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Do I have to register to listen to music on SongPlanet.com?
Absolutely not! We never require anyone to register to listen to the great Indie music available on SongPlanet.com.

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How can I listen to SongPlanet Radio?
There are links to the radio stream on the SongPlanet navigation menu (top of every page) under the "Radio" button. Choose the link based on your player (Windows Media, Winamp or other), click and your player should start streaming!

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Which audio player do you recommend?
We recommend Nullsoft's Winamp Basic - it has many cool features and requires very little of your computer's resources to run! You can get it here: Nullsoft Winamp

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My audio player opens, but nothing happens - no music plays.
Make sure your player's "file associations" are setup correctly. You will usually find this under the player's "options" settings. For Winamp/most others: Make sure it is setup to play MP3 and M3U file types. For Windows Media Player 9, 10, 11: Under tools -> options -> file types make sure WMA, WMV and ASF are selected (if these file types are selected AND grayed out, click each of the three file type boxes to change to "un-grayed out" but still selected). If you're sure these settings are correct and it still won't play (and you are running Microsoft Windows operating system), try clearing your browser's cache. If that still doesn't work, try also clearing your browser's cookies (click here for more info). Microsoft XP using Internet Explorer 6+ sometimes caches errors and then redisplays that error every time you reload a page!

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Is there any way to listen to a selection of songs or a playlist?
Our Auto-DJ, Nomad, streams 24/7 except when a live DJ is on the air. Nomad only plays songs that have been deemed worthy by SongPlanet's staff of DJs, so you will only get great songs! You can also stream our current Top 40 or Top 100 by selecting them from the "RADIO" button from the navigation menu at the top of any page or from the "play all" links located at the top of most of our Live DJ Radio Charts pages.

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How do I get my songs played on SongPlanet Radio?
That's easy! Signup as an artist on SongPlanet.com and provide us with great music! Our live DJs review all new songs and add the ones they like to their playlists.

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Do I need to be a paying member in order to get radio airplay?
Not at all! The only requirement for being played is to have a song that a DJ likes!

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How do I get to be a Featured Radio Artist?
All artists who are on the DJ charts (excluding the "All Songs Played" and "Last Show Set List" charts) are eligible to be featured radio artists. You must have a bio of at least 320 characters, an artist photo, and a real location in your artist profile to be a featured radio artist.

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My songs don't sound right on my player. Is there something wrong with the SongPlanet encoder?
Internet radio, and for that matter, any radio, compresses the sound files. This is most likely to be noticed by artists who are very familiar with the nuances of their own songs. The song files that are available free to listeners that visit an artist page are encoded by SongPlanet from the original MP3 that is uploaded by the artist (a 192 kbps MP3) to a 128 kbps Joint Stereo MP3, for hifi, and a 24 kbps mono MP3, for lofi. For the best sounding streams, we recommend encoding your songs from the original CD or .wav file using Joint Stereo mode (this is in addition to our requirement of 192 kbps constant bit-rate MP3 files). Digital download sales allow your fans to purchase the original, higher quality MP3.

If you'd like to check out some different audio recorder/editor/encoder software, click here.

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Where is the artist login?
In the navigation menu across the top of the page there is a button labeled Artists. When you hover over this button with your cursor, a drop-down menu appears and you'll see the Artist Login link. Click this link and a new window will open with the artist login page. The image below shows an example of what it should look like. If you do NOT see the drop-down menus, check your security software. Some over-zealous software (CA Security Suite is the only one we know of for sure) can prevent these menus from showing. In the interim, you can access the login page from the Site Map page (click here)

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I can't login or when I try to login all I get is a white screen!
This can be due to two things - a corrupt session cookie and/or the wrong bookmark for the artist login page. Make sure your bookmark is NOT to songplanet.com/artists/index.php (it should be songplanet.com/artists/login.php). For the cookie problem, follow the directions below (click here). MAC cookie deletion is similar, as well.

New Artists - If you just signed up and have not validated your account using the link in the email that was sent to you, that is why you cannot login. Check your SPAM folder if you don't see this email in your inbox. Be sure your SPAM filter is set to allow email from songplanet.com.

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Why is my Windows operating system so erratic and what should I do when things don't work?
Isn't it amazing that the software that costs the most, has the most problems?

Here is a general rule of thumb procedure for troubleshooting Windows problems (because of space constraints - this could easily fill an entire Web site - we will briefly touch on Internet related Microsoft programs).

The most common (and irritating) method for fixing Windows problems is a reboot. If that doesn't work, try clearing your browser cache.

Internet Explorer 4, 5 and 6
Close all your browsers except one. Go to a Web site that you don't visit very often. On your browser's tool bar (at the top) select Tools -> Internet Options -> General and then click on the button labeled Delete Files... just below the title Temporary Internet files. Close your browser and then open it. This can fix problems with Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, MS Office products and almost any other Internet related program.

If the above steps do not work, repeat the instructions and add this step: after you click the Delete Files... button, click the Delete Cookies... button, then close your browser and reboot your computer.

Internet Explorer 7
Close all your browsers except one. Go to a Web site that you don't visit very often. On your browser's tool bar (at the top) select Tools -> Internet Options -> General and then click on the button labeled Delete... just below the title Browsing history. Close your browser and then open it.

If the above steps do not work, repeat the instructions and add this step: after you click the Delete... button, click the Delete Cookies... button below the title Cookies, then close your browser and reboot your computer.

Firefox
Firefox uses the same procedure as Internet Explorer, except for the location of the cache tools. On Firefox, go to Tools -> Clear Private Data.

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How long has SongPlanet.com and SongPlanet Radio been around?
SongPlanet.com first came online in April, 2001 as an online collaboration tool for musicians. In June of 2003, RiffTrader.com, in partnership with Flying Spot, Inc., went online with the same collaboration tools and SongPlanet.com was put in mothballs in anticipation of relaunching as a place for musicians to showcase their finished product. SongPlanet Radio was launched in November of 2003 and the new SongPlanet.com launched in January of 2004.

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When a Web site talks about traffic, what's the difference between "hits" and "page views"?
A Web page is built from many different objects (images, JavaScript files, CSS files, etc.) and each time a single Web page is "viewed" every object counts as a hit. One page view can be many hits - some are over 1,000 per page! A "page view" is just what it seems - one page viewed by one person. So, don't be fooled when a site brags about "1 million hits" unless you put it in perspective. At SongPlanet we do well over 100 million "hits" in a single day!

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Does iTunes (or any other player) let people freely download my song files?
Unless you set your songs to be available for free download (not available on free artist accounts), no song files can be downloaded to any kind of device. Many players (iTunes included) will save the URL to a song in it's play list, but no song file is downloaded nor can this be transferred to an iPod, another computer or any other device.

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What is an Ogg Vorbis 32 KBPS LOFI stream?
Ogg Vorbis is a popular MP3 stream that provides a much higher quality LOFI audio signal than the MPEG (MP3) format. This allows people with dial-up connections to listen to SongPlanet Radio. You'll need an Ogg Vorbis capable audio player (such as Winamp Basic) - unfortunately, Windows Media Player does not support the Ogg Vorbis format. More and more cell phones are also able to play this format - call it "SongPlanet Radio To-Go!"

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I can't find the answer to my question here!
You can use our feedback form to ask questions, make comments, suggestions or give us some feedback, just click here.

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