Q1. What is BitJam?

A1:
BitJam is a demoscenish radio which will only play demoscene or related material. Obviously what is related to the demoscene can be a pretty vague definition, so it might be better to state what it ISN'T. We won't play: Commercial music (if you have released music on cd and give us permission to stream it and if it is scene related then it's another matter!), some random guy's music (even though it might not be commercial/copyrighted), adverts, etc. It's all just pretty much common sense

For further information please follow this link: BitJam - Banging Your Ear Drums article by Spectral and Alien

Q2. How do I listen to BitJam?

A2:
There are currently 3 streams being offered, URLs:
ogg/vorbis (80k): http://marmalade.scenesat.com:8086/bitjam.ogg.m3u
ogg/vorbis (24k): http://marmalade.scenesat.com:8086/bitjam-lo.ogg.m3u
mp3 (128k): http://marmalade.scenesat.com:8086/bitjam.mp3.m3u

To listen to these you obviously need a player. There are many, but I will mention a few:
Winamp, foobar2000, vlc, helix, xmms, Amarok, mpg123, ogg123, etc.

For more detailed information on players, etc. check out:
http://bitfellas.org/page.php?78

If you have any problems to listen, just ask in the forum and we will help you.

Q3. Can I request tunes to be played? How do I request?

A3:
Of course you can request!
To request simply locate the tune by either searching or browsing and then press the "bell" icon in the column labeled "Req". A popup (javascript needed) will inform you wether your request was accepted or not.

There are also some rules involved, simply because we want to promote variation in the stream, and avoid one user requesting all his favourite tunes all the time.
1: Each user has 5 requests.
2: A request takes 2 hours to "respawn" or "grow back", which means you can request a maximum of 5 tunes every 2 hours.
3: Only 2 songs from the same author can be in the queue at the same time. This also applies to tracks where the author co-produced it with someone else. So for example if Tip & Firefox - Musiklinjen and Tip - Gummisnoppis is in the queue, then no further requests of Tip songs will be accepted. You could still request one more track by Firefox, though.
4: After requesting a tune, it will stay locked for 36 hours before it can be requested again. Why? Simply because again we would like to promote variation in the stream, if we had 24 hours locktime every day at the same time a user could ALWAYS request the same tunes, and also for overseas listeners all the good tracks might be locked when they wake up. (Exception to the rule: newly added tunes are only locked for 2 hours the first 5 days in the playlist).
5: The queue can be at most 2 hours long, after that you have to wait until it shrinks below this length before anyone can request again. This is to stop the queue from becoming too long and users not being able to hear their requests.
6: Abusing these rules by creating "fake" accounts and similar will not be tolerated, and we sincerely hope this will never happen, but if it does: be prepared to face repercussions
7: If noone requests our DJ, BitBot, will step in and request for us. His selection is totally random.

PS. Observe that the popup window should be brought to the front of your screen if it is minimized and you request another tune. For this to work you need JavaScript 1.1, otherwise it won't pop to the front.

Requesting a random tune

There is also an option to request a random tune, to do this simply push the dice-icon in the menu (javascript needed) and a popup will appear with a randomly selected tune and now you can select either request (requests it, doh!), another (generate another random tune) or no (simply closes the popup window). after requesting you will be asked if you want to request another random tune or not.

Q4. What is "Favourites", and how does it work?

A4:
It is what the name suggests: A list of your favourite songs in the playlist. Call it a bookmark or top list or such. To add tunes to your favourite list, simply locate the tune and press the "+" icon in the column labeled "Fav". When pressed (javascript needed) a popup will appear telling you that the tune has been added to your favourites. Now when you locate the tune again you will instead see a "-" icon which will, when pressed, remove the song in question from your favourite list. To go to your favourites page, simply push the heart-icon in the menu.


Q5. Hey you don't have xxx by yyy, can i add songs to the playlist?

A5:
If you want to have some tracks that are currently not in the playlist added, simply go to: http://bitfellas.org/page.php?86 and read the information on how to support us with new tunes.


Q6. Is there a bot in IRC and how does it work?

A6:
Yes indeedelidoo there is a bot in various channels and his nick is "BitJam". It can be used to see what has been played, will be played and what is being played currently. The commands are as follows:

1: !help - Should be obvious what this does
2: !next (or !queue) - Displays 5 tracks from the queue.
3: !now - Displays what is currently playing and who requested it.
4: !last - Displays 5 tracks from the history.
5: !stream - Displays links to the stream
6: !radio - Displays links to the stream

Q7. What are these boxes to add BitWorld/pouet/csdb links for?

A7:
Quite simply they are there so any registered user can submit info about which demo/cracktro/musicdisk/etc that tune was released in. To help us make the database grow and submit this info, simply do as follows:

Find out what the ID is for the production: Locate the production on either http://www.pouet.net, or, http://bitworld.bitfellas.org (BitWorld Demo DB) or http://csdb.c64.org

The ID is the number you will find in the URL for each production. For example, let's say you just heard a song that you know is in "second reality" by future crew, locate the demo on pouet.net. once you've found it, examine the URL for the demo which in this case will be http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=63
And thus the ID of this production is "63". To find the ID for BitFellas DB or CSDb the process is just the same, but the URLs will look slightly different.

Now that you know the ID, just enter it in the Pouet textbox at the song information page for the song and press "Add ID". Voila! You have now added a link to the production at pouet, and the screenshot should appear at the BitJam song info page.

PLEASE only post links to demos that you are sure the song was part of. And only post links that has EXACTLY this song in it, for example if an amiga demo has the Amiga version of Mad Max - 7 Gates Of Jambala then don't add this link to the Atari ST version of the song.

Q8. Why does BitJam say that xxx is played, but right now there is another song playing!

A8:
There is a slight difference in what is displayed at the webpage and what is actually playing in your player because of several reasons. But mostly it is because your player probably has a buffer that it fills with data, so if your buffer is 64KB (which is pretty standard among players), it means that if you are listening to the ogg/vorbis 80kbit/s (10KB/s) stream, then this buffer holds roughly 6,5 seconds of music that it has received, but hasn't actually played yet. There are also buffers in the streaming software that we use, so normally you will see about 10 seconds of difference. This is totally normal and there is not much we can do to make it lower because of the way tcp works. You CAN lower the buffer size in most players, but keep in mind that if there are hiccups in the network between you and the streaming server, then you might have to rebuffer more often, than if you have a bigger buffer.

Q9. Who are behind this radio then?

A9:
Spectral is the guy who coded everything.
Alien is the guy who forces spectral to code everything.
Buzz is the guy who calls spectral on the phone for 6 hours so he can't code everything.

Various people also deserves mentioning for providing material for the playlist:
Grue, Talus, Soasc= (C64 stuff)
Grim (CPC stuff)
Skatoony / cosmic-dreams.net (Various "Exotic" PC Soundcard recordings)
Bobic / 4sceners and back2roots