I am considering going on the internet with my station and have a few questions:
How much is BMI or ASCAP music licensing and how do they figure it?
What is the best (in your opinion) hosting service?
What are the typical monthly costs?
For those of you who have gone on the net, I am interested in your experience's!
I am considering going on the internet with my station and have a few questions:
How much is BMI or ASCAP music licensing and how do they figure it?
What is the best (in your opinion) hosting service?
What are the typical monthly costs?
For those of you who have gone on the net, I am interested in your experience's!
My oldies station is on the Internet, streaming through Audiorealm and licensed through Loudcity. My costs, minus DSL, are about $30 per month. I pay a fee to Audiorealm for the hosting and a fee to Loudcity for licensing. I could host the stream on my own server, but I don't have the upload capacity. I am very happy with Audiorealm. My stream stays up virtually all the time and they have few, if any, outages. My fees are based on the number of listeners and the upload rate. I bought the cheapest package I could at 20 listeners, but opted for 64 kb streaming for decent sound.
For an all-in-one option, there's Live365. Live365 is a "one-stop shop"; they both host and license. It's fairly easy to set up a broadcast and they have packages to fit almost any budget. They have two streaming modes, Basic and Live. Basic is streaming from their servers while Live is streaming from your studio. Streaming in "Live" mode, though, sharply reduces the number of connections you can have. That's because Live365 inserts commercials into the stream and they can't on a live broadcast. They've had some significant outages lately due to equipment failure.
The second alternative is harder to set up since you have to find a hosting company and a licensing service. Also, you pay two fees, one for your hosting (unless you do your own hosting) and a license fee. The upside is that you can pick your host and you control your content.
Having done both, I would recommend the second alternative. It's more difficult to set up, but you have more control over you product and you'll get more listeners. A lot of listeners don't like the Live365 login requirement and other annoyances on the service.
Hopefully, this helps a bit.
Frank
The Destiny Radio Broadcaster at http://www.pirateradio.com is an excellent software package ($30 approx) depending on how you are looking to promote your internet stream.
You operate as your own server and can adjust the level of potential listeners dependent on your connection bandwidth.
you would then only have licencing fees to consider.
Don't be put off by the "pirate" label.
It is straightforward enough to set up a broadcast link in a web page to allow people to obtain a direct stream.
From behind a router it isn't anymore difficult to set up than ShoutCast. One slight restriction is the need for listeners to have the (free) Destiny media player to receive your stream.
worth a look if you are looking to reduce monthly outlay.
I have used it extensively for testing purposes and it is pretty reliable. (see if I am currently running a test at http://soundrediscovery.dnsalias.net:8082/radiodestiny.rdl )
Ian
"Every day I look at the world through my window....." (Kinks - Waterloo Sunset)