Review Time
101.7 The Fox is back thanks to Live365I started my radio career on a rock station in Sonoma County called The Fox. Sadly the station has been off the air for over 10 years now, but thanks to Live365, I was able to recreate the listening experience we all shared back in the good ol days of the early 2000's for like $60/month. They supply all the licensing and cloud scheduling software, which I could never afford by myself. I have friends that use radio.co but they don't cover licensing and their support is horrible compared to Live365.Highly recommend!
101.7 The Fox is back thanks to Live365I started my radio career on a rock station in Sonoma County called The Fox. Sadly the station has been off the air for over 10 years now, but thanks to Live365, I was able to recreate the listening experience we all shared back in the good ol days of the early 2000's for like $60/month. They supply all the licensing and cloud scheduling software, which I could never afford by myself. I have friends that use radio.co but they don't cover licensing and their support is horrible compared to Live365.Highly recommend!
I am not sure where to begin . . . the past two months trying to get our platform (K-Radio) on a timely 'real-time' rotation has been totally impossible. We have dealt with 'events' not able to be programmed back to back at selected hours. Example: going into a new day, top of the hour, can be scheduled, however, scheduling the next hour (1 am) a "warning" would appear indicating 'overlapping,' therefore, that hour event cannot be programmed. Needless to say, the prior hour would be perfectly timed. Other issues we were experiencing; going into the new hour - the previous hour, the first song, would air instead of the first song of the 'new hour.' Plus, the top-of-the-hour packaged ID would repeat once it has already aired. Thus, unbalancing the rotation's timely progression by 16 to 20 minutes depending upon the 'time length' of the unscheduled first song (domino effect). Anyway, it was a challenge to obtain the attention of Live365's support staff (requesting a telephone conversation - hasn't happened) or, anyone for that matter to address these never-ending issues. On top of all this, I informed them that I would no longer program our platform because it was a waste of time and extremely frustrating trying to achieve our goals under the given circumstances - the monthly payments were still debited. To date, our issues have not been resolved. This was never my experience with the prior Live365.
I am not sure where to begin . . . the past two months trying to get our platform (K-Radio) on a timely 'real-time' rotation has been totally impossible. We have dealt with 'events' not able to be programmed back to back at selected hours. Example: going into a new day, top of the hour, can be scheduled, however, scheduling the next hour (1 am) a "warning" would appear indicating 'overlapping,' therefore, that hour event cannot be programmed. Needless to say, the prior hour would be perfectly timed. Other issues we were experiencing; going into the new hour - the previous hour, the first song, would air instead of the first song of the 'new hour.' Plus, the top-of-the-hour packaged ID would repeat once it has already aired. Thus, unbalancing the rotation's timely progression by 16 to 20 minutes depending upon the 'time length' of the unscheduled first song (domino effect). Anyway, it was a challenge to obtain the attention of Live365's support staff (requesting a telephone conversation - hasn't happened) or, anyone for that matter to address these never-ending issues. On top of all this, I informed them that I would no longer program our platform because it was a waste of time and extremely frustrating trying to achieve our goals under the given circumstances - the monthly payments were still debited. To date, our issues have not been resolved. This was never my experience with the prior Live365.
My experience with Live365 has been short and very unhappy. I've only been with them for maybe 6 weeks, but they have been 6 of the longest weeks of my life! I've had nothing but trouble with my station's stream since signing up. It glitches, it sounds like another station is stepping on it, like a weak FM signal. For more than a week after I opened my support ticket they wasted time trying to push the issue on me and my gear. I have a high-end studio, and have checked it up and down and it's clean. Plus I am streaming the signal to another service and that stream is clean! They finally noted that there was a problem and their response was that they were too busy with rolling out a new feature to work on it! Imagine a paying customer being told that? Shocking to me. How about fix what is basic before you look to roll out new features??? I got so fed up with their finger pointing so I decided to turn on AutoDJ and stop broadcasting from my studio. Amazing, the issue is STILL there! I left it on AutoDJ for 3-4 days for them to fix. Communication is terrible. Now today is Friday, and the station has been sounding horrible all week because their AutoDJ is terrible, and no processing, etc. So I switched it back to Live this afternoon, and the same issue still exists. My last two emails went completely unanswered, So I logged into the portal to see if I could get an update on the support ticket itself. I got an update alright. THEY CLOSED THE TICKET 4 DAYS AGO! No resolution, no response, NOTHING! Forget about radio services, this is THE WORST company I've ever dealt with, hands down. They are unresponsive, provide substandard services and expect you to pay full price for all this with a smile! Any company can experience issues, it's technology, and things go wrong, I completely understand that, but Live365 has proven that they don't care! No one has reached out to me to make good on the issue, instead emails go unanswered. I've made several suggestions to them about moving my station to another server unless this is completely system wide, they don't even acknowledge anything I say. When they answer it's in short sentences mean to appease me, but it just angers me more. The only reason I am still there is the licensing part. If/when I figure out how to do music reporting on my own, I'll cut them as fast as I can.They are a terrible company. I'm not sure music reporting is more painful than this horrendous experience. Find another way to broadcast your station!!Update: Monday Aug 9, 2021:I was just contacted by Live365 who would like more information.This made me think that I should post an update to this review.In the last 6-8 weeks, they've completely resolvedthe issue. I am completely happy with the sound quality. I don't know what they did, but it slowly started to get better, and I've not heard one glitch in maybe 2 months.To be clear, my issues with Live365 are not based around technical issues. I have been an IT Professional for 25 years, and understand that technical issues happen. My issue is how it was handled from a customer service perspective. For example, when I first inquired about their service, the customer service was top notch! Someone walked me through the platform, did a complete demo for me, etc. He was a great first ambassador for Live365. However, that set my expectations very high. When the issue first appeared, I opened a ticket. My first impressions of support immediately irked me. It felt like I was being placated. Like I didn't understand what I was talking about, and all systems were fine, and it must be my end. The burden of proof was on me, which is why I eventually disconnected myself for that 4 days period to prove I had nothing to do with the issues. It took way too many weeks for them to FINALLY explain that they had hardware issues that they needed to address. But again, that came with a bizarre answer of not having enough staff to address this because they were busy rolling out new features. WOW! I'm paying full price for a substandard product, and that's OKAY? Hmmm.As I mentioned, today the issue is solved. It took far too long, I spent too many hours defending my systems in the process. Not to mention months of paying full price for a substandard level of service.I am a very busy person, and always willing to work with support, but I felt like I was wasting my time during this incident and eventually, just gave up. Luckily, they did resolve it technically. However, I dread the thought of another issue.For those of us who want to do things legally and pay our licensing fees, there are no other options, which is why I am still a customer. I am happy to speak with anyone from Live365 to answer any questions about this incident and how it unfolded from my perspective. Unfortunately, this wasn't handled well at all.
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