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!

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!

“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!

We have just secured 100mbit extra capacity for our customers with services in the USA. Due to the excellent pricing we have managed to get on this, we will be offering some substantially discounted streaming deals on high capacity 128k SHOUTcast servers on our US network for you guys which will be made available within the next couple of weeks.

Our INSANE pricing is as follows:

50 @ 128k SHOUTcast Server – ONLY $54.00/month (3 Available – Half Price!)
100 @ 128k SHOUTcast Server – ONLY $107.50/month (2 Available – Half Price!)
150 @ 128k SHOUTcast Server – ONLY $177.50/month (1 Available – Half Price!)

As you can see, we’re only going to offer 6 lucky people the chance to take advantage of this excllent pricing and its not very often we do a promotion on this scale. If you want to take advantage of this – you can book your server in advance, please contact our sales department via the form on our website and use subject ‘Blog Offer’.

www.wavestreaming.com/?i=support

The pricing shown above will be honoured on a monthly basis for the first six people to order. Servers will be made available on a first-come-first-served basis.

There is a limit of one per customer.

Our system finds out the geographic location of your listeners based on their IP address, it can then use the Google Maps service to create a visual representation of where they are in the world.

It also provides useful information such as the player they are using (iTunes, WIndows Media, Winamp, Realplayer, Flash Player etc) and the amount of time they have been listening to the stream.

This is an exciting and new service for our SHOUTcast customers. As part of our ongoing development roadmap, this service will be included free with all SHOUTcast hosting accounts.

To sign up with Wavestreaming SHOUTcast and take advantage of our Geo Location Maps – visit our website;

http://www.wavestreaming.com/?i=shoutcast

We use Google Maps to allow you to keep a very close eye on your listeners, in real time.

Zoom in on your listeners. Try and spot the millenium wheel!

Sorry that we haven’t updated this blog for a little while, but we thought we’d inform you as to one of our most recent features, which is vital if you’re using PPL and PRS/MCPS for music licensing and royalties in the UK with your SHOUTcast server.

As you may know, it is a requirement from PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) that all of their customers report quarterly listening hours as part of their Small Webcasting Licence agreement.

The ‘TTSL’ or Total Time Spent Listening is a new feature that we are now providing free of charge to ALL SHOUTcast customers, to use for general information and for music licensing reporting purposes. This is calculated based on your listening figures, which are checked every 5 minutes.

For example, if you have a stream with a 25 listener max and for most of a 24 hour period, around 25  people are connected, you would expect around 600 hours listening time each day.  This is a very simple calculation (24 hours * 25 listeners = 600). Obviously, no stream is at the same level throughout each day, which is why we have created a complicated system to accurately monitor your listener figures every 5 minutes and calculate the TTSL at the end of each day. This figure is then logged and the data is made available via Wavepanel.

An example set of data of a 25 listener stream, which is close to being full 24 hours a day as follows:

09/07/2008: 578.5 hours
10/07/2008: 579.83 hours
11/07/2008: 579.42 hours
12/07/2008: 588.67 hours
13/07/2008: 589.25 hours
14/07/2008: 591.58 hours
15/07/2008: 589.58 hours
16/07/2008: 582.33 hours
17/07/2008: 586.08 hours
18/07/2008: 581.75 hours
19/07/2008: 584.92 hours
20/07/2008: 580.5 hours

As mentioned, most streams are not full 24/7 so its likely your data will vary from day to day, depending on listener figures. Data has been collected across all clients since 9th July. You can access it via the ‘Advanced’ section of your SHOUTcast server(s) from within Wavepanel.

This is just one of our ongoing development projects which we are working on over the summer. Making your legal reporting obligations simple and effective. To our knowledge, no one else doing streaming media can offer anything as easy and convenient.

More soon!

Its all go go go here at Wavestreaming. not only are we launching our Instant Radio Success Internet Marketing project – but we are also developing some exciting new products and features for our existing and new streaming customers, which will be made available later in the summer! Keep your eyes peeled for more information.

To kick this off, we’ll be making an announcement to all SHOUTcast and Windows Media customers today about a new BETA feature we’ve just created for your servers, so check your Wavepanel messages or email inbox to find out what its all about.

We’re also working on a fresh new look for our website, which will also be transferred to Wavepanel. We’ve had the green waves on our site for 4 years now! Our team of web designers have been busy, we’ve decided its about time the waves go and so we’ll soon be relaunching with a fresh new look.

Thats all for now, again soon.