Moon In 2020? Eh, We’re On Top Of The World!
In case you’re wondering, it was after a lot of Ragged Insomnia that we chose Imagine Dragons for this article. #TrueStory
CyberFM’s Past & What To Look Forward To. We’re Ready, Are You?
With an incredible year behind us, everyone at CyberFM is looking forward to an entirely new decade and to furthering our mission to create a new engagement model for Online Radio.
Recently, we challenged the industry by reversing the economy, where you (not the Radio Networks) get paid for the time you choose to share with us while enjoying and listening to our broadcasts online. But we got thrown a curve-ball out of nowhere, we realized…
“Holy crap, we’re old!” — We are “so old... “(How old are you?)… we are “so old,” we remember Rod Stewart telling us to stay “Forever Young!”
Some of us are old enough to remember when “When Moon” meant the FIRST conspiracy theory, pre-web.
I’ve tried to cut these corners
Tried to take the easy way out
I kept on falling short of something
We were founded in 2007, by 2008, just about every Radio Station online (we can’t names, but let’s just say: we play a “sweeper” to this day that takes a good old fashioned swipe at two of them) were announcing being on the “verge of collapse!” — It was a good run and we enjoyed our year of service. After all, if they couldn’t make it… who were we?!
We were brick & mortar. An actual Radio Network that broadcasted online for the world to listen. We were bleeding money! We had only two parking spots at the studio and a bunch of DJs who didn’t even finish Broadcasting School. But we refused to give up.
CyberFM was not a “startup” as you know startups today. We weren’t sharing workspaces and crowdfunding investors. We were just “going to work” and praying we could afford the rent, the electric bill, and the Internet Service Provider. Our debt for mixing boards and microphones were incredible! One of the founders even donated a refrigerator to store beer.
We were “so broke!” “…How broke were you!?” We were “so broke,” our white-paper was literally written in a loose leaf notebook. But you’ve seen that already. White papers today have chapters and tables of contents. We remember a time when it was a “marketing philosophy.” (Get off our lawn!)
I coulda gave up then but
Then again I couldn’t have ‘cause
I’ve traveled all this way for something
We had to do something. Something that no other Online Radio Network was doing normally. So it was decided to go back to the roots of radio. What radio always was and was already successful at. Fun and concerts and prizes and interviews and shows and…. ok we get it… Radio. From there the motto: We’re Not Online Radio, We’re Radio, Online! spurred its growth.
Enter, “Mainstream For The Underground,” stage left, and go! The acronym for that extremely long brand is “MFTU” and it was revolutionary for it’s time! Remember, the entire industry was already collapsing. Lawsuits, Government Regulation, Copyright issues, MP3 / Ringtone Price volatility, (any of this sound familiar? At all?) Myspace was falling apart and the Indie Music scene was taking a hit. It was the cornerstone of the Unsigned Artist, in fact, so popular, even the Signed Artists had verified Myspace pages.
Online Radio Networks (thinking they were smart) started offering “broadcast packages” to “sell” to these Artists for airplay. But there was a big greedy loophole. Indie Artist broadcasts weren’t regulated. To this day, it’s a decentralized industry that is not enforced by Government Regulation. It was an ingenious way to save money avoiding regulator fees and help promote good Musicians who were losing opportunities. (Again, any of this sound familiar? …At all?) CyberFM decided to NOT charge Artists. Morally, we weren’t being charged so why should we?
Fun Fact: One of our Founding Fathers: “Franky Hardtimes” (1976–2016), once gave away Bitcoin during shows and we entertained the idea of being a Bitcoin Radio Network as early as 2011! It didn’t take off because, all THREE of YOU weren’t interested.
We were Tech Geeks, some from Wall St, some from the Military, some from other Streets. One big dysFUNctional family. We managed to keep the studio alive for quite sometime. We were turning around! Because we were IT Savvy, we decided to attempt to create milestones that others weren’t. After all, we were the very first Shoutcast/Icecast Radio Network to have it’s own proprietary custom Android App! Hard to believe, but yes CyberFM started it! So what about the other Online Radio Networks, what were they not doing?
They were not accepting Independent Artists MP3 submissions for free. They were missing out on an enormous library of some of the most professionally written, talented, music available. This was also an opportunity for global branding.
They were not doing live remote shows. They weren’t giving away prizes. They weren’t using On-Air Personalities in Arm Wrestling Championships. They had no need to save data costs because they weren’t using them outside of their own networks. But we were, so we stumbled upon another problem:
Bars and Nightclubs barely had good WiFi. High-speed cellular in major cities were virtually useless. We created something called Data Saver which resulted in alleviating the AM Radio sound you’d hear on TCP/IP Networks. Google uses it now and it’s also an option in Twitter settings. “You’re welcome.”
Now take it in but don’t look down
We were back baby! Doing what’s never been done before!
’Cause I’m on top of the world, ‘ey
I’m on top of the world, ‘ey
Waiting on this for a while now
Paying my dues to the dirt
I’ve been waiting to smile, ‘ey
Been holding it in for a while, ‘ey
Take it with me if I can
Been dreaming of this since a child
I’m on top of the world
Fast forward to the wonderful year of 2018: We had an “Oh Shit!” moment. The need to fill a value gap amongst musicians had existed for a long time. Everyone from the RIAA to Congress have worked to try to resolve this heavily weighted discrepancy. A majority of our family are IT Professionals centered around FinTech and Security. Only one thing made sense:
Distributed Ledger Technology!
Cyber-FM created an open-source online royalty payment model with peer-reviewed information available worldwide through a distributed ledger system. This is a dual cryptographic token ecosystem named as the Cyber-FM “CYFM” token and as the “MFTU” token for representing the “Mainstream For The Underground” product branding.
We have accomplished this strictly with internal resources and without an expectation of profit: this growth in service offerings is tied to our core business without the need for third-party proceeds.
Before we started building upon our infrastructure, we first needed to evaluate the existing projects available in this new decentralized world. We looked at each and every established company, read their white-papers, examined their use cases and even spoke with the Founders directly.
The truth is, not one of these projects have the Artist’s welfare and success in mind. Sure it looks great on paper (even white ones), but the hopes and dreams all resembled the same goal: A 21st Century, still centralized version of Napster, inside of Blockchain Technology.
Not one single project involved holding hands with Copyright enforcers and Performance Rights Organizations while simultaneously allowing Musicians better opportunity to enter Mainstream arenas!
And I know it’s hard when you’re falling down
And it’s a long way up when you hit the ground
But get up now, get up, get up now
We went full force into an all new level of geek-tech-development-sex-drugs-rock-n-roll mode:
2018 Timeline:
19th April 2018 — First CYFM transfer occurred at 21:28:07 UTC
20th April 2018 — First MFTU transfer occurred at 20:46:01 UTC
27th April 2018 — Official CYFM & MFTU Twitter account created
14th May 2018 — Both CYFM & MFTU added to Hexel wallet
15th May 2018 — Official CyberFM Discord channel created
28th June 2018 — Trust Wallet integrated support for CYFM & MFTU
19th July 2018 — Both CYFM & MFTU official verified by Ethen Market
26th July 2018 — Both CYFM & MFTU added to Token Jar
6th August 2018 — IDEX initiated CYFM & MFTU trading
10th August 2018 — CYFM added to www.coinmarketcap.com
12th August 2018 — Both CYFM & MFTU added to Token Store
16th August 2018 — MFTU added to www.coinmarketcap.com
20th August 2018 — FatBTC exchange initiated CYFM trading
28th August 2018 — Mercatox exchange initiated CYFM & MFTU trading
30th August 2018 — LAToken exchange initiated MFTU trading
10th September 2018 — LAToken exchange initiated CYFM trading
29th September 2018 — CYFM circulating coin supply reduced by 10 billion
4th October 2018 — CYFM became available on https://ethershift.co/
7th October 2018 — CyberFM celebrated its 11th birthday
13th October 2018 — Delta Relay exchange initiated CYFM & MFTU trading
14th October 2018 — IDAX exchange initiated CYFM trading
17th October 2018 — FatBTC exchange initiated MFTU trading
9th December 2018 — CoinPulse exchange initiated CYFM trading
11th December 2018 — CyberFM attended the Atlanta Blockchain Event
12th December 2018 — CoinPulse exchange initiated MFTU trading
17th December 2018 — EtherFlyer initiated CYFM and MFTU trading
Other events in 2018:
6th July 2018, an anonymous community member won the “Graphics For Our Tokens” event.
22nd July 2018, CyberFM founder James Tylee was interviewed on the Crypto Beast YouTube channel.
12th August 2018, Token Store listed both CYFM and MFTU. They welcomed these as their first additions of tokens from the music industry.
21st September 2018, CyberFM proudly announced that they had officially gone live on the China and Hong Kong iOS Apple Store. It became possible for people in 155 Asia Pacific countries to listen to MFTU artists.
21st September 2018, Cryptoacademia in Manila, Philippines, held its first Crypto event featuring CyberFM.
It’s always been our opinion that, if we’re not having fun, we just need to pack up and go home. We watched the blockchain side of the world and “fun” was halting. From Moon and Lambos to FUD and Exit Scams. Our users just wanted to enjoy Pina Coladas and get lost in the rain. We had to help!
Our users wanted an escape (get it? No? Ok) …from the day to day lifestyle of frustrating cryptocurrency market moves. The same old tweets from the same old influencers talking about the same old subjects.
We had to do something. Something that no other Online Radio Network was doing normally. (Wait, didn’t we just say this a few paragraphs ago?!) So it was decided to go back to the roots of radio. What radio always was and was already successful at. Fun and concerts and prizes and interviews and shows and…. ok we get it… Radio. From there the motto: Stop Paying For Radio, Let Radio Pay You! spurred its growth. (It’s not plagiarism if we wrote it first!) History repeats itself, like a crazy Elliot Wave.
We completely “gamified” the CyberFM Listening experience. Membership and Virtual Staking Tiers from Newbie to Hex Diamond (The hardest material on Earth.) The more you HODL CYFM the more you EARN. We started BUIDLing an empire!
Out of nowhere, something else was happening in 2019 that we didn’t immediately realize. The KPop invasion! Misunderstandings about the newly popularized KPOP genre had created a negative image for it and ignoring the real epiphany of its influence. (Does this sound familiar at all?) But thanks to the Asian cryptocurrency user-base being vocal, we took a leap of faith and announced our Very-First-Ever-Justin-Sun-esque Partnership: In an unprecedented move to capture the Asian Market, CyberFM & West Loves East Radio Networks announce collaboration.
We were back baby! Doing what’s never been done before! (Again!)
We call it Reverse Mass Adoption… get the cryptocurrency / blockchain users of the world, using Music and Radio to create an economy and reward each other. Everyone “wanted in!” CyberFM as well as Cryptocurrency in general was still standing (yeah, yeah, yeah!) By the time our 12th birthday came about, we weren’t accepting gifts, we were just giving them away: CyberFM Turns 12 Years Old & We’re Giving Away Birthday Presents! Our numbers were at an all time high! All of our Press Articles now use music to garner attention.
Enter ParJar, with over 16,000 active users. You can swing by and play CyberFM Trivia games and win CYFM! They believe crypto should be accessible, easy to use, and social. They’re also making it simple for friends to send each other crypto, taking away the learning curve for people who are new to blockchain and making your favorite coins usable in your daily life.
It was the easiest 16,000 users to be added, ever. It was one exhale of relief. History repeats itself. Simply do stuff, that no one else does. We have going on 13 years of experience in the never-been-done-before realm. And now we are entering the Roaring 20s.
One day at a time, one year at a time, one decade at a time. We are going to keep doing what’s never been done before. If it’s not adopted one way, we’ll just do it another way. We won’t fail and you won’t let us. Is it worth it? Let us work it, we’ll put our thing down, flip it and reverse it.
It’s still early, we have another whole 10 years to perfect this system and grow. Sing with us, sing for the years. Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears. Sing with us, just for today, cuz maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will form that bull-flag our way!
And I know it’s hard when you’re falling down
And it’s a long way up when you hit the ground
Get up now, get up, get up now’Cause I’m on top of the world,
For the next entire decade: CyberFM is On Top Of The World. Join us at https://app.cyberfmradio.com
