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FOUR STATIONS ON AIRSapphire Media Limited — United Kingdom

We run the stations.We wrote the software.

Four UK radio stations — and the software company that keeps them on air. We build our own tools because we’re the ones they wake at 3am.

NetworkALL NOMINAL
4 stationsALL SERVICES NOMINAL
  • POPON AIR
  • DNBON AIR
  • RAVEON AIR
  • REGGAEON AIR
01The stations
Four brands · one operation

Four stations. One operation.

We own and operate four UK radio brands. Programming, transmission and the systems behind them sit inside the same company — which is the whole reason the technology exists.

All four run on one platform — scheduling, transmission, delivery and monitoring, built and maintained in-house.

See the platform
02The platform
Sapphire Control — internal platform

Nobody was building the tools we needed.

So we built them. One platform runs all four stations — scheduling, playout, streaming and monitoring — and it has to work at 04:00 with nobody watching.

Automation — all stations, 24hRUNNING
0006121824
POP
Overnight
Breakfast
Daytime
Drive
Evening
DNB
Deep
Rollers
Liquid
Peak
RAVE
Afterhours
Chill
Classics
Big room
REGGAE
Dub
Roots
Lovers
Dancehall
Logging
Continuous · compliance capture
Now 22:42

Platform modules

  • SchedulingClock, rotation and rulesACTIVE
  • PlayoutUnattended, 4 servicesACTIVE
  • EncodingMulti-bitrate, multi-formatACTIVE
  • DeliveryEdge distributionACTIVE
  • MonitoringSilence, levels, uptimeACTIVE

Signal monitor

−6.2 dBPEAK OK48 kHz
Stations4 LIVE
  • Sapphire PopON AIR
  • Sapphire DNBON AIR
  • Sapphire RaveON AIR
  • Sapphire ReggaeON AIR
Stream health
320kbps

AAC · 48 kHz · stable

03The signal path
One company · no handoffs

Everything between source and speaker.

Four stages. One company. Nothing is handed to a vendor and hoped for.

  1. 01

    Content

    Music, scheduling and the editorial decisions behind four station brands.

  2. 02

    Broadcast

    Playout, continuity, transmission. The bit that cannot stop.

  3. 03

    Software

    Encoding, scheduling, delivery, APIs. Written by us, for this.

  4. 04

    Audience

    Phones, speakers, browsers, cars. Wherever the signal lands.

Owning all four stages is unusual. It is also the reason the software works.

How we build
04The company
Registered in England and Wales

One company. Two disciplines. No translation layer.

Sapphire Media Limited runs four radio stations and builds the software that runs them. Both sit inside the same company, deliberately.

The people writing the playout code are the people who get the alert when a stream drops at four in the morning. Nobody has to explain the problem to a supplier first, and nobody waits for a support window to open.

  • We use what we build, every day, across four live stations.
  • Requirements come from operating, not from a workshop.
  • If a tool is wrong, we are the first to know.
Company
Sapphire Media Limited
Registered
England and Wales
Company no.
17463222
Registered office
Unit 201F, 60 Frederick Street, Birmingham, B1 3HS, United Kingdom
Disciplines
Radio · Software
05Capabilities
All capabilities →

What we actually do.

Seven things, all of them load-bearing for four stations that have to be on air tomorrow morning.

  • 01Broadcast

    Scheduling, playout, continuity and compliance logging across four live services — running every day, not as a demo.

    • Playout
    • Continuity
    • Logging
    Read more about Broadcast
    Signal48 kHz
    CONTINUOUS4 SERVICES
  • 02Software

    Product design and engineering. The playout, scheduling and delivery systems our own output depends on — written in-house, running in production, fixed by the people who wrote them.

    • Playout
    • Scheduling
    • Delivery APIs
    Read more about Software
    Signal48 kHz
    CONTINUOUS4 SERVICES
  • 03Streaming

    Encoding, packaging and delivery across web, mobile and smart speakers, at the bitrates each platform actually wants.

    • Encoding
    • Delivery
    • Edge
    Read more about Streaming
    Signal48 kHz
    CONTINUOUS4 SERVICES
  • 04Automation

    Unattended playout, timed events and fail-safe handover between sources — the part that has to work when nobody is watching.

    • Unattended
    • Failover
    • Scheduling
    Read more about Automation
    Signal48 kHz
    CONTINUOUS4 SERVICES
  • 05Infrastructure

    Transmission chain, redundancy, monitoring and the plumbing nobody sees until it stops.

    • Redundancy
    • Monitoring
    • Uptime
    Read more about Infrastructure
    Signal48 kHz
    CONTINUOUS4 SERVICES
  • 06Digital

    Websites, apps and the on-demand layer that sits around a live signal.

    • Web
    • Apps
    • On demand
    Read more about Digital
    Signal48 kHz
    CONTINUOUS4 SERVICES
  • 07Product

    Taking an internal tool and making it something another broadcaster can pick up and run.

    • Productisation
    • Support
    • Onboarding
    Read more about Product
    Signal48 kHz
    CONTINUOUS4 SERVICES
Next steps

Let’s build something worth broadcasting.

Airtime, a platform, or someone who genuinely understands both. Tell us which one you need.

hello@sapphiremedia.ltd
Talk to us