Urban Voices Community Media Ltd.

🚨TODAY’S THE DAY. 🤣🎙️🎶🌐🎂🚨

What started as a daft thought, a bit of tinkering, some late-night “how hard can this be?” energy, and a frankly concerning amount of Greggs-fuelled ambition… has somehow become an actual live radio takeover. 🤣

So aye… today, Urban Voices Radio properly goes for it.

🎂 Andrea’s 70th Birthday Takeover begins from midday, with Andrea’s own hand-picked music playing across the day — decades of tunes, memories, classics, singalongs, guilty pleasures and the occasional “how on earth did that get in there?” moment. 🤣🎶

From 7pm, the microphones go live for:

🎙️ Is This Mic Live?
A chaotic, absolutely unpolished, very real birthday broadcast with Andrea, me, family, friends, birthday messages, memories, laughter, possible technical wobbling, and whatever else escapes the docking bay once we push the faders up. 🚀🤣

This is not slick corporate radio from a £40,000 glass box in MediaCity.

This is few folk, a few mics, some tunes, a birthday, a bit of chaos and a founder who has absolutely no business being allowed near this much broadcasting equipment. 🤣📻

So if you fancy joining us:

🌐 Listen live: https://urbanvoices.live
🔊 Alexa: “Alexa, play Urban Voices Radio”
🎧 Andrea’s Playlist From Midday
🎙️ Live microphones from 7pm

And because we’re all terribly modern now, there’ll also be a 30-day catch-up afterwards for anyone who misses the live fun.

Right then.
Coffee on.
Encoder on.
Starfleet on standby.
Greggs reserves holding.
Captain Potato attempting not to panic. 🤣🥔🎙️

This is Urban Voices.
Your station. Your voice. Radio your way.

🚨3 days and counting!! 📻🎧 🎙️ 🎚️🎛️🎶 🔉 🚨

Very interesting piece of Newcastle’s little known history..

In 1650, Newcastle’s witch trials ended with 16 ex*****ons on the Town Moor.

In 1649 the city hired a witch-finder from Scotland and a town crier urged complaints; around 30 people were accused and held before trial – most in Newgate on Newgate Street, with at least one (Jane Martin) confined in the Castle’s dungeon.

A year later the trials were heard at the Guildhall on the Quayside. On 21st August 1650, 16 of the accused were hanged on the Town Moor alongside other condemned prisoners; the spectacle was so large the council erected a special three-sided gallows.

Afterwards, St Andrew’s parish records noted the burials “for a wich”, one of the ways 'witch' was spelt in the 17th century.

To this day, it remains the largest mass ex*****on for witchcraft on a single day in English history.

Despite the terrifying scale of the ex*****ons, the event is largely forgotten today.

The true heartbreak of this story lies in the revelation that these 16 innocent people were murdered for nothing more than sheer profit. The witch-finder's deadly 'tests' were nothing but a rigged, murderous scam – he had been using a retractable trick needle to ensure his victims wouldn't bleed, sealing their fate.

He eventually confessed to framing over 200 women across the country to collect his bounties before he was finally executed himself.

Alice Townend, from Newcastle, is bidding to become the first woman to run the entire length of the Metro system.

Her epic 65 mile challenge gets underway at 3pm on Saturday, 8 Aug, at South Hylton.

Good luck Alice!

Alice Townend, from Newcastle, is bidding to become the first woman to run the entire length of the Metro system.

Her epic 65 mile challenge gets underway at 3pm on Saturday, 8 Aug, at South Hylton.

The run will see her track the Metro lines as closely as possible, taking in the fastest routes between all 60 stations. It's in aid of Women's Street Watch.

She's due to cross the finish line at Monument Metro station on Sunday.

🎙️ Urban Voices Radio is now quietly making a habit of actually streaming now.

Daily, from roughly 10am until 6pm, UVR is streaming non-stop music from across the decades while we test the systems, build the station and prepare for the moment somebody finally lets me near a live microphone.

A frankly reckless decision, but here we are. 🤣

Yer can listen online at:

🌐 https://urbanvoices.live

Or, for those who prefer to delegate basic tasks to a small electronic cylinder:

🗣️ “Alexa, Play, Urban Voices Radio.”

Aye, the Alexa skill is now live too.

So whether yer working, cleaning, hiding from responsibilities, reorganising a drawer that absolutely did not need reorganising, or sitting with a Greggs sausage roll wondering where it all went wrong…

Hoy Urban Voices Radio on.

Non-stop hits. Proper variety. Minimal waffle.

The Encoder Has Been Let Loose 📻🤣

Reet… I’ve finally stopped treating Urban Voices Radio like some top-secret Starfleet prototype that can only be switched on under laboratory conditions.

For the time being, I’m firing the stream up daily, from around 10ish until roughly 6ish, playing non-stop hits from across the decades while I continue building the rest of the station behind the scenes.

No grand launch fanfare yet. No presenters dramatically bursting through the doors with Greggs pasties and headphones. Just the station gradually waking up, stretching its legs and being allowed out into the wild.

So, whether yer working, cleaning, pottering, avoiding the washing-up or staring into space wondering where the day went…

🎧 Stick it on at https://urbanvoices.live

And should it suddenly gan quiet, assume Windows has had another emotional breakdown or I’ve pressed a button Myriad specifically told me not to. 🤣

Urban Voices Radio — live daily, approximately 10am till 6pm.

And after all that licensing archaeology, Urban Voices Radio is streaming live right now — non-stop hits from across the decades while I recover from today’s encounter with the compliance gremlins. 🤣📻

🎧 Listen live at https://urbanvoices.live

Captain’s Log, Stardate: The Great Licensing Archaeological Dig 📻🖖

Reet… the PPL reporting saga is officially done and dusted.

And after all that licensing archaeology, Urban Voices Radio is streaming live right now — non-stop hits from across the decades while I recover from today’s encounter with the compliance gremlins. 🤣📻

👉 🎧 Listen live at https://urbanvoices.live

What should’ve been a fairly simple job — report how many people listened and roughly how many songs were webcast per hour — somehow turned into me excavating Windows Event Viewer like Indiana Jones with a spreadsheet. 🤣

The problem?

Myriad logs every media item it plays, including when I’m using it offline for training, testing and generally pressing buttons to see what happens... but PPL only needs the music that was actually webcast.

The older encoder connection records had already vanished into the digital abyss, so I ended up:

✅ exporting thousands of Windows encoder events
✅ matching shutdown and restart records
✅ marrying those against six months of Myriad playout logs
✅ separating music actually streamed from music only played locally
✅ identifying 152 confirmed streaming sessions
✅ reconstructing nearly 271 hours of actual webcast activity
✅ producing a full reconciliation workbook
✅ asking PPL to approve the methodology before submitting anything

And today, PPL confirmed that the approach was reasonable, based on a substantial sample, and could be used for the full reporting period.

Final figures submitted:

🎵 8.6 recorded-music tracks webcast per hour
🎧 199.7 total listener hours

PPL also thanked me for taking such a thorough and transparent approach.

Not bad for a station that’s still technically in development and whose audience has, for much of the year, consisted of only me and whichever Echo device I’ve shouted at. 🤣

There were also listener statistics multiplying like Tribbles, missing track metadata, browser sessions refusing to die quietly, and several moments when I considered launching the entire computer into the Tyne.

But the report is now submitted, the evidence is retained, and a proper monthly recording process will be in place from now on.

Because community media might be fun, creative and occasionally completely crackers

…but the compliance still has to be right.

Captain out. Computer… delete licensing paperwork from today’s mission plan. ☕📻✅