Hey everyone I just want to get your thoughts on shoutcast/icecast hosting. How big of a market is there for it?

Hey everyone I just want to get your thoughts on shoutcast/icecast hosting. How big of a market is there for it?

The market is pretty big, however theirs many already in it...

Hmm..How big are those many though, are there thousands of really tiny companies or are there thousands of really large companies? I mean if one got started in it they would have some sort of chance. I am not neccesarily getting into it, just curious is all.

Hmm..How big are those many though, are there thousands of really tiny companies or are there thousands of really large companies? I mean if one got started in it they would have some sort of chance. I am not neccesarily getting into it, just curious is all.

theirs many big companys and small doing it...

However you just need to stand out from the rest...

I think the market has slowed down slightly, it's certainly past the peak but still steady. The majority of people using Shoutcast tend to be hobby stations so it's possible that as the economic recovery kicks in, there will be another boost of people getting in to it.

Yea from my research it seems this market just like shared hosting goes up and down depending on the economy. Although the cheaper hosts will see inclines as they are more affordable.

We were wondering that same question.

I have not used Shoutcast in years and was considering offering it to my clients but I wasn't sure what the demand would be like to offer such a package.

I have not had anyone request this feature though so still not certain whether to offer it or not.

Decisions... decisions.

I used to run a internet radio station myself using shoutcast, and one thing I can tell you is that if I had a place that would do all the configuration of that for me I would be been more than happy to pay them for it... It's been a while but as I remember that was a big annoying thing. One of my dedicated clients tried to setup his own station on his server but I couldn't help him as we are just not setup to support shoutcast, so I think he ended up paying someone else $12 a month to host it for him. That's money that could be in my own pocket! Maybe I should consider offering it to people... haha.

In all seriousness, I think the market for shoutcast, or most any internet service really, will be similar to the market for general hosting services... If there is a demand of any sort, then people like us will rise to the occasion and fill that demand as much as possible, so I wouldn't expect people to flock to your service any more than they would normal hosting... As SLDHosting mentioned, they key is to standout somehow ;)

I am still considering adding ShoutCast and since we use WHMCS a lot, I see they have control panel modules.

Which is the best for clients?

WHMSonic
CentovaCast
SCPanel
CastControl

Anyone tried any of these?

I think they all have limitations and strengths so it's a good idea to try them all first. CentovaCast is really good apart from the fact that you can only set up one server per user account.

Its a big market, but also many hosts that you need to compete with. Like any industry there are select large companies, that take up most of the market, and then there are many small companies that barely get by.