I don’t even know what drew me to the site. I think that I was surfing the RPG Blog Alliance website for blogs to read, and this particular one caught my eye. I visited the site and was instantly hooked. Based out of Sweden, it’s a gorgeous site that is easy on the eyes and light on the ears. I thought to myself “More people have to be told about this site!”
Upon contacting the site owner (aptly named Lord Elrond), he was cordial enough to answer a few questions for us today.
Lord Elrond, first of all, thank you for answering our questions today; can you tell our readers a little about Radio Rivendell?
Radio Rivendell is the only webradio streaming fantasy music 24-7. We only focus on fantasy-related stuff and have been doing so for over ten(!) years now. We’ve been growing slowly but steadily through all the years, we didn’t even have website the first years.
Where did you get the idea for your web design? Why Lord of the Rings?
The whole idea of a webradio came from my friends’ need of background music when gaming, and it cannot get much more fantasy with Tolkien, right? And Rivendell is the ideal place to draw inspiration from; it sits in the center of Middle-Earth with connections to everything. So when one of my friends suggested “Radio Rivendell” it stuck immediately!
How many artists do you currently feature on your site?
Currently we have over 300, but we’re always adding new artists and albums along the way. Lately we’ve also tended to get more artists rather than more albums / soundtracks of each. So we’re widening and growing at the same time.
What are your short-term, and long-term plans for your site?
There currently is no real short-term plan, the one we had was to upgrade the software and the look of the site; that was what happened before X-mas. The long-term is to grow steadily, reaching more people, but probably also to move to a faster server. The site went down a few weeks back due to overload when we were linked to by a popular external site. So just grow at our comfortable speed we’re going now. I’m doing this as project during my free time so I cannot work on it full time, but who knows, perhaps it’s possible one day?
I noticed that when signing up to the site that I became a lowlife. How does your xp for members work? How do you level?
The XP system is a new thing we introduced this winter. Leveling and experience points are important elements of roleplaying, so putting it into the site would make it feel even more like a game of its own! I also wanted to make people chase XP and level-up to become more “powerful”, this is in order to make it more fun to register and take part in our activities. XP is given for all things you do on the site, like logging in (once a day only), rating music, commenting, writing in forums etc. This is only in it’s first installment.
What do you do with the donations you receive?
The donations pay for prizes in competitions, server space, hardware etc. More or less everything goes back to the site in one way or the other.
Do you play Dungeons and Dragons? Any other Role Playing Games?
I have played D&D, but that was loooong time ago. I remember when my brother bought the first “Red Box” of D&D and how we played it. We had been playing RPGs that were made in our country before, so D&D wasn’t our first. Then we’ve played through a great deal of different RPGs such as Lord of the Rings, Rolemaster and Spacemaster, Warhammer Fantasy, etc., etc. Now we play an adapted set of our own rules in Warhammer’s world, which is the one we’ve stuck with for the longest time, well over ten years now.
If there is anything else you would like to add, please do so.
Hmm.. Keep an eye on Radio Rivendell, we’re not growing fast, but steadily. I have so many ideas I want to implement into the site, and our music library will grow too. Worth mentioning: we’ll continue to play only the music we’ve been granted the right to play, and hopefully all the major companies and composers will turn to us for exposure 🙂
Thanks!
Thanks for talking with me today, and good luck with your future endeavors!
Marc Talbot (Alton)
Living in Elliot Lake, Canada has taught me many valuable lessons. The first is making sure my garbage cans have tight lids, because BEARS do love to come into my yard (especially on garbage day). Secondly, teaching happens to be the best profession in the world, and lastly, I can still be part of the gaming community without being physically present. I've been an RPGer for over 25 years, teacher for 6, blogger for 1, and married to a wonderful woman, I couldn’t ask for anything else in life – except for…Profile Page / Article Portfolio
Nice! We were literally just talking about an RPG soundtrack at the game table last night. You can only listen to the Conan and Game of Thrones soundtracks so many times. Thanks for the tip!
No problem. It is great music for studying also!