Stations
The Pipeline

Once you create a station, you can put it on any site you want (with an auto-play option) using the KIAC Export Player.  Click on that link and it will take you only a few seconds to create a code that will place your songlist/station for play on your homepage, domain site, or My Space page. 

The IAC player has enhanced sound for exceptionally crisp streaming, and now you can take your station all over the web.  Also, now you can customize the color of your Export Player too.

While we're on the subject of song streaming, this might be a good time to mention that IAC is one of the few sites that allows artists to upload mp3s at any kbps bitrate for no additional cost.  This means that many of the songs you hear on the site will be playing in super hi fi mode, which is basically CD quality.

The artist pages at IAC are the first place many go to find songs for their stations.  These too come in various customizable colors and often contain a lot of info on the artist, including tour dates and a list of what stations that artist is playing on. You can sign up for a free artist page HERE.

All IAC pages benefit from what has been called the best support department on any music site ever.  Should you have an issue or a question about your artist or listener page, there is a direct link to support in your administration area, and the IAC techies will soon respond to the call.

Another nice thing about IAC artist pages is that you can click onto any song and see a separate song page which often contain lyrics and the story behind the song.

The slideshow along with the changing front page and various color choices throughout the site provides a unique ambiance, quite different from most mp3 sites which rely on a rigid structure where all the pages look almost identical.

Tagboards are the most basic mode of communication between artists and listeners on IAC.   Artist, station, and listener (pipeline) pages all come with free tagboards. 

If you were to pursue having a tagboard like this on your homepage, with editing features like this one has, it would cost you 20 dollars a year, but at IAC, we made it part of the fibre of the site.

So where do you go to find great songs at IAC?  The answer is that you will find them almost everywhere you turn, but one good place to start is our famous KIAC Big 50.

The KIAC Big 50 has been called the finest chart of music that ever existed, label or indie.  What it is is a simulated radio chart compiled by the KIAC programming department.  It is followed weekly by many many listeners and one of the most regular questions artist support receives is "How does my band get on the Big 50?"  Also on this page, you can look back at previous #1 songs from 1, 3, and 6 months ago and check out the top ten from a year ago.  It is really quite amazing, the depth of great songs on the site, and they continue to come in, every day of the week. 

At IAC, we try to provide the best of both worlds, so accompanying the KIAC Big 50 are the IAC genre charts, which measure popularity based on a formula which involves number of unique plays by listeners and how long people listen to the songs. 

There is a separate chart and features for every one of 30 genres and one for all songs.  The genre charts are a great way to find good songs in whatever style you prefer.  

The genre charts (and the KIAC Big 50) are also the gateway to getting some extra worldwide exposure as 18 of them also show up as the Indie Charts for Cashbox Magazine.  If you aren't familiar with Cashbox, it's the institution that along with Billboard popularized the the Hit Parade in America.  If your song makes the Big 50 or to the top of various genre charts, you will also be in Cashbox.

The newest kind of charts at IAC are the station charts.  Every station you create will show up on 3 different charts based on the frequency of songs represented in respective genres. 

By the way, some artists have a very tough time picking what genre their song is in.  IAC came up with the idea of creative genre names to make it possible for the artist to make up their own perfectly descriptive term.  It's fun seeing some of the wacky subgenres on various songs around the site.

IAC artists love the fact that new releases show up immediately on the front page.  The station managers often start their day by checking out the new songs.

It is often said that IAC is a whole culture in itself.  There is much more than music on the site.  Look further on the front page and you will find a list of the most recent blogs.  The pipeline at IAC is the blogworld of the future, has many unique features which provide a full range of expression for IAC listeners and artists. 

There you can get to know the most supportive community that's ever existed on an indie music site.  Don't just do hit and run promo, introduce yourself.  A lot of station managers frequent the pipeline, they will check out your music and often add it to a station or 2.   Don't hesitate to jump in and get involved in the discussions, it's an interesting crowd, to say the least.

Now let's talk a bit about something IAC did to help the artists on the site.  The founders of IAC, indie artists themselves, have a long history of artist activism and reacted to the large percentages iTunes and others were taking out of indie music sales by deciding to provide totally free processing for the merchants area on the artist pages..  In other words, IAC takes 0% of any download or CD sales by artists, and the artist retains their full retail price. Artists can also pick their own price instead of having to conform to a set price.

A new function page was recently added so you can adjust all your download prices at once, and even more importantly, you can use it to choose which songs you want to show up on your page and which ones you want to hide.  Some artists like to change the content of their pages regularly and this is a good way to do that, it's called the ALL SONGS OPTION GRID and you can find the link in the Song area of your administration page. 

Indie artists often can't invest the capital they need into manufacturing a batch of CDs, so IAC came up with the revolutionary DMD (Digital Music Delivery).  A DMD provides everything you once got from a CD but injects all the past magic of opening and perusing a new album into the digital product. Upon purchasing, listeners receive not only the downloaded music on the record but a link to the Ultrapage, which is a way artists can provide pictures, links, all kinds of expository info in exactly the package they want to provide. 

As you can see, there's now a whole new way to experience music online.  IAC has a wide assortment of DMDs on sale, created by the great artists on the site.

Something that many people don't know about IAC (Independent Artists Company) is that we're in the process of buying a midmarket FM radio station which will be the starting point of our own radio network. 

In the meantime, we stream KIAC Radio the internet version 24/7 with a fine sampling of some of the talent on the site along with lots of special programming.  It now also serves as the official internet radio for Cashbox Magazine.  Just click on this banner on the left side of the front page to hear it.

There are so many great songs on IAC that it was natural to have a special awards presentation to celebrate the cumulative talent of the indies on the site.  The biggest event of the year at IAC is our annual Golden Kayak Awards.  The kayak represents the indie artist, who by sheer determination takes his or her own music to the world via the internet without the help of large publicity machines or substantial FM radioplay.

In order to select the winners, an organization of artists was formed so the top indie songs and artists could be chosen by their peers.  This organization is the IAIA (International Academy of Independent Artists). 

Those with IAC Prime memberships are eligible for the voting and for nominations.  The first Golden Kayaks were such a widely followed event that artists are still talking about it, debating the winners.

One thing we'll never have to worry about is having enough good songs and artists each year for nominating, as IAC continues to reach new heights in numbers of artists and listeners who know that this is not just your same ol' same ol' music site.  It's an environment where true music lovers and the very best songwriters on earth come to partake in the great culture of indie music.