Tinsel & Tunes Updates

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2017 Christmas Season is Read to Go

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Friends, we have so many things to discuss for the 2017 broadcast, I’m not even sure where to begin!

This broadcast finds us in our 12th year/13th season and we have grown bigger than ever. If you haven’t had an opportunity to like our Facebook page, do that right now. We’ll be introducing a lot of interaction via Facebook this year with live requests, contests and conversation. It will be a lot of fun!

We’re kicking off this season with a brand new, fully redesigned iOS app. The design was built with getting to the music as quickly as possible, so now you just open and hit play. Additionally, to view song history you simply scroll up. We’ve also taken our design direction from the new iOS11, simple bold fonts and easy to read colors.

Coming in mid-November, our Android app will receive a similar facelift, the first since we introduced the Android app 4 years ago!

We’ve brought a lot of new music into the mix this year and, of course, we’ll be adding more throughout the season. A few old favorites have been retired as well.

Another big update this season will be reducing our “remixed” holiday music show Christmas Cocktails from 2 nights down to one. While this show is super popular (and great for parties), we have had several listeners say they would love the option of listening our normal broadcast for one of the two weekend nights. Christmas Cocktails will now take place on Fridays from 8pm – 1am EST and our regular broadcast will continue through Saturday evenings.

Tinsel & Tunes TV

Tinsel & Tunes Yule Log Apple TV Christmas music apple TV app

Tinsel & Tunes is coming to AppleTV in early November! Accompanied by a crackling fireplace, you can now stream our Christmas Music broadcast via AppleTV. Our brand new app will be released in early November. We’re super excited about expanding our reach to tvOS users.

 

Stay tuned, we’ll have a few more updates in 2017. In the meantime, we’re preparing for our biggest launch ever tomorrow night at 12:01am EST. Don’t miss it!

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Tinsel & Tunes 10 Year Anniversary

What? Are you serious? We’ve actually been at this for 10 years? That is just crazy!

We would not be celebrating our 10 year anniversary if it wasn’t for you, our incredible fans. Each season I strive to make the station better than the year before and that is no small task. There are literally thousands of new holiday songs through which to comb every season and I attempt to listen to each one! The mix on Tinsel & Tunes is something I’m extremely proud of. Sure, there are plenty of options for Christmas music and virtually all of them include the cheesy, goofy and downright weird. Though they can be fun, Christmas music is much more than a light entertainment. It’s the sound track to the happiest time of year and I take it very seriously. Every song is hand selected to fit a certain ascetic that is quite difficult to describe, so I just call it the Tinsel Sound and that is what makes us different.

It was a huge honor to be featured in Good Housekeeping last year! So, so cool. Your comments on our Facebook page and the mountains of shares remind me why I work so hard every year. You obviously love the Tinsel Sound too! For that, I’m grateful every day. This station really is a labor of love.

A Spot of History

2015 is our 10th season and many of you may not know how we got started.

Tinsel & Tunes was born from the previous broadcast called “24 Hours of Christmas” on MakRadio.com. MakRadio was the very first independent commercial internet radio station. Long before Pandora or Spotify, MakRadio and its network of stations broadcast around the world from digital studios in Central Pennsylvania, with live DJs, commercials and everything you’d expect from a modern radio station. The station garnered 100,000,000 listening hours in its first year and was the very first pop radio station on iTunes! As we were a bit ahead of our time, the project ultimately couldn’t sustain itself, was disbanded, sold for parts to Fusion Radio in Chicago, reformatted and brought back to life as Pop Fusion Radio. In 2005, a joint effort between myself and Fusion launched our very first 2 month broadcast of Tinsel & Tunes. We’ve committed to maintaining the yearly broadcast and it grew year after year into its current incarnation.

Tinsel & Tunes is 100% commercial free and does not generate revenue. Its sole purpose is to bring you the absolute BEST MIX of Christmas music available anywhere in the world. Each year we launch more than 1,000,000 streams in virtually every country around the globe. That, to me, is payment enough for the the work that goes into its production each season.

With that, I want to say a heartfelt thank you. Your ongoing listenership fills my heart with warmth and happiness as I hope the Tinsel Sound fills your home with the same. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, I’m raising a glass to you saying “Cheers” to 10 Years.

-Mak McKeehan
Founder, Program Director
Tinsel & Tunes

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Gearing up for our 2014 Launch

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I get giddy every year when I write our “coming soon” post. As much I love the summer time, there is something so special about Fall. Maybe it’s the combination of the cooler air and everything pumpkin, but Autumn is one of my favorite times of year. More importantly, it means the Tinsel & Tunes team is back in the studio preparing for our annual broadcast tradition. Keep Reading >>

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