About

Netmix is a software development company building professional-grade WordPress tools for the radio, music, and news industries. Our flagship product, Radio Station, is a WordPress plugin broadcasters and webcasters can use to publish and maintain a Show schedule and associated information on their WordPress websites. The original author of the plugin, Nikki Blight, transferred responsibliity to Netmix founder, Tony Zeoli, in June of 2019. Zeoli, along with lead developer, Tony Hayes, worked to fork Nikki’s work and advance functionality of the plugin to its current state. Netmix plans to offer a PRO version of Radio Station and a variety of Add-Ons that serve niche communities in the broadcast and webcast markets with the goal of broadening the plugin to serve both the music, talk, and news radio formats.

Radio Station’s functionality is based on Drupal 6’s Station plugin, but reworked for use in WordPress. The plugin includes the ability to associate users with “shows” (schedulable blocks of time that contain a description, and other meta information), and generate playlists associated with those shows. The plugin contains a widget to display the currently on-air DJ with a link to the DJ’s show and current playlist. A schedule of all shows can also be generated. Visit this page on our website for a list of all of Radio Station’s features and functionality.

History

Netmix was originally conceived as the world’s first mix-show website featuring DJ mixes crafted by the world’s most sought after DJs. The concept was conceived, created, and launched in early 1996 by Tony Zeoli, a former Billboard Dance Chart reporting DJ and former co-creator of X-Mix Remix and Management. The site preceded Napster and MP3.com by a few years. It wouldn’t be until the mid to late 2000s before SoundCloud and subsequently MixCloud arrived on the scene. Netmix was the originator of the online mix-show, well before every other service. But innovation and survival are two vastly different things.

In June 2000, Netmix entered a purchase & sale agreement with Polyverse, Inc, a holing company aggregating a number of youth culture oriented websites to build and sell the audience to advertisers. Netmix was coming of age just when Dotcom bust of Internet 1.0 would wipe out billions of dollars in investor equity in the new digital economy. At that point, Netmix could no longer survive and ceased operations, but Tony Zeoli retained the domain name and held onto it unsure of what he might do with it. Over the next 19-years, Tony would learn WordPress, work for startups and corporations in product management, project management, and digital marketing, all the while building the skills to apply to Netmix someday. 

In early 2019, Tony was working on websites for a local LPFM radio station in Asheville and an online webcaster in Raleigh focused on Tony’s original expertise, the online DJ mix-show. Both sites were using tools to help the station publish and manage a show schedule. While the latter site was using a popular theme, the LPFM were using Radio Station. As Tony worked on the site, he was intrigued by Radio Station and wanted to learn more about the plugin. Tony contacted Niki Blight to inquire about the plugins status. Nikki let him know that she was looking for someone to take over the plugin. Given Tony’s 30-year career in developing Internet products, he saw an opportunity to build a world class plugin that would serve small webcasters and large broadcasters alike, as there were few competitors in the marketplace and Radio Station seemingly had traction.

After agreeing to take over the plugin, but with no plan, Zeoli reached out to the WordPress community through Twitter and WordPress job boards posting his requirements for someone who might want to jump in and help. Enter Tony Hayes, an experienced WordPress developer with a number of WordPress plugins and contributions under his belt. Tony Hayes knew about Radio Station, having used it for a friend’s radio site in the past. Both Zeoli and Hayes connected and have worked over the remainder of 2019 through mid-2020 to advance the plugin by planning and developing new features, as well as providing robust documentation and support.

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