SAM Broadcaster Blaming You for MP3 Relay Interruptions

Alleine Dragonfyre

Alleine Dragonfyre

New Member
Hello,

We have had multiple interruptions of our broadcast from SAM Broadcaster to our MP3 relay with you guys. Apparently your service is getting interrupted and SAM broadcaster loses the connection until MANUALLY fixed. Their support is blaming YOU. Can you please look into why this is happening and make it stop? Here is their response to this issue.


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This is a huge problem because we don't have staff to watch the stream 24/7. What can be done? We cannot let this continue to happen!
 
Support said:
Hi Alleine,

The us3 server that your account is hosted on has not had any downtime recently: https://stats.uptimerobot.com/YWm9ATkR1/778383571

When you next experience this, please could you run an MTR tool to test your network and then send us over the results. http://www.internet-radio.com/commu...the-mtr-tool-to-analyse-network-problems.535/
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SAM has supposedly lost connection, again, to your MP3 relay and so our station went down because it's the weekend and we don't have 24/7 coverage yet. It's been happening multiple times per day now and is unacceptable!

When you say "test my network," what do you mean? My network and connectivity should be irrelevant as we are using you as a relay for our station over at SAM Broadcaster/Spacial, and we are not live hosting the station. We are using the auto DJ. So it's their server to your relay. I am running the test, therefore on
us3.internet-radio.com.

Is there somewhere else I should be testing? SAM?
 
Hi Alleine,

Ok I see, I didn't realise that you relay from SAM to our server. I'm really not sure what could be happening here as everything looks fine with your account and as I mentioned our us3 server has not been experiencing any issues. We have no other customers on that same server reporting any outages or their connections dropping.

Could you please try streaming directly to our server from Sam Broadcaster instead rather than as a relay if you don't mind? I would be interested to see if that makes any difference.
 
Support said:
Hi Alleine,

Ok I see, I didn't realise that you relay from SAM to our server. I'm really not sure what could be happening here as everything looks fine with your account and as I mentioned our us3 server has not been experiencing any issues. We have no other customers on that same server reporting any outages or their connections dropping.

Could you please try streaming directly to our server from Sam Broadcaster instead rather than as a relay if you don't mind? I would be interested to see if that makes any difference.
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I woke up again to SAM not relaying to your server. I'm not sure what you are asking me to do. I know that most of our connectivity, especially to TuneIn is not working, and its breaking my business before we even get off the ground. Spacial is so little help that they suggested another service instead of helping us. I am almost in tears over this.

I have no idea how to fix it and everyone keeps blaming each other. Why can't you and Spacial get together and fix this ???

Since we use their cloud service to run auto-DJ that is supposed to then relay to you, it is something beyond my control. I CANNOT FIX THIS.
 
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I have to go in here and click a checkmark in the relay to reenable the relay. Something is unchecking this box. SAM claims, "SAM Cloud will restart up to five times when it detects an issue with your third-party streaming service." But again, none of this has to do with me. You guys need to fix this for us!

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I can appreciate that this must be frustrating for you.

Could you please send over a screenshot of your relay configuration settings for the connection to our server so that I can take a look.
 
It has become a non-issue. They literally canceled our service and took us OFF THE AIR because I had become unhappy with how one of their reps had handled a conversation and the manager did not like hearing the feedback.

So, unfortunately, I cannot show you how things are configured because they took us offline. We cannot legally deal with this because they are in South Africa. So we will have to work quickly to find another provider. The whole thing is a mess. But before they shut us down, the errors came from you guys. I haven't changed anything in the configuration and it has been working for months!

Thanks for trying, however. You have been trying. That is not the case for Spacial. They are a horrible company.
 
Oh! I'm sorry to hear that.

That's ok, we always will do our best to help our customers. This is just an unfortunate situation for you.

As we could see no obvious issue with the server at our end or with your account, it is hard for us to work out what went wrong here as you were relaying from a third party streaming service. If you were connecting from your own remote location directly to our server then it would have been much easier for us to diagnose the problem.

You could still continue to stream with our services if you use some alternative automation software and connect directly to our server instead.
 
Support said:
Oh! I'm sorry to hear that.

That's ok, we always will do our best to help our customers. This is just an unfortunate situation for you.

As we could see no obvious issue with the server at our end or with your account, it is hard for us to work out what went wrong here as you were relaying from a third party streaming service. If you were connecting from your own remote location directly to our server then it would have been much easier for us to diagnose the problem.

You could still continue to stream with our services if you use some alternative automation software and connect directly to our server instead.
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I will keep that in mind. Thanks. For now, we have canceled our relay with you. Honestly, we're going for a service that has Mp3 streaming capabilities out of the box. We spent way too much on services that did not work for us.
I had a bad feeling about continuing with Spacial after I took over the station. It's so archaic. I never could get used to the idea that we had to do actual scripting to program SAM smdh. Live and learn.

Now I know they don't care about their customers either. I'm glad this happened now instead of later when we have more listeners. But anyone reading this should stay FAR AWAY from Sam Broadcaster / Spacial. If you have any negative feedback they will literally cancel your service without warning.
 
That's a shame that it didn't work out for you with Spacial. I hope that you find a more suitable alternative for your requirements.
 
Thank you for your kind words.

SAM Broadcaster used to be the "Leading" provider of Radio Broadcasting software but they have never updated or modernized their user interface. We have to literally WRITE CODE to schedule our programming. The software looks like it's straight out of the 1990's.

The sad part is this outdated software is one of the most EXPENSIVE services you can sign up for as well.

We have been looking at alternatives because SAM is just too old and inconvenient to use for a while but Spacial has forced our hand in the worst way possible (for them).

As you can see above (anyone new reading this) we've been having connectivity issues between Spacial/SAM Broadcaster and you, our Relay provider (because we were not going to pay SAM the ridiculous amount of money they wanted), and they provided NO HELP. They said it wasn't their issue and offered zero guidance.

This upset me because you guys were saying the same thing. However, you, who receive only a fraction of what we spend on SAM, tried your hardest to help.

But Spacial Support? They did NOTHING to help.

When I sent feedback about this as a frustrated new station owner worried about our uptime and all the dead air, they GOT INSULTED!

Mind you, I was never mean. I never got personal with them; all I did was say they were causing our downtime, and if they were not, please help us figure it out.

When I pushed back to defend us and the lousy, or rather total lack of help, they CANCELED OUR SERVICE AND TURNED OFF OUR RADIO STATION EFFECTIVELY TAKING US COMPLETELY OFF THE AIR WITH NO WARNING.

I think that about sums it up. Spacial is a company that does not need us, nor do they care about us, and they have made that perfectly clear.

Stay far, far away. You have been warned.
 
Glad to see you are now with Radio.co they really are a caring company and bend over backwards to help their clients. Good choice and best wishes for the future.
 
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