Internet Radio for Charities

Musikhjälpen (Music Aid) is a well-known Swedish annual event that takes place for an entire week towards the end of the year. They often work with some big names within Sweden like SR International (Radio Sweden), SVT (Swedish Television), and Radiohjälpen (public service help organisation). Uppsala, Sweden was chosen to raise money for charity this time around. 3 presenters get locked in a glass cage and spearhead the broadcast. Listeners and viewers donate money for a specific theme. 2017’s theme was “children are not for sale”.

Listeners and viewers were welcome to send song requests and send greetings. In addition to this, there were many interviews, live performances, and competitions that centred around the year’s theme. Celebrities got involved by either guest appearing in the studio, donating money, and auctioning off something they own to contribute to the charity.

RadioLUR: Student Radio Helping Raise Money

In addition to the major event, smaller events were organized around Sweden to help out. In Växjö, the local student radio station (RadioLUR) and local television channel (Open Channel Växjö) broadcast the local event called "Växjö Campus for Musikhjälpen 2017" between 14th – 15th December 2017.

The event was broadcast via internet radio and television for 24 hours from a cafe in the student area Campus at Linneuniversitetet i Växjö in Linnaeus University with student associations that send 1 hour at a time. In order to broadcast good content around the clock, students pre-recorded interviews carried out by one "correspondent" from RadioLUR and Open Channel in Växjö broadcasted out between the exchange of programmes.

During the broadcast there was live music, competitions, information about the important topics of the year. Although, not everything ran as it should have, RadioLUR were able to broadcast 24/7 using the Radio.co platform.

There were a few problems during the show on our end, but overall everything went smoothly and we were satisfied with everything.

Overall, the charity was a success! Having broken a new record for amount of money donated, RadioLUR and the other organised events did a fantastic job at reaching their target audience.

How Everything Worked

RadioLUR broadcast simultaneously via local television, internet radio, and on their FM radio station. The setup for their station consisted of:

• 4 microphones for each presenter.
• Behringer U-Control UCA222 with audio-interface and audio-card for music and jingles.
• Yamaha mixer to manage seperate audio channels.
• Sonifex PS-SEND to relay the audio online.

They used used 4 microphones with red-arms and two table racks running through a computer with audio-card/audio-interface (Behringer U-Control UCA222) that played music and jingles. Audio was sent through the XLR/Tele/RCA to the Yamaha mixer, which pushed the signal to Image Mixer and Audio Out from Image Mixer to Stream Encoder for Sound (Sonifex PS-SEND) and finally out to Radio.co.

The signal was also sent from Radio.co to a broadcast computer for local radio, which was sent out on Swedish local FM-channel 102.4MHZ with a 30 second delay.

Many thanks to all who set up and helped make this event possible. Thanks to Radio.co for an incredibly good reception and support. We highly recommended them as a partner!