Internet radio station help

[evermore2000]

Hey guys,

Im looking into setting up an online radio station for local bands. Has anyone had any experience with internet radio? Which programs to use, how easy and how costly it all is?

Many Thanks

Rob

 

[Fkrule]

i remeber a topic in the np incentves selling the software needed cant remember who bu though try searching it

 

[Jim_]

http://www.shoutcast.com

 

[siradio]

Internet Radio can be a lot more costly and complicated than most people imagine.

The important things you need are as follows:

Shoutcast servers (try not to go for and hosts with data transfer limits on their shoutcast deals)

SAM Broadcaster - if you are serious about internet broadcasting, this is the program you need. You can find it at http://spacialaudio.com - a licensed version costs around $200-$300. Please bear in mind that if you plan on having more than one person broadcasting, each will need their own fully licensed version.

Royalty coverage - you will need to ensure you pay the relevant royalties for the music you broadcast. Dealing directly with record companies is not only extremely costly, but also very time consuming. A good place to start would be http://live365.com - who can take care of this at a much cheaper rate (albeit still fairly costly)

Fully legal mp3 collection - this one explains itself.

.....................................

In addition you'll also need a lot of time, effort, energy and patience, as well as a strongly targetted concept. There are a lot of generic stations out there, so in order to succeed you'll need to find your own niche.

Also - prepare yourself for it being a loss-making venture for a while. The costs can be huge and grow excessively the more popular you become - and you will need strong audience figures before any potential advertiser will touch you.

Lastly, be realistic. You will not hit hundreds of thousands of listeners - so don't guage your success by those sort of numbers. Instead, research other similar stations and measure your performance against theirs - once you become the most popular/successful station for that niche - then you'll have something to attract advertisers for the particular field you are covering.

Hope this helps.

 

[evermore2000]

Thanks for the replies.

Another thing is - When a listener tunes in I want information about the band to be shown for the band that is currently playing. Then when the next song/band comes on information is shown about them. Is there any programs that diplays like this?

Rob

 

[siradio]

There aren't any programs for this as far as i'm aware. We currently use two custom scripts built by our webmaster - once of which updates an amazon link using the currently playing band name as a keyword, another updates an album screenshot, also from amazon, and again using the bands name as a keyword.

I suppose if you wanted info on the band to be displayed you could look at doing something similar - although I have no idea how this would be done

 

[Brujah]

Your shoutcast page will display information about the current song, and the history of last songs played. You can also grab it in the form of XML data I believe, to display on your page.

 

[DropLister]

I would suggest a windows server, cause im using linux and having a hell of a time finding anything like SAM Broadcaster to work on linux

 

[jstep]

whats wrong with shoutcast?

 

[siradio]

Sorry I may have misread about displaying artist info - I thought you meant having the 'now playing' info as well as like a mini-biography of that band or something...

If its just the details of which track and its artist are playing, then yeah, as mentioned in this thread your shoutcast index page( http://serveraddress: port/index.html ) shows details, and you can set up xml to pull these details directly onto your website.

 

[Snurf]

Use Winamp with Shoutcast, its the best.

 

[siradio]

I strongly disagree. If you are on a small budget then this may be your only option, however if you're serious about doing it and have the budget to match your intentions, then SAM Broadcaster is the way to go.

It is, however, a matter of opinion - so obviously try both (SAM does have a trial version)

Use Winamp with Shoutcast, its the best.

 

[leviathon]

My close friend used to host an internet radio based on Winamp Shoutcast. He told me it was a breeze to set up and really easy to manage. I personally favors Shoutcast as well.

 

[evermore2000]

I've just been reading http://www.allinternetradio.com/shoutcast.asp and it gives a few things to test before downloading anything from ShoutCast.
I did a 'SmarTest' at :

http://www.testmy.net/u_load.php and clicking the "SmarTest" link.

And then entered my results on the first link I gave above to see how many listeners I could handle. It cam back with 3! Does this mean I will have to pay a stream host? Would this be the better option anyway instead of being the host myself?

Rob

 

[siradio]

Shoutcast is the name of a server type used for online broadcasting, and is probably one of the most preferred server types used. The Winamp plug-in for shoutcast, which handles the actual broadcasting side - ie setting up and playing tracks etc, is what i'm referring to as being far inferior to SAM Broadcaster.

With regards hosting your own server, that depends entirely on how much bandwidth you are capable of. In all honesty once it gets to the technical side of things I start to get lost - but basically if you're wanting to stream high quality audio to a large number of people, you're probably best off going with a host.

Try googling 'shoutcast hosting' or check out the two we use: b2netsolutions.com and tidyhosts.com

 

[Echelon17]

Thought I'd throw my technical mind into this thread.

When streaming audio, bandwidth is a MAJOR concern. You need to research on bitrates and work out the quality of your broadcast streams. The higher the quality the more bandwidth you will consume. The lower the bitrate, the less bandwidth you'll use but the audio quality will gradually decrease.

Let's consider now that the average 'illegal' MP3 is ripped and encoded at either 192kbps CBR (Constant bit-rate) or approximately 224kbps VBR (Variable bit-rate) - both are important factors to consider. Constant bitrate is exactly what it says, a constant bit-rate that does not change. Variable bit-rate works slightly differently, essentially the 'quieter' a song is or the less happening in a song, the lower the bitrate. For example, sometimes at the end of a CD you get a hidden track at the end of the final track - with several minutes of silence in between, right? The 'silence' in those tracks is detected in VBR and as a result the bitrate will dramatically drop to almost nothing, because after all, silence is silence and almost contains nothing. More active parts of songs (numerous guitars, drums, vocals) contain more information and thus larger bitrate.

So, once you've determined your bitrates, we're back to the bandwidth side of things. If you're familiar with webhosting packages, generally they will offer you something like (for example) 6GB Bandwidth every month. That's data transfer and not a data FEED.

A feed is a little more difficult to explain, but I'll try.
Say that you have broadband at home and you have a 2MB connection. This means that at any one time you can pull a maximum of 2 Megabits a second, which equates roughly to 256k/sec on a download. You are able to pull this 256k/sec constantly for an entire month, and if your ISP are unlimited, they won't care at all. That's a feed.

In webhosting it works slightly different. Typically a webserver will have a MUCH faster connection than your home machine, but instead of rating you on speed they rate you on total amount of data sent in a month. On most typical websites you won't have people downloading files from your site, so the actual amount of speed you'll be using will be almost nothing. It'll always spike up and down as people are accessing your site.

With streaming audio the package you are more than likely going to want/get is based on a connection speed FEED and not the amount of data transferred. Because of this, you need to base the quality/bitrate of your stream on your feeds capabilities. You also need to include overheads into that estimation, so as a rule of thumb I say 5%-10% can be taken off for connection overheads.

Feeds are, generally, more expensive than paying for a transfer amount. This is because it's a GUARANTEED speed constantly, so it must always be achiveable regardless. When running an Internet radio station this is vital, you can't have your streams buffering or not playing properly because your feed isn't up to scratch.

So, let's say for example you decide to get a 10Mb feed and broadcast at 192k, let's do the math:

Drop the 5% overheads:
10 * 0.95 = 9.5
9.5 / 0.192 = 49~

That's approximately 50 users at a solid 192K bitrate on a 10Mbit feed.
Times that by 10, naturally, for a 100Mbit feed.

Good luck with your project.

 

[infinitomagazine]

hi , i have my radio station roun 3 months so i can help u
PM about all ur question and i will try to help u
is not too difficult and is cool

well u know where can you find easy help

 

[evermore2000]

Thanks everyone.

Ive downloaded shoutcast, winamp etc and am having some problems

Ive edited ShoutCast DNAS config file entering the port numbers etc and when I try and run ShoutCast DNAS I get this error message :


Event log:
<05/01/06@11:18:02> [SHOUTcast] DNAS/win32 v1.9.5 (Dec 27 2004) starting up...
<05/01/06@11:18:02> [main] loaded config from C:\Program Files\SHOUTcast\sc_serv.ini
<05/01/06@11:18:02> [main] initializing (usermax:5 portbase:8000)...
<05/01/06@11:18:02> [main] No ban file found (sc_serv.ban)
<05/01/06@11:18:02> [main] No rip file found (sc_serv.rip)
<05/01/06@11:18:02> [main] opening source socket
<05/01/06@11:18:02> [main] error opening source socket! FATAL ERROR! Some other process is using this port!


Ive googled the error message and it seems to be a common problem but Im still not sure what to do as to be honest I dont completely understand the technical side of things with the pot number etc.

It looks like another program is using port 8000. Ive tried switching the ports to 8001,8002 etc but its still the same error. If anyone has the config file that works could you please send it to me incase Ive edited mine wrong.

Is there anyway to find out what program is using these ports?

Rob

 

[slipondajimmy]

what are you running it on ...I set it up in about a minute with no issues on my home comp

 

[Anthony]

I would also suggest you try using a Flash-based mp3 player as an alternative for music and/or podcast files.