Internet Radio Blog

Wavestreaming in 2010, Podcasting and More!

It is now the 31st December 2009 – and a few weeks back, I recorded this video. We are soon to be launching an exciting new service that will benefit many radio stations. Sit back and enjoy! James.

Wavestreaming – Reduced Support Hours Over Christmas

We have now officially closed our office for Christmas and normal business hours will resume in January.

Our sales phone line will be unavailable during this time. However, technical support and sales will continue to operate on reduced hours throughout the Christmas period via email. This simply means that if your query isn’t urgent, we may take a little longer than usual to respond.

If you need to contact us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via our ticket desk – you can do this via the contact form on the Wavestreaming site.

Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2010!

SHOUTcast Broadcasting in MP3 vs aacPlus

We often get asked by our customers “What format is better, MP3 or aacPlus?”. If this is confusing to you, lets explain: These are both two different ways to encode (compress) audio to allow it to be transmitted over the internet. Both of which are offered by the SHOUTcast software.

The 2 formats have their advantages and disadvantages, namely aacPlus – which was introduced only a few years ago and offers excellent quality audio at much lower bitrates. Coding Technologies who produced the format claim that you can produce CD stereo quality using aacPlus at only 48kbps, whereas the MP3 equivalent would be 128kbps, this is great to lower bandwidth costs for radio stations and also great for listeners without high-speed broadband connections (which, lets face it – are few and far between in 2009).

MP3 has been around for years and is a very mature and hugely widespread format, the ideal thing about streaming in MP3 is that the support of it is native to all operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX and all the various types of Linux, Unix, BSD etc.

The Wavestreaming SHOUTcast Flash Player also supports MP3, but does not yet allow aacPlus to be streamed via SHOUTcast.

So the decision is still yours, but at Wavestreaming, we always recommend good old 128kbps MP3 streaming to customers. We have some SHOUTcast Deals to help lower the cost of this if you run a smaller radio stations and keep you on budget. MP3 streaming will guarantee that you will be accessible to many more listeners than aacPlus and it also allows you to take advantages of Flash streaming on your website. With broadband being so widespread, listening to a 128kbps stream isn’t really a problem for people any more.

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Is the credit crunch having an effect on your internet radio station?

We’ve had mixed views on this one, many people are saying that they have seen record levels of listeners. Possibly due to the fact that people are staying in more as opposed to going out. Staying in, perhaps on their computer or listening via a WIFI radio set.

Other radio stations have seen a negative effect and found advertisers are pulling out, listener levels are dropping and the recession is hitting them big time.

Either way, we find nearly all of our clients are constantly looking for new ways to improve the performance of their radio station and attract those all valued listeners in their hoards.

Keep your eyes on this blog, as we’ve come up with an idea which you’re going to love. Can’t really go into much more detail than that for now, but all that will be said is that this is quite a closely guarded secret here at Wavestreaming.

New Credit Card Billing System for Streaming Customers

We have now launched our new credit card billing gateway, this will replace our 2checkout payment system. Users are now going to be billed automatically each month/year instead of logging in and being required to manually make payments each month.

The new system has been developed to be secure, using industry leading 256bit encryption. It will also be easier to maintain for us, and the recurring nature of the payments means its also easier for our clients.

As we are a UK based company, payments will automatically be converted and shown as UK £ GBP. This does not affect your services, as you’ll still be able to pay using a USA or other credit card. All common cards are accepted including Visa, Mastercard, Switch/Maestro & Solo.

All new orders placed via our website will be routed through this system, however, we will continue to also accept PayPal payments as an option.

If you’re an existing customer, you will be able to move your services over to the new system via the billing section of our control panel. If you have any questions, you can contact billing via our website contact form. Existing customers using PayPal to pay us will not be effected by the new system, it only replaces 2checkout.

Broadcast SHOUTcast from Apple Mac OSX using Nicecast

We’ve had a lot of requests for this tutorial, a high quality version for our website will be published soon.

Nicecast is a software tool for use on the Mac OSX operating system. It offers some great features including SHOUTcast compatibility amongst other tools to enable Apple users to start their own radio stations.

More information about the software and a free trial is available from;
rogueamoeba.com/nicecast/

Free SHOUTcast Flash Player for your Website

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of our new Flash Player – with over 20 different skins to choose from, it can easily be implemented onto any radio stations website and will enable you to reach a wide audience with your SHOUTcast server.

The great news is, you don’t even have to be a Wavestreaming customer to take advantage of this – it is open and free to everyone! Just visit the following page to get started;
http://www.wavestreaming.com/servers/flash-streaming/shoutcast-player.php

The great thing about Adobe Flash is that it can play MP3 streams, and is very widely compatible. You’ll be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t have flash on their computer and our SHOUTcast Flash Player will work on nearly all browsers and operating systems, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, on both Windows XP & Vista plus on Mac OSX, even on Linux PC’s!

Previously SHOUTcast radio stations often depended on embedded Windows Media Player to add their stream directly onto the website, this of course caused issues with non-windows users. Now, using our Flash player – the stream can be played on almost any system.

We offer a selection of over 20 skins to choose from. These are from simple black & white themed through to more adventurous colours to suit any website. Here are just a few of the skins available;

Basic Skin Preview

More exciting skin

Wide Selection of Stylish Themes

To grab your player today, just visit our main site;

www.wavestreaming.com/servers/flash-streaming/shoutcast-player.php

Cheap SHOUTcast Server Hosting – Special Offers and Promotions

Since the launch of our new website in January, we have introduced a range of special offers and promotions, we now offer the best deals on cheap SHOUTcast servers.

www.wavestreaming.com/servers/shoutcast/cheap-shoutcast-deals.php

Due to our special relationship with our suppliers, we are able to bring you SHOUTcast streaming at a reduced rate.

We refuse to be beaten on price, if you would like a price match – you can get in touch with our sales team!

cPanel Web Hosting Services Now Available – PHP & MySQL Enabled

Wavestreaming are proud to announce the immediate availability of our new Webhosting services for Radio Stations.

If you are a radio station, or run any other website and are in need of a high quality website hosting solution, Wavestreaming should be your first port of call for web hosting.

All of our website hosting packages come with industry leading cPanel control panel, which gives full control over all aspects of your hosting account, including email, domain functions, statistics and much more.

We also include a whole range of additional features, including PHP & MySQL for development and a large selection of auto-install web applications (scripts) such as Wordpress for Blogs and PHPBB Forum system.

Three packages are available to cater for small to medium websites at a range of monthly and yearly pricing structures. Custom solutions can also be created for larger sites – quotes available on request.

For more information, see our web hosting section;
www.wavestreaming.com/servers/web-hosting/