Andy Moore

So you want to run a streaming radio station eh?

My bother in law (well sort of, girlfriend’s sister’s husband) is another with a background in radio broadcasting, we met up at the Carillon in Loughorough the other day when Caroline was playing and ended up anoraking about streamng radio.

That led to me setting up ShoutCast server and trying to get to grips with things to see how easy, or hard, it would be to set up a stream. It’s not amazingly hard but it’s SSH based and I’d prefer a nice user interface so I purchased an owned license for WHMSonic ShoutCast Admin Pro - this is now installed on NoSting Hosting and lets clients manage their radio stations with ease. It even comes with AutoDJ which shuffles mp3s you simply store in a directory.

Here’s my basic guide on getting a stream setup.

This guide assumes you have already signed up with a hosting provider who can support ShoutCast streaming.

For a web host with exceptional uptime, fantastic support and ShoutCast server hosting visit NoSting Hosting

You will need:

• ShoutCast Server IP address
• ShoutCast Server Port
• ShoutCast Server Administrator password
• WinAmp and ShoutCast DSP plugin
• Some creativity

Step One:

Download WinAmp from www.winamp.com/player/ and install. You’ve not got a media player which plays ShoutCast streams.

Step Two:

Download the ShoutCast DSP plugin from www.shoutcast.com/download/ and install.

This is the software that processes what you output and sends it to the streaming server.

Step Three:

Log on to your ShoutCast stream:

http://SERVER_IP:STREAM_PORT
Example: http://67.225.141.134:8000

You will see that the server is down. This is misleading as for you to be able to see that screen indicates the server is actually up, there’s just no stream for it to broadcast yet and rather dumb way of reporting that error.

Step Four:

Start playing some music on WinAmp

Step Five:

Tell ShoutCast / WinAmp which sound to broadcast, either the sound card’s output or the output from WinAmp. In this example it’s best to select WinAmp.

You’ll see how ShoutCast has detected the output from WinAmp already if the Input Levels dance.

Step Six:

Tell WinAmp and the plugin which ShoutCast server to send the stream to.

Under the Output tab enter your ShoutCast server’s IP address, the port which you broadcast on and the password.

You will then see the status update:

You should now be broadcasting!

Step Seven:

Check it out!!! Go back to your admin panel to see its updated and showing information about your stream!

Now to be certain the streaming radio is set up and working you should test it out on different players.

iTunes:

Click CTRL+U to Open a URL, or click Advanced then Open URL.
Enter the URL of your stream:
http://67.225.141.134:8000

Windows Media Player:

Click CTRL+U to Open a URL, or click File and Open URL
Enter the URL of your stream:
http://67.225.141.134:8000

WinAmp:

And in true “Here’s one we made earlier style” click the link and select WinAmp to play the stream:

http://67.225.141.134:8000/listen.pls

That’s not a live stream from here, it’s the Auto DJ software working away playing five songs on rotation.

Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 8:23 pm and is filed under Hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.