Hello,

I am just getting into this shoutcast thing and am curious if you can set up the server to stream from files hosted locally on the same server, like from a Playlist etc. ... or is it simply what you broadcast to the streaming server so you would have to have multiple instances to have different streams?

Hi,

There are ways of doing it, but unless you own the music, it's technically illegal :D

well actually most of these tracks are self-produced from Soundtrack Pro, so that isn't a problem :)

Hi,

There are ways of doing it, but unless you own the music, it's technically illegal :D


Unless you pay for royalties :D

Which id say 1 out of every 5000 streams is legal

I think he means he produces the music, so that is legal as it is his material.

There is a program called " streamtranscoder "
With this,if you have mp3 files on your remote server(or where the shoutcast is)you can setup easily this and play the files automatically when no dj is :-)

Regards,

Who is liable if the stream is illegal?

The broadcaster or the Server provider?

The broadcaster is responsible, but the provider has to take it down if they see it.

Well that's what I base on, and I have no problems. It's in my terms any illegal broadcasts and i'll terminate.

Yeah,

But if somebody complains to the DC.
Would they not have sufficient grounds to terminate your server?

There has recently been a big shadow cast over the internet radio industry as i found out on shoutcasts homepage. Heres what was said:


The Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC has more than tripled the royalty rates for web casters and if left unchanged they will *KILL* the future of Internet radio!
Yesterday(April 26th, 2007) the "Internet Radio Equality Act " House Resolution # 2060 was introduced in Congress. This bill would overturn the CRB's decision and require rates to be re-set at a lower rate.

Yeah sites like fragfm.co.uk have gone into hibernation...

thats probably the reason.

The wouldn't disonnect your server unless you were big time running illegal radio's. We've had one from the datacentre, and they were saying we had 24 hours to remove the radio. Which we did.

There are licence sites which pay royalties for you and anything upto 500 listeners is arround £20.

And how many of them are just scams? Most of them.

I Dont think that the most internet radio are enough big and commercial to pay for the licence.
For example,here in Greece the Licence I Think that is 60€/month
Any other interesting point,is that many shoutcast providers gives space to their users to upload mp3s for automatic playing.
They didnt request for licence or anything else.
Regards,

Getting back to the original poster's questions..

The SHOUTcast server itself can be set up as an on-demand streamer, or as a live broadcaster. The on-demand streamer basically will stream an MP3 to you when you pull up the correct URL in your browser..allowing you to listen to any MP3 that is set up in your on-demand shoutcast folder. The live broadcaster works as you described...whatever audio is streamed to the broadcast server, will be sent out to all the listeners. To stream the audio to the broadcast server, you can either use a winamp plugin(Shoutcast DSP Plugin available on www.shoutcast.com), Oddcast(available http://www.oddsock.org/tools/oddcastv3/), or you could load up more server software, specifically sc_trans and use that to stream a playlist from the dedicated server, to your shoutcast broadcast server.

The streamTranscoder previously mentioned is for converting from one bitrate to another.. ie.. taking a 128kbps Stereo stream, and rebroadcasting it as a 24kbps Mono stream.

Hope this answers your questions.

Thank you, yes that was very informative!

I have found a nice little program called Nicecast, and although it doesn't play music from the actual server box, I can stream it from a computer at our studio easily and with great quality. Also, this way we can do live-mic nights.

Ahh... you are a Mac person. :) That is definately one of the more popular programs that is used for Mac.

A Nicecast guide to setting up for an Internet station:
http://www.orbitalgrooves.com/help.php?d=macosx

:) Thank you again amico I will take a good look at this guide!

Yes, I used a program to do this actualkly.. Ill search for the name..

Hello,

I am just getting into this shoutcast thing and am curious if you can set up the server to stream from files hosted locally on the same server, like from a Playlist etc. ... or is it simply what you broadcast to the streaming server so you would have to have multiple instances to have different streams?


There are a few systems like this, check out source forge. Search "Zefie Cast"

Hello, When you are setting up the shoutcast server, it has a box to place in the file that you want to stream whenever there is no live dj.

Hello, When you are setting up the shoutcast server, it has a box to place in the file that you want to stream whenever there is no live dj.

Hi,

This file will only stream to people who are connected when the last DJ disocnnects. It will not stream the file for people who try to tune in after the DJ goes offline.

You will need sc_trans, or other "libshout" based scripts to source a shoutcast or icecast server when no DJ is connected.

My personal favorite is Icecast, because it can be configured to relay another stream when there is no live DJ. Lots of cool bells and whistles that Shoutcast can't do.

Hi! Calibur, if you are interested in setting up a RadioStation (audio or video streaming) you can check out my free shoutcast hosting service on http://www.chilazo.com we may can work something out ;)

If you have any doubt you can visit the website or send me a PM ;)