Snakenet Metal Radio
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Snakenet Metal Radio (SNMR) [1] is a net-based radiostation, which specialises in playing heavy metal music and its subgenres. The service was founded in 1998 by Jerry "Snake" Storch and Jeremy "Ozzman" Hill. The radio station and website has become increasingly popular amongst the metal scene around the world. This popularity is in no small part due to the fact the audio stream includes listener requests, the music played is what the members of the site want to hear. There is a vast range of choice from a database of tens of thousands of metal songs. Snakenet has hundreds of active users from all over the world.
Contents |
[edit] Music on Snakenet
Snakenet plays heavy metal music. This covers music like black metal, death metal, power metal, doom metal, thrash metal, and gothic metal. Snakenet focuses on music that could be considered underground, which does not get air play on any commercial radio station broadcasting over traditional means.
This selection of music attracts die-hard fans.
The playlist of the station is mostly controlled by the users themselves via requests. There are tens of thousands of songs in the song database. Users may make requests or "bump" other users requests in order to get them played on the stream.
As SNMR is a radio station, it helps promote the bands by providing a way for the public to hear the music. \m/
[edit] Community
One of the key attractions to SNMR is the community focus, listener controlled audio stream, forums, chat channels and real world gatherings. These lead to a diverse, global userbase.
[edit] Battleboard
The Radio Station is accompanied by a discussion forum called The BattleBoard where members from all over the world can socialise.
[edit] Gatherings
The friendships established on the BattleBoard are extended into an active snakenet community in the real world. In its early years of growth, Snakenet sponsored several independent metal festivals in the US. After the popularity of these events with the members, Snakenet started a series of annual metal festivals promoting independent and unsigned acts known as Metal Nation [2]. These festivals drew members from across the US, and even some from Europe.
Every year over one hundred Snakenet Members gather at the The Friendship Team Network [3] in Northern Germany. These are mostly members from Europe; however, members have flown in from New Zealand and the US, showing the tightness of the community.
In addition to these major gatherings on both sides of the Atlantic, there are regular Gatherings all over Europe. This can be as small as three people having a barbecue together or as big as 30 people renting a house for the weekend.
Snakenet members regularly meet up at many other gigs and smaller ad-hoc gatherings.
This diverse and wide-spread membership inspired the creation of a Snakenet World Map [4], showing the distribution of members.
[edit] Chat
Snakenet also has an IRC channel for people to chat in real time.
[edit] Rest of the Site
[edit] The Metal Bible
Besides the radio and community aspects of snakenet, members contribute heavily to an encyclopedia called The Metal Bible. The metal bible attempts to list all Heavy Metal bands and their full discography along with official reviews and member submitted content. The Metal Bible is a work in progress.
