As some of you may or may not know, my crew and I run a radio show off of Live365.com. It's 24/7 of a basic list (about 5-6 hrs) and a live show on Sunday nights.

Issues I have with this format are...

The commercials
Signing in
The occasional too frequent "drop outs" while broadcasting
The COst and pricing structure. We pay 60 a month. We could pay more for more space or better placement etc.
Very limited (or at least it seems) Radio Owner functionality
Software issues and if your computer has space issues, you may not be able to broadcast.

I already have a website and spend money on that. I figure for 60 a month (which would garner me an extra 300 mb of space alone on my site for a year) I can spend it on my site and host a better show (and maybe throw some cash towards Live365 for placement only) But really money better spent elsewhere.

But how does one go about hosting a good show? One thing Live365 does is allow many people to tune in. If We did it from a local server or something wouldn't the banwidth of our Internet providers limit the number of people that can listen. So many questions...but if someone knows how to go about this...or maybe knows of a better Radio service...



Also WHat are podcasts and how do these relate to internet radio?

i dont have the answer for your questions but i wanted to say Hi !!

Mach said:

Hello!

I run NewPowerRadio from my computer at home.

I'm on a DSL connection so I can have about 12 listeners at 24kbps/mono on my server. I also have listeners/friends that donate their bandwidth (relay servers) so I have about 35 listener slots.

For my server I use SHOUTcast which is free.

I use SAM 3 Broadcaster to play the music, talk, do shows ect...It cost me $199 US and is worth every penny. U really can take control of your station. Plus the forums at Spacial Audio are great.

There are many options...look around and U'll find the one that suits U best.


If U have any questions let me know and I'll be glad to help in any way that I can.

superspaceboy said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting

I forget how the pricing goes, but I thought there was some law set up where you have to pay a certain commission now to broadcast music online. That may be factored into your costs at Live365.

If you don't mind the user not being able to jump right into the middle of a live broadcast, you can also just make the tracks available in a streaming format directly from your web space. Both Windows Media and Real Player have special "redirector" files you can create (in notepad if you know the syntax) that will automatically play a list of seperate files.

For example. Say you converted all your mp3s into Real Player files (.rm extention) at a bitrate suitable for streaming. Then you would just need to create one redirector file (.ram extension) that lists all the tracks you want to play and the order you want to play them in. So when you link to this file (lets call it "broadcast.ram") that triggers their Real Player to launch, then start playing each track off your web space one by one.

Its been a while since I've done this, but I think the language is called SMIL. You can do alot more with those files than just specify playlists, you can also include banner ads, animations, etc...