Why You (Still) Need Radio in Your Life (By the People Who Should Know): Vinejuice Radio

In an age where you completely control every aspect of your audio consumption experience, why do you still need music radio..?

I’ll be honest: before I started working in radio I had very little time for the medium.

These days we’re spoilt for choice, with options for free and paid download services, or audio streaming via any number of platforms, most of which are (for the moment at least), free.

So why in the world would anyone need music radio? Read the background and full introduction to this series here.

Having had contributions from radio presenters in part 1, it’s time to move the spotlight for part 2.

The Station Owner (Part 1)

I’m always found mavericks fascinating: people who – in the face of conventional thought and wisdom – still choose to go against the flow.

What drives them? Some special, specific insight they possess? Sheer single mindedness? A desire to prove a fundamental point? A drive to prove people wrong (or right)?

Whatever their motivation, these are the people whose moves have ended up directly or indirectly impacting our lives, usually (and thankfully) for the better.

Difficult Nut to Crack

From a financial point of view Gospel media broadcasting and publishing is a particularly difficult nut to crack: we all agree there’s a fundamental need for it, but few have managed to find a business model that’s sustainable for the long term.

Our scene is littered with the fragments of great initiatives that started off excellently but soon ran out of steam or money (or both).

Fresh Energy

And that’s where the mavericks come in. While history seems to suggest big, ambitious projects in our sector is folly, the mavericks still try, regularly injecting fresh energy and perspective into all our lives.

Vinejuice

Enter: Manchester-based Vinejuice. In the relatively short space of time they’ve been going, Lavinia and Adaeze seem to have found a pretty good formula, launching Vinejuice.co.uk as a feature-rich magazine (starting out with the usual text and image-based news and updates, but soon adding regular video briefings into the mix), then quickly evolving it into a full-service news and events hub.

Vinejuice Radio

In March 2016 another feather was added to the Vinejuice bow: Vinejuice Radio.

So, why radio? And why now? Interestingly, Vinejuice opted for radio in a full playout format (you can’t pause or rewind its stream), so it really is radio in the full traditional sense of the word.

There was only one thing left to do: ask the Juicy Ladies (that’s what they call themselves, and there’s a story behind that, too) to tell all…

Yinka Awojobi
Content Development

Name: Lavinia Goddard (right in picture below) & Adaeze Chiwoko, Directors of Vinejuice Ltd.

Station: Vinejuice Radio: Manchester’s Positive Playlist

Why did you set up Vinejuice Radio?

The short story: I don’t do short stories well so here’s the long story…

When Adaeze and I started Vinejuice, a couple of years ago we wanted to use community radio as a channel to distribute information about Christian and community events as a way to reach people who do not live their lives online and who are not necessarily church attendees.

We had a couple of “non-religious” chat shows on various FM stations but made a commitment to only play Christian urban & contemporary music on them.

During this time we were overwhelmed with the number of Christian artists that started sending us music from all around the world. It not only broadened our musical horizons but let us see the need to create a platform where this great music could be more regularly heard.

Gospel Versions of Mainstream Music

We both grew up on the Hip-Hop, RnB and Soul sounds that have become mainstream Pop today, but as Christians we were missing a lot of the “Gospel” versions of these genres, and so were our peers.

As a result we found a lot of young people particularly still consuming a lot of secular urban music, not all of it bad, but even by their own admission a lot of it is not “positive listening” for a Christian.

So we set about addressing these problems by creating Vinejuice Radio.

Growing Listenership

Vinejuice Radio was launched in March 2016 so is very new but already we have a regular and growing listenership.

We’ve had some great testimonies coming in including reports from uni students who have started to regularly tune in because of their excitement to have a listening option that caters to their musical tastes without being riddled with themes of sin and debauchery, haha.

Positive Listening

We’ve heard from an “older saint” who was so moved by the music that he threw out all of his old secular music that he knew was not “positive listening” for him.

We’ve heard a testimony of a lady who repeatedly played the station in her car during the school run, her 12 year old fell in love with the music so much so that he started turning his friends on to it.

A Christian man who was doing some building work in a ladies house, he had the station playing repeatedly, the lady loved the music and the messages so much that she turned her teenage son on to it (neither the lady nor her son are Christians).

We’ve also had people tell us that they’ve started to use the station for their pre and post church service background music.

That is just a handful of the testimonies we’ve received in the few months since the station’s launch.

What gap was in the market?

There is a large proportion of church attendees that would be considered millennials.

Christian radio is great for the most part but the vast majority caters for an older audience of 45+, therefore these millennials have grown used to searching out music for themselves.

However, there is still a need to more easily connect millennial Christians with quality urban & contemporary Christian music… that isn’t only US Gospel. That’s where Vinejuice Radio fits in.

The one thing you get on our station that you won’t hear anywhere else: Vinejuice Radio is a 24 hour music station. So non-stop music. No preaching, no teaching, just music (we are not trying to replace church, you must still go to service, lol).

Not only that, we only play Hip-Hop, RnB, Soul, Pop, Electronic Dance Music (EDM) & Afrobeats… No Gospel… No Worship… shock horror (we may eventually introduce these genres but they will be specialist shows).

Vinejuice Radio has a mainstream commercial FM station feel about it but the music is from Christian artists, hence our slogan “Manchester’s Positive Playlist”.

Additionally, we have a strong commitment to playing a balanced mix of US and Non-US music. We regularly hear comments like “UK Gospel music is crap” or “UK Gospel music is nothing compared to US Gospel”. We strongly disagree.

Yes, US Gospel is great and their industry dwarfs the UK’s but we do have a few really great artists who make really great music, it just often gets drowned out in a sea of mediocre music.

So on Vinejuice Radio we will play a big name artist like Kirk Franklin followed by a quality UK artist like Natty Joshia: key word QUALITY.

For our listeners they get a continual, uninterrupted stream of great, current, mainstream sounding music, but also get introduced to some fantastic artists from around the world that they’d probably otherwise miss if they only relied on searching for themselves on YouTube or Spotify.

Music Style: Hip-Hop, RnB, Soul, Pop, EDM & Afrobeats

You should listen to our station because: Vinejuice Radio needs to become the No.1 playlist for your day.

That’s because:

1. You get to hear great, edifying, quality music, all day, every day that will not work against your faith – it’s #RealMusicWithoutTheRatchet

2. We have taken the hard work out of discovering new music. Stay up-to-date with new music from your favourite artists but also be introduced to other artists that would have otherwise gone under your radar.

3. It’s just all the way juicy! Simple.

Vinejuice Essentials

Station website: Vinejuice.co.uk/radio (also available on TuneIn Radio and other radio directory sites: “Vinejuice Radio”).
Twitter: @Vinejuice
Facebook: @Vinejuice
Instagram: @Vinejuice