Some years ago at a Britfolk gathering in Yorkshire several artists started bemoaning the severe reduction in radio programmes featuring folk music. Pete Coe suggested that we should stop moaning and do something about it now that streaming on the web could provide a web based channel for folk to be heard. Tom Bliss picked up the idea and ran with it - and that was the start of Radio Britfolk. Several performers backed it by throwing fifty pounds each into a pot for development and expenses (you need licenses to run this sort of thing and royalties have to be paid to the poeple whose music is played and that's not cheap). Tom involved musician and programmer Phil Snell and Radio Britfolk launched under the banner of FolkWISE, the development organisation that was then the formal wing of Britfolk. We ran Radio Britfolk for two years and then Phil Snell had some underlying programming ideas that he wanted to push forward on his own, so having done what we said we would do and launched a web-based folk radio programme we passed it over to Phil to run and manage, knowing it was in good hands. Phil changed the name from Radio Britfolk to The Music Well and it's still running, still providing folk music on the web.
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