Net Radio

[russellelly]

I am in the process of setting up an internet radio station. The thing is I'm not sure about how many people could listen. I have a 150k connection, which is 64k upload. If I was broadcasting at 24kbps does that mean only 2 people can listen at any one time? I seem to remember a station called Daniel's Lounge by a member of NTHW.com a while ago and him saying he was on 128k at the time. I'm sure more than 2 people were listening to that. I'm pretty sure he didn't "buy a server" (sorry if that's the wrong term, I'm fairly new to this stuff).

So have i got it right?

Cheers

Chris

edit - typo

[paulyoung666]

i may be corrected here but any amount of people could listen to you as they wanted but when you are streaming people will have to buffer at some point so may have to sit around and wait sometimes , does that make sense , maybe not , im sure someone will be along soon to put it into proper english we all will understand :spin: :spin: :spin: :spin:

[andygrif]

No...less than 24 really if you've only got a 64k upstream.

I'm sure someone will post the exact details of how much output you can actually use of your 64k, but it's not the full amount, and sure won't be enough for streaming listenable quality audio.

Plus...and this is a big deal....it's illegal and will breach the terms of your AUP (acceptable use policy) NTL will probably shut you down and may even report you to the PPL and PRS, who may well take you to court for not paying what is due to the hardworking ladies and gentlemen of the music industry.

Saying all that....(the bit by the way about paying what is due to play other people's songs is something I care passionately about) you could have a look at something like Live 365 who provide distribution of internet radio stations. I think you either upload your own music to them for playing, or they just host your feed from your PC and then as many people as want to can listen to it via their site. Not sure if it still works that way, and I do know you have to pay for it. Apart from that....it's probably easier if you just send out some cassettes to your mates as they're the only ones that will listen anyway. And remember kids....HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC

[paulyoung666]

see told you someone would be along soon ;)

[andygrif]

Originally posted by paulyoung666
i may be corrected here but any amount of people could listen to you as they wanted but when you are streaming people will have to buffer at some point so may have to sit around and wait sometimes , does that make sense , maybe not , im sure someone will be along soon to put it into proper english we all will understand :spin: :spin: :spin: :spin:

In theory true, in practice not so. Each listener's PC will be demanding bandwidth, via this 64k pipe. The host PC must make a unique connection with every player for it to work, so say the channel is just listenable to with one listener (which it may not be with 64k and a 24k stream) then you come along and want to listen as well. There is now double the demand for bandwidth, which that size pipe simply could not handle ata once.

So the listener's players will try to rebuffer once the connection is lost momentarily, however as long as there are two listeners then both combined will continue to request more bandwidth than is available. This doesn't make a lot of sense reading it back, but hopefully you get the general idea. I understand why it doesn't work I just can't tell you!!!

If you remember what happened on Sept 11th 2001 (from an internet point of view) when so many people were trying to access news websites. There were more people trying to get to Sky News and BBC sites than Sky and the BBC's pipes could allow, therefore no-one got their pages...it just stopped. This is because requests were being sent and timing out before being acknowledged by the servers. Therefore the viewer's PCs were sending the request again, and the whole thing was a vicious circle.

OK this is on a much bigger scale, but the principle is the same whether you've got 2 people or 2 million people collectively taking up more bandwidth than is available to them.

[paulyoung666]

see someone who can put into proper english , thank you :)

[paul11974]

i lock on to www.piraterevival.co.uk all the time ......is a little stn with approx 30 - 50 listeners which streams via www.live365.com ... take a listen for yourself .. http://www.apru75.dsl.pipex.com/listenlive.pls

[andygrif]

Quite a good quality stream that. Had a look at Live 365's pricing, starts at $7.45 per month, so it's not as cheap as running your own, but then it also works! This price is for 25 basic listeners only, meaning that you have to host your files on their website and you only get 100mb of space.

The other packages start to get expensive if you want live relay (meaning they re-broadcast the stream from your PC) - $14.95 a month for 10 listeners and $18.95 for 30 listeners.

The other one is ShoutCast from the people that make WinAmp.

It's also worth noting that there are details of the correct US royalty payments on the Live 365 web site - and that certainly ain't cheap!

[russellelly]

Thanks for the replies

Andygrif - the station was going to be for unsigned bands who sent their CDs to me, so AFAIK there isn't an issue for copyright.

I'm cosidering the Live 365 thing, but I take it i can only play music and there isn't a way of doing voiceovers (unless I do a show in advance and upload the whole thing, which makes it not live).

Is it legal to play copyrighted music on Live 365?
And I take it it's within the AUP?

Thanks in advance