be able to access our live streams but additional content and archives will be available for a yearly fee. We are also planning on providing tracks monthly to our members in the genre of their choice as part of this service.
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6.) Interview: The Womb - A digital rebirth of sound - L33tdawg
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9.) Of broadband gimmicks and the like - biatch0
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