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.

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!

Just with all of the other server data, due to popular request – we’ve added some Javascript to our Wavepanel system, which allows clients to put the song history on their websites from their SHOUTcast servers.

Add SONG history from SHOUTcast to your website.

It boasts a new design in preperation for SHOUTcast Version 2, which will be launched soon (we hope!).

Check out their website; www.shoutcast.com/

All Wavestreaming SHOUTcast Hosting customers will be upgraded to the new server software when it is released.

“I want to broadcast a radio station using your SHOUTcast services, but I run an Apple Mac computer and use OS X – I can’t install Winamp and have no way of connecting to SHOUTcast. Is there any iMac Friendly software which I can use to stream to SHOUTcast?”

The answer (You’ll be glad to know!) is YES. We recommend the following 2 tools, which can both stream to shoutcast and be installed on Mac OSX

http://butt.sourceforge.net/ (Free)
http://rogueamoeba.com/nicecast/ (Paid)

The best thing of all, one of these is open source so its completely free. The other is a paid application (Only $40) but they do have a free trial available!

So there is your answer! If you’re on a Mac, you have no excuse not to install one of these and get streaming!

http://www.youtube.com/Wavestreaming – Subscribe!