how to start an internet radio station

[dhruv227]

was wondering how can we start an internet radio station ? i would like to start my own so i could stream my band's songs, ya the like x10 radio station.

[Zangetsu]

SHOUTcast is a way for you to make an internet radio station and it would also be handy to keep a machine running for 24/7 + a huge amount of songs

[TechAsh]

You will not be able to run a Radio Station on x10's Free Packages. You will need to buy a VPS, or use a computer that you have at home.
Also make sure that you have the rights to broadcast any tracks that you play.

[omniuni]

If you're not so interested in an actual radio station, and just streaming music, upload the songs as mp3, aac, and ogg format, and create a .m3u with the address of each of the songs. Most media players will stream the songs automatically pulling each address from the m3u. Of course, it also means people can download the songs. If you want to stop that from happening, run the files through a *.php which will only stream them if the user has logged in to the web page, and uses arguments to pull the files from a protected directory and without disclosing their location.

[Zangetsu]

but you cannot upload them to one of the X10 servers for several reasons
1. copyrights
2. usage of resources i.e. if there allot of people listening to your songs not only would it eat your bandwidth away it would also crank up the cpu usage which leads to a very fast suspension of deletion of your account

[omniuni]

I'm pretty sure if it's their own music, and they are legally allowed to distribute it, it is well within their rights to post it on the servers. Also, file reads are not very resource intensive at all, so that is likely not an issue. Now, it will, however, eat your bandwidth.

[Smith6612]

Well, for basics, what you need are the following for a 24/7 radio station.

1: A dedicated PC that is running 24/7 or a server with a large supply of good quality music (128kbps minimum, higher is better).

2: A streaming server. This can be hosted either at home (if you have a fiber optic connection with 20Mbps+ of UNTHROTTLED, UNCAPPED upstream connectivity) or at a datacenter. If at a datacenter, a server with a plentiful supply of Bandwidth. If hosting from a datacenter, you need a connection that has a greater amount of upload than the stream's bitrate, as well as a connection that is both unthrottled and uncapped. Saturating your upload to the limit will choke your connection, and cause the stream to cut in and out when you're online. Also, capping is self explanatory, and throttling will cause the stream to skip.

3: Software such as ShoutCAST to perform streaming, as well as some slight knowledge of networking and some knowledge on PCs.

4: Of course, if playing music that is retail, you need permission as it is normally copyrighted. Typically the artists of the songs will allow you to play them as they want you to help get their music out to the world, but the music labels, it all depends on what they would like, since they tend to be a bit more picky about streaming/piracy than the artists since they get most of the money anyways.

But that's all that's too it. Might I also include, you need a good ear as well so that you can hear the sound quality and determine what might need to be changed, so some sound knowledge is also needed a little bit.

[omniuni]

IceCast and XMMS2 are also good server softwares. (And FOSS)

[allofus]

I have setup a live / preloaded broadcasting platform.

The system is maybe more complicated than typical broadcasting needs, but we have multiple hosts scheduled at fixed times. We also wanted to allow the hosting team to be as creative as possible as well as record and publish their work.

I use 2 shoutcast servers, 1 is local on an xp box and the other is on our x10hosting vps

Hosts call into an IM / voip client running on the local xp box and their audio is passed to 1 soundcard.
This audio is then fed into the second soundcard that is being broadcast using shoutcast plugin for winamp.

The 2 soundcards mean that the hosts can be muted during breaks but they can hear the breaks. This also alllows all audio on the box to be broadcast as well as switching from 1 source to another seamlessly.

A recording program is scripted to start if the host is set to live.
A host can change their show status to on / off / pre-recorded and a few other features. This is done by using a bit of php on remote shared host on x10 as well as a webserver on the xp. The scripts that que up the intro / outro music basically read the contents of text files to see who is up next and whether they are live or pre-recorded. If live it un-mutes the audio stream, plays their intro music and ssh is used if they are preloading a recorded show.

The hosts also have a bunch of infomercial stuff they can add, 10 files of 3 different lengths, 30, 60, 120 seconds long and the system randomly picks them, determines the length and makes 3 mins out of them for the breaks....

The shows are recorded, renamed to match the host and time / date and then automatically uploaded to a folder setup for each host on our shared host server.

Ready to publish on the website within 5 mins.

I use 2 shoutcast servers, 1 on the vps is set to broadcast the 1 i have locally. I do this because if there is a seconds drop in my local connection the remote shoutcast server would freeze. It is easier to monitor the local via scripting. I have set of scripts that status of all needed programs and servers and if there is a problem they are restarted automatically within a second or so, making for a hassle free and constant broadcast.

When a show is over the system terminates their connect to allow for the next person to connect. We can take calls live and broadcast any audio with ease.

Our system is automated to the max. It fixes it's self, chooses what to play, when to play it and if there is an error either locally or on the vps it restarts it's self and it also informs the team via IM what it has had to do. The system can be administered via our website and feedback for admin tasks are IM sent to the team also. Basically it lets us all know what is happening instantly. If a host is not live for their show the system will find their last show, if they want to pre-record it will find that and if there is no show scheduled it will find something random to fill the gap.

I am very pleased with the results and am proud of what I have been able to achieve by putting the various elements together.

I will gladly assist if there are any questions about how, or whatever....

[dhruv227]

thanks everyone for all your knowledge.