There are many myths and rumors that you may have heard, or concerns you may have about starting an internet radio station. These are the 3 biggest questions, we see coming up time and time again on our pre-sales desk. These are as follows:

1. 1. Do I need a whole bunch of expensive studio equipment to start webcasting?
2. 2. How about licensing? Are licenses expensive?
3. 3. Finally, do I need to be some kind of web genius in order to setup a website?

If these concerns are preventing you from starting an internet radio station, then don’t let them! We’ve put together a little video to answer your questions and address these myths.

For more information about creating your own radio station online, you can visit our sister site here.

We hope you enjoy the new product!

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.

Learn How To Start An Internet Radio Station today!

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.

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

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!

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/

I’m quite happy that our new website is almost ready! I’d like to thank Steve, our web services manager & Simon North for their excellent skills in producing this site! I had a chat with Steve earlier today about what is to come – of course, here is the video of our discussion for you to watch on YouTube…

Its almost ready to be launched and we will be putting the brand new Wavestreaming.com LIVE on Monday 19th January 2009!

If you haven’t already seen, we have a couple of sneak preview images available for you to see what its going to look like!

New Wavestreaming Website - SHOUTcast Page

New Wavestreaming Website - Video Tutorials Page

As mentioned – the new site will be live next Monday (19th Jan) so be sure to go and check it out!