Copyright © 2014 by Kym Kostos

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

ISBN: 978-0000000000

So, you think you have what it takes to be a DJ and broadcaster? Awesome news for you! And guess what? This is very lucky news for you because in today's technology, it allows anyone who wants to do what was once a limited to a very small percentage of people. But, now you can become an online / internet DJ and / or broadcaster! You can actually be the DJ, the station manager and even the program director who decides what to play on the station, because it’s all on the internet!

There are several ways and approaches you can take in creating a streaming Internet radio station. Which one you decide to choose depends on what your goals are and what type of ways you wish to go about doing them in. If you are really motivated and inspired to start an Internet-based radio station that operates for the sole purpose of profit and revenue generation, your direction and approach will be different than from the individual who just wants to set up an Internet radio station for the only purpose of simply sharing his or her favorite opinions, information or music with friends or people with the same interests as their own.

There are many excellent options for the beginner that of which require very little technical knowledge. If you know how to create or put together MP3 format files, upload them onto a server and then choose some options, you can reach a world-wide audience!

If this really interests you, keep on reading because you're about to enter the world of online radio.

Live 365 is an affordable and premiere provider of independent web-based Internet radio show streams. What they do is act as your radio transmitter. They have created a structure that allows thousands of audio streams to use their servers to make broadcasting on the Internet very easy and simple. It's very easy to begin broadcasting with them and it's also easy for listeners to hear your own broadcast. Live365 does offer several options.

A Personal Station

Live365 offers you packages for either a personal stations or a professional station. With your own personal station you can broadcast your talk radio show or your favorite music or just a small amount of money.

Their streaming packages for a personal station begins as low as $4 a month to $99.95 per month. You can check their website for more information. Note that the more expensive the package is, the more server space you will receive and it also affects the amount of listeners who can tune into to you at once because the more listeners there are, takes up server space. Also, Live365.com will pay all your royalty fees for you to stream music, to organizations like BMI, SoundExchange, SEASAC and ASCAP.

They offer six broadcasting packages for personal use at Live365.com. They say that the most popular one is the Gold package that is set at $29.95 per month. In the Gold package you receive 1GB of storage, 28K sound quality, the ability for 60 people to listen at the same time in basic Mode or 30 listeners in live mode with unlimited VIP Listeners and the capability to upgrade your package at any time. Live365.com is the stress-free and easiest solution for almost everyone. The company provides outstanding software to help you create your own station and does all the preverbal heavy lifting. All you have to do is be creative! If you’re not sure if this is the avenue to take, they offer a free trial period for you to try it out!

Professional Stations

Live365 also offers professional broadcasting packages that allow you to create pre-recorded or live streams. You can also earn revenue through your own advertising, add links to your station on your own website and even stream through popular players like Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, and more.

The prices for their professional packages are given when you contact Live365.com. According to their website: “Live365 offers full royalty/licensing coverage for SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Your station gets wide distribution including Live365.com (preferred station status), iTunes Radio (128k stations only), Mobile Apps (iPhone, Android), TiVo (home listening), Roku (home listening), and more.” Also according to their website, it is “The ONLY internet radio service that offers full music licensing for your station and website." So, if you're running a station that plays music, you will pay a fee to Live365.com in order to do this and you won’t have to worry about royalty payments. Their professional packages start at $99 per month for talk radio and $107 per month for music format stations.

The software they provide lets the DJ / Radio Host broadcast live at any time to listeners or upload WAV and MP3 music files, pre-recorded content , commercials to play on their station 24 hours-a-day. Their Station Manager software is designed to be used by anyone with or without any prior broadcasting experience.

Radionomy is a free and easy to use option where you can create your own online radio station. The main interface creator’s use is the Radio Manager. This dashboard that is web-based allows you to put all the controls in one place to run your own online radio station. You are able to select the musical genre and songs, choose the name of your station, even set up the rules for music rotation, you can upload an image for your station and within 24 hours it's streaming!

If you want to set up a broadcast and you don't wish to pay any fees to another party to host your Internet radio station and you are also a do-it-yourself hands on kind of person, you can also create your own Internet radio station by using your own personal computer to create a dedicated server for getting the job done.

Here are some of the software options for this method:

Quicktime Streaming Server. Apple.com declares: “Whether you are looking to add streaming media to your web site, deliver distance learning or provide rich content for your mobile subscribers, Mac OS X Server has all of the tools you need. QuickTime Streaming Server lets you deliver live or prerecorded content in real time over the Internet.” You can find out more information on Apple.com.

Quicktime Broadcaster: Apple.com declares: “Combining the power of QuickTime with Apple's ease of use, QuickTime Broadcaster allows just about anyone to produce a live broadcast event.” You can download this software from Apple.com as well.

PeerCast.org is a non-profit website that offers free peer-to-peer broadcasting software. PeerCast is a free and easy way to watch video and listen to radio on the Internet. It is a P2P and uses technology to let everyone and anyone become a DJ or Radio Host without the many costs of traditional radio.

Icecast is also a free server software for streaming multimedia. You can download a copy of their software from Icecast.org.

Andromeda is one of the delivery on-demand software programs. What Andromeda does is scan your MP3 files and presents them as a full featured streaming website. That means all you need to do is just add, move, rename, and delete your files and folders to update the content of your Andromeda-powered website. It's very easy as dragging, dropping and streaming according to turnstyle.com, where you can download a copy to evaluate and check out.

Keep in mind that if you do decide to broadcast with Live365.com, they do cover your royalties, only if you buy their Personal Broadcasting package. If you decide to purchase a Professional package, those require a royalty fee paid to Live365.com and then the company handles all the payments on your behalf.

If you decide to endeavor to be a for profit web caster, it all depends on your status. Please keep in mind that you may have to pay royalties based on a percentage of your revenue that you take in. If you are a larger commercial web broadcaster, you just may fall under other guidelines, so be cautious diligent in your research.

So, with that said, keep in mind that there are different classes of online web broadcasters; profit, non-profit, talk only, music only, talk and music, etc… With the different classes, come different rates you will pay.

If you want to look over and read a complete explanation of the current royalty situation that applies to web casters, you can visit the Summary of the Determination of the Librarian of Congress on Rates and Terms for Webcasting, located here: http://www.copyright.gov/carp/webcasting_rates_final.html

Understanding what the Bottom Line is when you get started is important. Your expenses will be varied greatly depending on how large of a webcast you plan creating for your station. Keep in mind that aside from fees being paid to a third party to host your webcast, you may have to decide to invest in a computer or laptop to act as a server, which very possibly can possibly can cost up to several thousand dollars.

There are other potential expenses that you might very well incur, which can include the cost of electricity, the cost of music files or CD’s, a quality microphone, DJ talent fees, a mixer board or DJ’ing software, and even advertising expenses should you decide to create an internet radio station that is live and revenue generating.

Whatever direction that you should decide to go in, always remember that your first priority is to please and cater to your listeners and always try and keep it fun, entertaining and interesting!

If you are one of those type of people who asserts in handpicking a road trip playlist rather than just setting your music player to randomly shuffle, then you were born for radio! Fortunately, for you, you don't have to let your everyday life get in the way of your web casting dreams. As long as you have a computer or laptop with a broadband connection, you definitely will have what it takes to pursue your political radio rants or musical taste on anyone who'll listen to you.

The Easy, Quick and Dirty Way

If you want an easy, quick and dirty way to stream music to your friends, you can just grab a male-to-male 3.5mm RCA audio cable, then plug one end into the microphone jack and the other end into the headphone jack, and you can sign up for a Skype account and then start a group chat session and invite your friends to join in and listen.

Your computer will then feed the audio output from your headphone jack to the audio input from the mic jack and then broadcast it to whomever is on your listening stream. Now all you need to do is open up your MP3 player that you usually use and you are all se and ready to stream your tunes!

If you decide to use Justin.tv, it supports all You Tube playlists, so that your listeners can stay on listening way after you sign off.

Now, of course, if you want to set up a stream that gives your listeners that distinguishing radio experience, you are going to have to do a little more work than you may have thought you would.

Accomplish the steps that are listed below, and you will then have an online radio station that you can stream on the Shoutcast or Icecast servers like the large radio stations out there do.

Step 1 - Getting Your Gear Together

You will not need any special type of audio gear for this project, aside from a microphone, but that is only if you plan to say anything on “the air” like station identifications, song introductions or whatever speaking you would like to do on your radio show. Please keep in mind that what you do need is a handful of different applications. The first one is to play your music files. The second one is to turn the audio feed into a streaming source. The final one is to act as a server so that you can share your stream with anyone listening with the entire world.

You will have plenty of options that you can choose from in all of the above types that are listed. Please note that every application has its own virtues. As an example, I’ll use Winamp to play the music, Edcast, the Winamp plug-in not the stand-alone version, to turn it into a music stream, and the Icecast2 to serve up the stream. The Edcast and Icecast2 combination is very easy to configure for all sorts and types of radio servers and audio set-ups.

You will also need to download a special .DLL file, lame_enc.dll, if you wish to broadcast in an MP3 format. MP3 files are a lot better well-suited with older audio players. Then you need to download the zip files version, then unzip it and then put lame_enc.dll in Winamp's root directory. You can usually find it in C:/ProgramFiles/Winamp

Step 2 - Setting Up Your Server

Now, before you get started n streaming, you will need to get an approximation of the size of listening audience you want or expect to have. Your volume to stream music depends on your Internet connection's upstream speed. Which is the speed at which you can send your data to other computers. When you have fast upstream speeds, you can house more listeners with a much higher level of audio streaming quality.

Remember that since digital audio quality and connection speeds are both measured in kilobits per second (kbps) and are not to be mistaken for kilobytes per second, which are KBps, you can figure out how much bandwidth you will be needing to serve your radio station by plugging in the numbers using the below formula:

Simultaneous listeners x Audio bitrate = Required Bandwidth

This means that if you're hosting your radio station on your home PC with the usual cable or DSL connection, your upstream speeds will most likely not be all that great. With home DSL's the upstream speeds will top out at about 500 kbps, which is about 50 KBps. And with a high-quality MP3 feed that requires at least 192 kbps. So you would be able to accommodate only two listeners and you would barely be able to do anything with your Internet connection.

You could possibly lower the quality of the feed to probably something like 96 kbps, but then your quality of the audio of your stream would most likely be significantly worse than it was before. That is for music streaming. If you have just a talk radio show, you more than likely would probably be adequate, but for music, it might sound as though the songs were being transmitted in a bathroom, over a phone.

Fortunately for web casters, the stream server does not have to operate on the same PC as the audio source does. You can use your PC to play your MP3’s with Winamp and to source it you’re your Edcast. Then you can send the stream over the Internet to your dedicated radio stream server that is fortified with a high-bandwidth connection. If you use that method, your broadband connection will need to be strong enough to send out one stream to the dedicated server, but keep in mind that it does not have to be any sturdier. Also, you do not have to dominate your Internet connection to maintain and keep up your radio station since you are sending a solitary stream to the server, which then will handle each listener with their own broadband connection.

So obviously, you will have to pay for a dedicated radio server; the rates start at about six bucks per month and will rise as your radio station's listenership raises. But some free Shoutcast radio servers rely on advertisements to pay the costs. There is one such server called FreeStreamHosting.org that will invite you to broadcast a 128-kbps stream for up to one thousand users at no cost and the advertisements will stay off of your audio stream. They do this because the advertisements will be displayed on your website you use to advertise your radio station on.

It is however recommended that you sign up for a dedicated radio server due to the cost being far less than what you would pay for an Internet connection. If you think about it for everyday purposes you would not be able to use it for anything else because such servers are somewhat easier to configure.

If you decide on a a committed streaming server, just make sure that you know what the host's IP address is or their URL, their correct port number, their streaming password, what their server type is, more than likely it is either Icecast2 or Shoutcast, and the extreme bitrate (if pertinent) before moving on.

If you decide that you wish to run your own server, you need to transfer and connect Icecast2, open the application, and then select the Edit Configuration from the Configuration menu. This will then allow you to open a text document called icecast.xml, which you will have to tweak somewhat a little.

From top to bottom:

For the sources tag, enter the ultimate number of listeners you want your radio station to have.

For the source-password tag, enter the password you want to use for your stream application, such as Edcast.

Right now, the admin-password and relay-password tags are not very important for this tutorial walk-thru, but change them from the default password anyway.

For the hostname tag, enter your own IP address. If, however, you want to webcast only to your network, use your own internal network's IP address. Or else, you can just find your outside IP address at WhatsMyIP.net.

The port tag refers to the port you would like to use to stream your show or music. Leave it on the default of 8000. Remember, you will probably need to open this port in your firewall in order for your radio station to be able to work.

Now save the icecast.xml doc in the root icecast2 directory, usually C:/Program Files/icecast2 and then click Start Server in Icecast2's main window.

Step 3 - Configuring the Source Application

Now that you have your streaming server working, you will need to give it something to stream. That is where Edcast will come in. Take the Edcast Winamp plugin then open Winamp. Now go to Options then Preferences then Plug-ins then DSP/Effect then select Edcast DSP v3 [dsp_edcast.dll] and then click on Configure Active Plugin.

Here is where you will set Edcast to use either your Winamp playlist or your microphone jack. You just then click the microphone icon to enable or disable the microphone. Then when the microphone is disabled, Edcast will then use Winamp for its input. You can just test this yourself by clicking on the sound level meter to then get it working and initiate it, playing some of your music through Winamp software and switching the microphone on and off to see whether each input is working.

Now, you then click on Add Encoder so you can add a new entry- Vorbis: Quality 0/Stereo/44100- in the small box below it, and then double-click the new entry to configure it. Now you will need to plug all your server settings in and just make sure that the server type is set to the right protocol It will either be Icecast2 or Shoutcast, it depends on what server you selected in step 2, now you enter your server's IP in the Server IP field, remember now, if you're hosting the Icecast server on the same PC, it is your own IP address and then enter the corresponding port and the password.

You will also want to make sure that you set your encoder type here because AAC and MP3 tend to be the most widely compatible. With AAC+ it is heightened for lower-bitrate audio applications which are perfect for streaming. But sometimes it doesn't sound all that good. With Ogg Vorbis has equally great acoustic quality at lower bitrates, but certain music player applications like iTunes, for example, do not originally support it.

If you are using Icecast2, keep in mind that the mount point entry in the Basic Settings tab. You will need to put a path here depending on what your encoder type is, such as Ogg Vorbis streams that can be called /whatever.ogg and with AAC streams, /whatever.aac' and so forth. This string will eventually appear at the end of your Internet radio station's URL, as in 'http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8000/whatever.aac'.

When you are pleased with the way your station is working, you will want to click on to the YP Settings tab to configure your public listing information, such as URL, station name, genre, and so forth and so on. But for now you do not need to mess with it.

Step 4 – It’s Time for Action!

When your dedicated server is up and running, is configured correctly and your MP3’s in your Winamp collection is locked and loaded and ready to rock… it’s time to click Connect in the Edcast window to connect Edcast to your radio server and then start playing your music away.

Please do keep in mind though, that it is not any fun if you do not have a listening audience, though. If you decided on a separate radio server, you will more than likely have your own URL, which would be something like http://s3.myradiostream.com/24212.htm

But, if you are using Icecast2, the URL to access your radio stream will be http://(youripaddress):(port)/(mountpoint), without the parentheses.

For example, if your IP address is 192.168.0.1 and you are using port 8000 and you set the mount point to '/stream.ogg', your listeners will be able to tune in by directing their audio player of their choice to http://192.168.0.1:8000/stream.ogg.

By connecting your radio station’s URL to your IP address, it can be a pain, especially if you do not have a secure IP address for your home Internet broadband because then your listeners will have to keep up with your IP changes. So, to avoid this impediment, you can register your own domain name but keep in mind that if you do not want to fork out the cash, you can always sign up for a free DynDNS.com domain name as an alternative.

Step 5 – Be Careful to Not Get Sued!

With the particulars of webcasting and copyright law, there are things you need to know outside the possibility of this how-to steps I have given you. Generally speaking, however, if you wish to webcast someone else's music in a legal manner, you will need to acquire the consent of both the recording company and the artist that produced and distributed the recordings you are streaming on your webcast. This can cost a small-time webcaster a lot of money and time, if not done correctly.

So, rather than take a serious chance with the RIAA, consider obtaining licensing through a service such as Live365.com, LoudCity or the JPL program of the SWCast Network. All of these organizations offer a variety of methods that will get your station properly licensed for a monthly fee based on aspects such as how many listeners you have.

You will also need to guarantee that your radio station fulfills with the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) when you plug-in your playlists. Live365.com has posted an abridged list of regulations and rules that you must adhere to.

On the other hand, if you wish to play your own music that you have created and have the rights to or if you get consent from independent bands that do not have a recording industry agreement to play their music, you are then all set to go.

Music that is licensed under the Creative Commons can work, too, though it depends on the specific license that the artist uses. If you run ads on your web station, you may not be able to use music that is licensed for noncommercial broadcasting only.

If your music that you are streaming is in the genre as classical music or music that has been around for centuries that music is deemed as Public Domain Music and you do not need to obtain a license to stream it. You can find a list of Public Doman Music at this site: pdmusic.org