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  1. #1

    Looking For New Shoutcast Provider

    Does anyone know of a cheap but reliable shoutcast provider out there? ShoutcastPro is pretty much offline now and giving us nothing but excuses. We stuck with them because they were low in price but now they've gone offline possibly for good and not doing much to help their customers. They said the outage could last several days which is just not good for our radio station.

  2. #2
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    How many slots do you need at which streaming quality?

  3. #3
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    Also, what is your budget/slot?

  4. #4
    We had 500 128k listener slots for $5 a month. I only found one other provider called Vennex Media which had a plan like the one we had with ShoutcastPro but their price is $12.20 a month which is fine for us as we aren't rich. I know of 2 other broadcasters already that also want to make a change to a new provider as well. Thanks for responding.


    Quote Originally Posted by e-work View Post
    How many slots do you need at which streaming quality?

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by catprotector View Post
    500 128k listener slots for $5 a month.
    500*128kbps = 60 Mbps

    That would cost in normal real pricing a minimum of 600$+server. No wonder they went down, it's an oversell where overselling is difficult to achiev e (shoutcast hosting market).

    How many listeners did u have at peak times anyway?
    Cheapest Multiple C Class IP Hosting

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by catprotector View Post
    We had 500 128k listener slots for $5 a month. I only found one other provider called Vennex Media which had a plan like the one we had with ShoutcastPro but their price is $12.20 a month which is fine for us as we aren't rich. I know of 2 other broadcasters already that also want to make a change to a new provider as well. Thanks for responding.
    Is that 5$/mth total? If so, I think there is a reason you are looking for a new provider. Current market prices for a 128k slot range from 1.10-2.50 / mth depending on the network quality, so you should expect to pay ~500USD / mth for what you are looking for.



    Regards,


    edit: I just looked at the Vennax Media site and their prices. Good luck with them, as I'm sure you will have the same thing happen with them that you are experiencing now. The cost/sale price discrepancy they provide is not even funny. You can not sustain 500 128k streams on 12.50 / mth. If you think they have some magic wand or special deal that no one else has, you are setting yourself up for headaches.
    Last edited by utropicmedia-karl; 07-11-2007 at 11:57 AM.

  7. #7
    Actually Vennex is a new company so most likely they're doing a special to get their name out. We were with ShoutcastPro for about a year but their constant buffering and latest outage was enought to convince us to take our business elsewhere. Yes, it was $5 a month we were paying. $1 or more may be standard for shoutcast but it's hardly affordable when you are on a budget.


    Quote Originally Posted by utropicmedia-karl View Post
    Is that 5$/mth total? If so, I think there is a reason you are looking for a new provider. Current market prices for a 128k slot range from 1.10-2.50 / mth depending on the network quality, so you should expect to pay ~500USD / mth for what you are looking for.



    Regards,


    edit: I just looked at the Vennax Media site and their prices. Good luck with them, as I'm sure you will have the same thing happen with them that you are experiencing now. The cost/sale price discrepancy they provide is not even funny. You can not sustain 500 128k streams on 12.50 / mth. If you think they have some magic wand or special deal that no one else has, you are setting yourself up for headaches.

  8. #8
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    I understand that you are on a budget, but I am trying to inform you what the costs involved are. Someone can make a website and say "I'll give you 500 128k listeners for 12.50 / mth" but when I see that, and I am someone that knows the costs involved in media streaming, I can say with absolute certainty that the provider cannot sustain that offering without loosing money. You can pay your 12.50 / mth, just be aware you will not be able to have a 500 listener stream for the long-term.

    Why can you not stay with your current host? What do you think caused them to have all these problems? If they were making enough money to provide a quality infrastructure, I am sure you would not be looking for a new provider.



    Best Regards,

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    How many slots do you actually USE? If it's not 500 get something smaller from a provider which has been around and has people who know their stuff.

  10. #10
    Our current host claimed to have a 99.9% up time but buffering problems were happening quite frequently lately. When they went down for some reason they always had some excuse. Recently, when it looked like they had gotten their act together, they went down again. This time they said some nonsense about someone they went into business with to house their servers and they were forced to sign some kind of contract and they sent them $3,000 for service. Then suddenly, the whole deal went sour and ShoutcastPro said the dealer (who whomever was housing their servers) took off with their money and turned off service or some such nonsense. When I asked how long they'd be down, the guy was like "dude. We may never recover from this." This after telling us they'd be online soon the first time we called support.

    This final excuse was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. They didn't offer any kind of help for their customers other than to recommend we go elsewhere. They also said, it'd be several days before they'd be back online. The $5 a month for 500 listener slots was a deal we got in on early. ShoutcastPro did eventually raise their rates to stay competitive but I'm afraid that an outage like this is probably going to lose them a lot of customers.


    Quote Originally Posted by utropicmedia-karl View Post
    I understand that you are on a budget, but I am trying to inform you what the costs involved are. Someone can make a website and say "I'll give you 500 128k listeners for 12.50 / mth" but when I see that, and I am someone that knows the costs involved in media streaming, I can say with absolute certainty that the provider cannot sustain that offering without loosing money. You can pay your 12.50 / mth, just be aware you will not be able to have a 500 listener stream for the long-term.

    Why can you not stay with your current host? What do you think caused them to have all these problems? If they were making enough money to provide a quality infrastructure, I am sure you would not be looking for a new provider.



    Best Regards,

  11. #11
    Not half of what we had with ShoutcastPro. Right now we're looking at Vennex, Netfull and a few others. We just want to be back up and broadcasting as soon as possible. If we can get a low price for streaming that would be very nice.

    Quote Originally Posted by VT6 View Post
    How many slots do you actually USE? If it's not 500 get something smaller from a provider which has been around and has people who know their stuff.

  12. #12
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    Out of curiosity, do you know what they raised their rates to? Their site appears to be down at the moment....

  13. #13
    Not half of what we had with ShoutcastPro but as we grow more popular we need those slots. Right now we're looking at Vennex, Netfull and a few others. We just want to be back up and broadcasting as soon as possible. If we can get a low price for streaming that would be very nice.

    Quote Originally Posted by VT6 View Post
    How many slots do you actually USE? If it's not 500 get something smaller from a provider which has been around and has people who know their stuff.

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    Thumbs down

    I must say that for a long time I was very happy with ShoutcastPro / Eastside-Hosting ,
    but at the moment I'm seriously thinking
    about finding me another host/server.

    First there were problems with my domain name...wich got solved after about a month or so.
    Then it work fine again for a few months ,
    untill last week...
    First my domain was down again , and after
    contacting support , I got a message that I should give it a few days.
    I gave it 5 days , and it still aint fixed.
    In fact the're whole website and servers are down for more than 24 hrs. now.

    This is costing me a lot of listeners....

    So if anybody knows a deal like the one we had...

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    You are not gonna find anything near their prices. Companies want to make profit and that is not possible when giving something that worths $600 for $6.

    My question is do you really need 500 listeners. Because if you need for example only 20 listeners then you may find something for $15-25 USD.

  16. #16
    Yes, they've been down for more than 24 hours and I'm sure it's impacting us greatly. Our station is somewhat popular and it's tough to explain to our listeners that our shoutcast provider is having problems. This new excuse for being down was that they made a deal (or some such nonsense. Hard to get a straight answer out of them when things like this happen) with another provider, sent them money and were forced to have to sign some sort of agreement in regards to their servers. Then I guess the people ran off with their money and shut down their service.

    Apparently, ShoutcastPro when we contacted them said they don't have their client list and apparently that went bye bye with the money. At this point, we decided we're leaving for a new provider. Whenever they had outages we kind of patiently waited and they'd eventually get things working but now that they've been down for over 24 hours again, I can't see us sticking with them. I would definately go elsewhere if you can.

    Quote Originally Posted by EuroDJ View Post
    I must say that for a long time I was very happy with ShoutcastPro / Eastside-Hosting ,
    but at the moment I'm seriously thinking
    about finding me another host/server.

    First there were problems with my domain name...wich got solved after about a month or so.
    Then it work fine again for a few months ,
    untill last week...
    First my domain was down again , and after
    contacting support , I got a message that I should give it a few days.
    I gave it 5 days , and it still aint fixed.
    In fact the're whole website and servers are down for more than 24 hrs. now.

    This is costing me a lot of listeners....

    So if anybody knows a deal like the one we had...

  17. #17
    I look at this more objectively here. When you are a new company just starting out it's ok to give things at a low price because eventually you can raise prices and meet the demand and bottom line. As for us needing 500 listeners it is good to have those slots because as we grow in popularity, we can feel comfortable knowing we can handle the listeners. Ours is a very unique station which has gotten some public attention again.

    Quote Originally Posted by CretaForce View Post
    You are not gonna find anything near their prices. Companies want to make profit and that is not possible when giving something that worths $600 for $6.

    My question is do you really need 500 listeners. Because if you need for example only 20 listeners then you may find something for $15-25 USD.

  18. #18
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    I maintain my earlier comments that you guys are going to go through an outage like this again unless you up your budget. If you can stand moving from one host to the next as they crumble, then so be it.

    Again, I am just trying to give you guys some insight into the industry. What good is a great deal$$$$ if it's unreliable and you can't use it? Is it still a deal?

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by catprotector View Post
    I look at this more objectively here. When you are a new company just starting out it's ok to give things at a low price because eventually you can raise prices and meet the demand and bottom line. As for us needing 500 listeners it is good to have those slots because as we grow in popularity, we can feel comfortable knowing we can handle the listeners. Ours is a very unique station which has gotten some public attention again.
    Building a solid internet station is difficult and I give you props for being successful. For years we worked with MusicOne and they grew to thousands of listeners.

    Your reasoning is slightly flawed. Say a company starts out by offering reduced prices to get clients. What if they never reach a critical mass of clients to break-even? We can do some simple math using your station as an example:
    • 500 slots / mth @ 128k / slot = 64 mbits.
    • 1000 mbps / mth from el-cheapo Cogent costs ~$1100. This is just the network pipe, not including any servers, routers/switches or humans to support/monitor anything.
    • 64 mbits = $704 / mth just for the bandwidth
    Now your provider was giving this to you for 5$ / mth??? How many clients like you do you think they would need to break even on JUST the bandwidth?



    Let's say they have one server with a 1000 mbps uplink.(for the sake of easy math. also, we are still just talking about the bandwidth, not the server or support people to maintain it.)
    • $1100 (cost of bandwidth) / $5 (cost for a package) = 220 packages to break even
    220 * 704$ (the true cost of your package bandwidth) = $154,880.00 / mth.


    Your provider would have committed $154,880 of resources in return for $1100 of revenue. They are taking a %140,000 loss month-over-month.

    If you are serious about doing business and being successful with your projects, you do not get services from vendors that are careless and unreliable.



    Regards,

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by catprotector View Post
    Yes, they've been down for more than 24 hours and I'm sure it's impacting us greatly. Our station is somewhat popular and it's tough to explain to our listeners that our shoutcast provider is having problems. This new excuse for being down was that they made a deal (or some such nonsense. Hard to get a straight answer out of them when things like this happen) with another provider, sent them money and were forced to have to sign some sort of agreement in regards to their servers. Then I guess the people ran off with their money and shut down their service.

    Apparently, ShoutcastPro when we contacted them said they don't have their client list and apparently that went bye bye with the money. At this point, we decided we're leaving for a new provider. Whenever they had outages we kind of patiently waited and they'd eventually get things working but now that they've been down for over 24 hours again, I can't see us sticking with them. I would definately go elsewhere if you can.

    Well , at the moment we can't even inform or explain things to our listeners ,
    as our domain is already down for 5 days.
    And since eastside-hosting (same people as shoutcastpro) is also down ,
    our website is simply unavailable.

    As for the domain , they told us that they had to repurchase our domain ,
    and that we should give it sometime to set it.
    That was 5 days ago now...
    Normally a new domain works within 48 hrs. as far as I know...
    So correct me if I'm wrong.
    But that's all they told us.

    We're also gonna leave for a new provider , and also do have a bit
    larger budget.
    However , since we are no pro's , our budget is simply limited.
    Besides that , we're not only looking for a new server , we're also looking for a new host , to host our website.

    Just like your's...our station was getting more and more populair ,
    wich means that we need a bit larger server.
    About 10 or 20 listeners is far too small for us.

  21. #21
    How is my thinking flawed here? A new company might just advertise at a cheaper rate starting out and then raise their rates later. That could be the case with Vennex or any other start up. With ShoutcastPro we stayed at the $5 a month rate because we got in a deal but they ended up raising their rates on many of the plans. What we didn't count on is all the excuses they gave for being offline and they also wouldn't give any credits at all. I of course have seen this with the ones who were higher in price as well.


    Quote Originally Posted by utropicmedia-karl View Post
    Building a solid internet station is difficult and I give you props for being successful. For years we worked with MusicOne and they grew to thousands of listeners.

    Your reasoning is slightly flawed. Say a company starts out by offering reduced prices to get clients. What if they never reach a critical mass of clients to break-even? We can do some simple math using your station as an example:
    • 500 slots / mth @ 128k / slot = 64 mbits.
    • 1000 mbps / mth from el-cheapo Cogent costs ~$1100. This is just the network pipe, not including any servers, routers/switches or humans to support/monitor anything.
    • 64 mbits = $704 / mth just for the bandwidth
    Now your provider was giving this to you for 5$ / mth??? How many clients like you do you think they would need to break even on JUST the bandwidth?



    Let's say they have one server with a 1000 mbps uplink.(for the sake of easy math. also, we are still just talking about the bandwidth, not the server or support people to maintain it.)
    • $1100 (cost of bandwidth) / $5 (cost for a package) = 220 packages to break even
    220 * 704$ (the true cost of your package bandwidth) = $154,880.00 / mth.


    Your provider would have committed $154,880 of resources in return for $1100 of revenue. They are taking a %140,000 loss month-over-month.

    If you are serious about doing business and being successful with your projects, you do not get services from vendors that are careless and unreliable.



    Regards,

  22. #22
    What's the name of your radio station?

    Quote Originally Posted by EuroDJ View Post
    Well , at the moment we can't even inform or explain things to our listeners ,
    as our domain is already down for 5 days.
    And since eastside-hosting (same people as shoutcastpro) is also down ,
    our website is simply unavailable.

    As for the domain , they told us that they had to repurchase our domain ,
    and that we should give it sometime to set it.
    That was 5 days ago now...
    Normally a new domain works within 48 hrs. as far as I know...
    So correct me if I'm wrong.
    But that's all they told us.

    We're also gonna leave for a new provider , and also do have a bit
    larger budget.
    However , since we are no pro's , our budget is simply limited.
    Besides that , we're not only looking for a new server , we're also looking for a new host , to host our website.

    Just like your's...our station was getting more and more populair ,
    wich means that we need a bit larger server.
    About 10 or 20 listeners is far too small for us.

  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by catprotector View Post
    How is my thinking flawed here? A new company might just advertise at a cheaper rate starting out and then raise their rates later. That could be the case with Vennex or any other start up. With ShoutcastPro we stayed at the $5 a month rate because we got in a deal but they ended up raising their rates on many of the plans. What we didn't count on is all the excuses they gave for being offline and they also wouldn't give any credits at all. I of course have seen this with the ones who were higher in price as well.
    I should have stated it another way: it's not so much your thinking is flawed, it's that if a new company offers deals to get customers, that means they are not making the $$$ per customer that they want to. This translates to having a loss-leader and indicates the company will be in danger, over time, if they do not get the volume of clients they need to survive.

    Contrast this with a company that from day one keeps their prices where they need to be to cover costs. This company is at much lower risk. From having to go with disreputable providers who might run off with their money because they cannot afford to get resources from one of the mainstream providers.

  24. #24
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    What you guys had came about was a massive overseller. In regular hosting it can be done, but when it cames to shoutcast it's very dangerous and might be done on a very small scale (10% max).

    So for your 64 mbps costing 800$ (example for a normal cost) you couldn't have payed less than 720$.
    Cheapest Multiple C Class IP Hosting

  25. #25
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    By the way I still remember the posts from shoutcastpro owner here few years ago.

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