Setting up an internet radio station

onefortynine

Hi folks.
Me and a few friends are trying to set up a live streaming internet radio station but we're getting nowhere fast. when we look for info all we find are things like shoutcast and icecast. from what i can understand with these programs, u stream from your own pc after installing all the programs.so if u switch off, so does the radio station.
but thats not what we want. we are looking for a company to host all our audio files so none of our PCs have to be online for it to work. also it needs to be live ie. the user logs on to the site and hears what ever is playing right then and there, not from the start of the file.
we already have a domain name but we are really struggling to find a company to meet our needs.
does anyone have any info that would help us out?
Thanks

godfrey

now correct me if Im wrong, but you want it all to go down without you doing anything, except maybe filling a template and uploading audio files, right?

well it doesnt work that way really.

what 'normally' happens with Internet Radio Stations is everything is done by the radio people and streamed (a single stream is all thats required) to a stream provider like Streamguys etc. they then serve out the streams to the Punters and you pay according to the number of streams you want available at any given time.

hope this is helpful to you...

g

p.s.
best of luck with it

stomprockin

As far as i know,the best way is to invest in a good server and off you go...
so that you will have all the bandwidth you will need

godfrey

stomprockin wrote: »

As far as i know,the best way is to invest in a good server and off you go...
so that you will have all the bandwidth you will need

not so...
whilst having a stable, reliable machine to stream from is important, and a server or a properly configured PC would do this , that doesn't provide or have any effect on your 'bandwidth' or the number of streams available UNLESS you plan on hosting and streaming from your base, which is fine, but...

you would need massive bandwidth (10's of MB/sec using fibre typically) and here is where the meaning of bandwidth becomes apparent.

a regular 2MB Eircom DLS service provides upload of 256kB which is only just enough to serve up 1 decent stream - ie: to 1 listener!

thats why most operators do just that, 1 stream up to a streaming provider who in turn serves out streams to the multiple listeners.

have a look at http://www.streamguys.com/ and see how they do it. there are many providers but they're the 1st to come to mind. they rent or sell you a streaming server in their server 'farm' and connect you to the www on a big fekkn connection. some providers can also rent or sell you an 'off-air' solution, meaning they connect a radio receiver to a streaming server so you don't have to have an internet connection to them, which is great if they're within the range of your regular FM signal.

I hope this helps explain the way it works. of course you 'can' do your own streaming to your 2 mates if you want to!!

all the best ~

g

murphman

This company might have a solution for ye?? Won't be free though.

http://wavestreaming.com/?section=products&page=autodj

godfrey

wowsers,
I wasn't aware such a thing existed. nice one there...

g

avandelay

You could try someone like stream101.com. They will host your music and send it to a streaming server.
By the way, how are you planning to handle the legal/admin side of things with royalties?

iamhunted

plus theres always smal;l irish webstations like http://www.sessionsradio.com and radiocrackle.com who do live streams and podcasting for free