Being new to using a Smartphone I discovered I could connect to my online radio stream and listen to my station no matter where I go in the world. This was a delightful experience and I began thinking about ways anyone with a Smartphone could experience the same thrill.
Building a stream is the easy part, most of the software is open source and available free. The typical roadblock is the matter of royalty fees for streaming copyrighted music. But there's a loophole that no one seems to have noticed.
Inside the setup for the stream encoder is a simple checkbox labeled: "Make Server Public". When this box is enabled the resulting stream is findable by the general public and able to become listed on radio directories. This makes it subject to royalty fees because of reaching a public audience.
However, left unchecked, the server becomes private and only available to the one who knows the IP address of the stream. This means you could stream any content and only you would be able to connect and listen, from anywhere on earth from your Smartphone. This is legal because your programming would not reach a public audience.
It seems that my message has reached me. Since I came up with the idea, I am seriously thinking about turning my stream(s) private. Starting this morning about 5:30 AM CDT, temperature already in the mid 80s and a predicted high of 102-degrees F, I was listening to the tickless tocking of the KHZ Tower Time unsolicited minute-by-minute announcements, when I decided to free-think while playing odds and ends from the forgotten parts of my Zara playlist, and when the PSA about potholes came on, I realized that sending out a stream to the public is a burden with no reward except that it's neat to be listed on two obscure radio directories, but I frankly don't care about imaginary fantasies of serving nebulous listeners who rarely tune in and whose intentions are suspect. While I may be offering exceptionally rich and informative programming, it does not fall upon my shoulders to provide total strangers with intelligence they may not be seeking nor capable of understanding. All these thoughts reached a culmination in a decision to switch KDX-MP3, one of my two internet streams, to Private Mode for a test period. Yes, as the Panama Canal suffers a backup of almost 300 ships due to low water levels, we anticipate a seachange as KDX backs away from public broadcasting. Follow me?
At 7:05 AM CDT on today's date KDX-MP3 ended Public Streaming and is now a Private Stream during an ongoing Test Period.
KDX-OGG continues Public Streaming for the time being.
Today's test of a private stream is a complete success. I was able to listen to KDX-MP3 on Smartphone Wi-Fi while public access to the stream is unavailable. Here is how it will play out. When I pick it up again tomorrow KDX-MP3 will be closed, and KDX-OGG will be switched permanently from Public to Private. Then, after our heat storm finally subsides on Saturday we will celebrate the new mode of operation by listening to the opera Aniara on private stream, perhaps with out Smartphone at a Swedish restaurant since the opera stems from Swedish roots. When I am asked to turn the music off for disturbing other patrons I will show great indignation and walk briskly onto the street saying "You Swede's are no better than Americans. You don't appreciate your own culture!" This will get me banned from the restaurant but I already have an alliance with an Ecuadoran restaurant so I'll move my entourage over there. Oh, I guess the heat has gotten to me, for which reason I've closed our website and blog until the thermometer gets below 90, either that or tomorrow morning. Are you doing alright?
@carl-blare I wouldn't be doing alright if I had to live or even experience such heat. 65 in Toronto today and September is coming! Low 70s for the rest of the month, low 60s at night.
Personally I get pleasure from getting listeners and potential listeners. That's the one main reason the Procaster is in the cupboard not being used as it's a hard sell to get listeners on AM but I do miss it. I had a great slogan...."making AM radio great again" as my format is really an AM format. Plus with the Decade they can't tell me I can't broadcast. I just can't imagine outside being like the inside of a car in the sun! Hope your A/C can handle it.
I can understand where Carl is coming from.
It's highly unlikely that anyone who doesn't already know that you exist is going to find your stream.
Back in 2012 and earlier, I used to get some listeners on my stream. Now, even though a few show up every once in a while, I suspect it's those who know the stream is there. I seem to use it the most, i.e., it's really a private stream masked as a public one.
As Carl says, you don't have to worry about copyright licensing issues with a private stream. Otherwise, you have to play all public domain material, which is harder than it sounds. To be truly compliant, you have to ensure that all the material you play is truly in the public domain in each and every country that has access to your stream. To do that effectively, you have to geo-block, and understand all those varied copyright rules.
I'm licensed for this year with SOCAN, and will reevaluate the situation at the end of the year as to whether to continue the stream publicly, or to go to a private model.
It's all happening. The KDX radio day started this morning at 4:30 AM with an area temperature of 84-degrees Farenheit. We turned on our web server but the radio server was modified as follows: KDX-MP3 is officially retired from service and will no longer operate. KDX-OGG has been switched out of Public Mode and henceforth will operate in Private Mode in the way discussed in this thread. What does that mean to KDX's status as an 'International Station'? I guess it takes us off the map as far as that goes, our AM & FM signals fall short of global coverage, and without public streams we have become hyper-local. Our brand as a Worldround Radio Station still stands as a representation of the programming heard on KDX, reporting on world news, politics, superstitious beliefs and creative personalities. Coming soon our shortwave transmitter will hit the air and restore our 'international' status, at least to the extent that shortwave is considered the international radio band. And there are the call letters of the 15.360 MHz signal, 'WRRI', standing for 'Worldround Radio International', so we're still very much in the game, we've just set some of the furniture out on the curb rather than rearranging it.
As the week concludes KDX has shifted its hours of operation away from the excessive heat at the peak of the day when 102-degrees is reached. Today is the last day after a week of this, then normal conditions return as wind storms become the principle threat. Amid all this we are continuing with our experimental Private Stream, no longer listed in directories, out of reach for the world public who wasn't listening anyway, so our great radio station proves to be a grandiose ego extension of a self-appointed messenger bringing to the masses the programs they aren't smart enough to find on their own. The private signal is there for the globe trotting that I have no intention of undergoing and no tolerance for travel, only another flavor of egoism, the thought of listening to my beautiful radio station from the train restaurant in Prague where I've already spent 15-YouTube minutes. So why post a website for a shut-out audience? The infection spreads, all 15 parts of it. If this were another example of AI obsolescence it would already have parallel parked and abandoned itself but it's something weaker and less defined; real intelligence flailing in a post-womb world with a playlist to show in lieu of more substantive creativity. The public domain has no street address but is a complete non sequitur placed across the sidewalk of words with nothing more to say about private streaming.
Round Abouts
There are roundabout ways of pointing your audience to program material you aren't licensed to broadcast. For example, tomorrow when we celebrate our new KDX Private Stream by carrying the Ariana Opera, we will link our blog visitors to the same performance openly available at YouTube. Times are strange.
It also seems novel that a station could offer two streams at the same time. A Private Stream and a Public Stream. A true contradiction in media.
One could also share the secret IP address of a private stream with trusted friends by email, making your signal available 'within ranks'.
A reminder: Measure your antenna and write it down in case of an FCC inspection.
Our Private Stream Celebration went off with a hitch. The weather got dicey as we came out of a week-long excessive heat storm to be met by wildly circulating weather patterns all over the place with our morning sky as dark as night. Things became weirdly calm in early afternoon and we were drawn into a haunted state of mind as we launched the Ariana Opera. I found myself writing:
THE ARIANA SPELL is everywhere all around.
Harry Martinson (writer of the epic science fiction poem) and Karl-Berger Blomdahl (opera composer) are in attendance.
Never anywhere has remoteness had greater farness.