Forum Moderators: phranque
A client of mine runs a radio station. He wishes to put his radio on the internet and has asked me to investigate. Let me start by saying I know nothing about media streaming or about how to setup the radio. All I now is that when I listern to Danny Baker in the morning I open Real Player. I can build the website and perform SEO on it no problem. He wants one of 3 options set up:
1. It plays what he broadcasts in realtime.
2. He preselects MP3's (songs and interviews) and it plays them in order.
3. He has a folder full of MP3's and the internet radio plays them randomly.
Can anyone give me any information. I'm mainly looking for what hardware/software is needed, rougth costs and, easy it is (or not) and any other info.
Any the any Guru's out there?
Many Thanks
Chris
I've done live radio streaming for a previous client. I'll preface this by saying part of the job was to set up an in-house server for them, which made streaming somewhat easier.
I used Real Server. I attached a radio tuner to the server which fed the station feed into Real Producer. Real Producer then fed this stream out to the Real Server which then fed it out to any RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) request. The link on the site pointed to a RAM file, which is a playlist file for the RA (RealAudio) stream. Real Server comes with a licenced number of users, the default being (IIRC) 60. After that you need to pay more to upgrade the licence to allow more listeners.
This is very bandwidth consuming, but since we had a dedicated leased line, we had no per month bandwidth limitations. You may also choose on the Real Producer stream setup to throttle all connections to a certain speed 14/28/56k etc.
If you are using hosted server options, there will be the cost of getting the live stream to the server. Many use ISDN, which can prove quite expensive.
There are other streaming options, ShoutCast (free) and Windows Media Player (not sure on cost, if any) - but I have always felt that Real Player has a good level of saturation to make it quite accessible to a large majority of people.
I hope this helps somewhat, and if you have any other questions - fire away! I'll certainly try and answer them!
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Does ShoutCast also require the user to download a plugin? Or does it use an Applet for the streaming?
Learning alot.
Blobfish, I don't quite understand your setup. Was it just a normal server with Real software installed?
I will definitely look into ShoutCast (I like the price).
I regards to the issue of royalties and such. The clients radio station will probably be mainly talk. However, even if it does play music I don't think artists will be too annoyed if we play their song, after all, we are promoting their product.
Chris.
Yep - just your run of the mill Windows NT server. Real Server is a software install that facilitates stream media.
I have to put the software on my expenses list (twice). One for him, one for me ;).
Chris.
I assure you, the cost of software pales in comparison to the new licensing fees proposed for broadcasters.
Does this also cover online streams? I'm not sure if the EU have made any moves in this regard yet. Anyone got any info on that?
Current proposals call for those royalties to be in the range of seven times current over-the-air royalties (less than the 49X the music industry asked for). There are some proposed breaks for small webcasters, but not for broadcasters.
I haven't checked the latest status since the NAB Radio Show in early September, but I don't think anything has been firmly decided yet. So anyone streaming in the US is definitely taking a big royalty risk.
I don't think artists will be too annoyed if we play their song, after all, we are promoting their product
You play it, you pay for it. A US broadcaster cannot play licensed music over the air or over the internet without paying royalties.
I'm sure your client has an attorney - now would be a good time to spend a little on legal fees.
I have spoken to my client. He is going ahead with the radio station, however, he is NOT going to play music. It is just going to be a business advice and phone in show. No royalties, no fuss ... whew.
Chris.
