Tell us about Street Sounds Radio, how you put it together and how long it has been going?


 

Street Sounds Radio was born out of my love of music as a punter rather than looking at it from a commercial venture. I heard what was currently being played on radio and discovered that there was a huge void of the music that people like myself grew up with. Yes, there is a plethora of specialist stations but none were catering for the demographic of music that was the soundtrack of my life, hence this is where the slogan for the radio station ‘The soundtrack to your life ‘ came in. I met Paul Ellis who is my business partner in the radio station who had a very similar vision and he also knows the heritage and pedigree of the Street Sounds brand. We already had thousands of followers on social media where the brand has been growing exponentially in the last few years because of the record side of the business, with that showing a need for people to remember the good times in their life. Music from the 1970s was exceptional and it was an organic and incredible time for music. Paul Ellis and I met and sat down and discussed becoming a partnership in Street Sounds Radio in terms of the financing and making this dream become somewhat of a reality about nineteen months ago.


 

How long ago was it when you first decided to embark on the idea?



 

About eighteen months ago. It actually came together sitting outside in a beer garden in Marylebone High Street. I was actually a little bit dubious because even though I wanted to do something like this I thought the brand wasn’t actually as big as I believed I wanted it to be. We actually did a random survey and went up to people in the street, black, white old and young and asked them if they had heard of Street Sounds. This was in Marylebone High Street and I can say with my hand on my heart that out of ten people, eight or nine said yes. so setting up a radio station seemed to be the obvious thing to do.




 

The music played on Street Sounds Radio is aimed at a more discerning audience and dedicated to lovers and aficionados of black/club/street music. We broadcast a veritable aural feast of the greatest music of black origin from the 70s, 80s and 90s and let us not forget there are also some great sounds from the millennium. However we didn’t want to be the new kid on the block trying to compete for a new young audience. We wanted to create a station where you’d step into the DeLorean and travel back to the 1970s and 80s and crystallise the best of the best music by listening to Street Sounds Radio. We want to create that vintage soul, hip-hop and electro scene that Street Sounds were famed for with the compilations we did back in the day. We wanted to do a snap shot of the anthems of all those genres and that is how Street Sounds was born out of doing some rudimentary market research, and with our thousands of social media followers we already knew we had a guaranteed audience. The station launched in August 2020 and we would never have expected after eight months how our audience participation figures, downloads and interest has exponentially grown.