Interview with Gavvie, DJ of RadioSEGA

Who came up with the idea of creating a radio station with songs from Sega? What were the reasons for this decision?

RadioSEGA was created by SegaMark back in 2006. As he is no longer a part of the RadioSEGA setup the reason why he set the radio website up is a story lost to time, but the reason we continue to run the website is to provide an archive of SEGA’s vast musical history.

Who exactly is Radio Sega team consisted of? Who is a DJ, who is a technical problem solver and who is an article writer?

Our DJ team consists of myself (host of Saturday Night SEGA), ResidentSD (Late & Live), GreenViper8 (current RadioSEGA owner and host of Pick ‘n’ Mix), VGbeats (VGBeats Box), and Rexy (SEGA Mixer Drive). We also host shows from LastMinuteContinue, Shenmue Dojo and Dreamcast Years. Our website and backend are handled in part by GreenViper8 and Whooa21, and Twinny handles our article updates as well as social media posts.

How has your approach to the project changed over time? How has the team changed during its development?

Over time, we have progressed from featuring the “best” in SEGA music (SegaMark once refused to include the Shadow the Hedgehog soundtrack as he didn’t like the game!) to basically anything that SEGA has been involved with – in the past 18 months we’ve added soundtracks from pachinko machines to pinball tables and UFO catchers, with the ultimate goal attempting to add the music from the Toylet urinals!

How does it look technically? Did you find a ready-made program to start with, or did you have to build everything from scratch?

I’m not overly involved with the software side of the website, so this is a bit outside of my wheelhouse, but I do know that we have a custom software for article creation. We also have custom software that allows registered users to request music to be played on our 24/7 livestream.

Did everything come easily right away? Did huge demand for the music website make you popular in a short time or did you need a lot of promotion?

I joined RadioSEGA in 2007 so I don’t know if the website was immediately popular, but I know we had a period in the early to mid 2010s, after we started hosting live shows, where we were at our most popular, and this has lead to a continued partnership with the Summer of Sonic team since 2010.

Is it hard work? What does it actually consist of at the moment? Do you often suffer from a overflow of work or does the gratitude of your fans compensate you for the effort put into the development of the radio?

For me, it isn’t hard work, no. As we don’t really tend to update the website other than Playlist updates (and it’s not really used for anything more than requesting music), our main focus is to make sure the radio stream online.

Our fans don’t compensate for the work we do, and we don’t ask them to either. RadioSEGA is run and funded by ourselves for the love of SEGA’s music.

Have you had any contact with Sega? What is their opinion about your work?

We were invited onto SEGA Europe’s Twitch stream in 2019 to promote the launch of the Mega Drive Mini, but outside of that we tend not to collaborate with them often, and as such it’s hard to know just what their opinion of the site actually is.

How wide range of music do you play? How do you choose your music? Are there any fan works?

We play music from pretty much every SEGA console, as well as computers SEGA released games on including the Magnavox Odyssey, Amiga and Atari ST. As mentioned previously, we also have non-video game music from pinball tables, UFO catchers etc. We do play remixes from fans, but listeners cannot request them.

Our mandate for including music on the station is pretty simple – If SEGA was involved in it, we want it.

Anyone who has heard about SEGA knows that Sonic the hedgehog is the mascot of the company. In RadioSEGA you organize various events, shows, arrange playlists etc. Can you list and tell a little bit about the attractions related to the Blue Hedgehog, which are the most popular on your radio?

The events we do for Sonic the Hedgehog tend to vary based on what the DJ wants to do for their particular show, so it’s hard to say what events we hold on a yearly basis outside of the Club Sonic DJ set I put together, which is usually broadcast in June but will be in July this year.