Have any of you ever thought about (or tried/succeeded) in setting up an Internet station? I have always thought this would be a great thing to incorporate into GaragePunk.com to complement the podcasts, but the costs, requirements and legalities of the whole thing blow my mind. Check this article and the included links for more info. Ugh!

So, avoiding trying to set it up the hard way (above) and deal with SoundExchange directly, the other alternative is to go with Live365.com because they basically take care of all of the royalty payments and paperwork for a monthly fee. The PRO packages are the best, but are very expensive. On the other hand, the Personal broadcasting packages ("for individuals only"), are much more affordable, but you're pretty limited in how much music you can include, and you have to keep a close eye on listening hours per month. The top tier personal broadcasting package sounds pretty good... you get 6 gb storage space for your MP3s, which, if ripped at 64 kbps, is equivalent to aprox. 208 hours of music. You also get plenty of listening hours to cover a pretty sizable audience (most likely more than adequate for this site). But this package also goes for $95/month. How do you cover your costs? I barely make enough money from ads and fund drives on the Hideout to cover my hosting costs as it is... I can't imagine having to come up with another $1,200 a year! So that's the big stumbling block as far as I can see it. If I could find a way to drum up a hundred bucks a month for this, we could do it.

Anyway, I just wanted to toss the subject out there to get some input or thoughts from some of you... and hopefully from some people who have actually done this (and succeeded).

Thanks!

I started my station www.podunkradio.com 2 years ago as a hobby (a very, very involved hobby) that features unsigned independent bands as well as small underground punk labels. 

there are many ways to go about starting your own station and many factors to consider before diving into it. After a few months of trying to host out of my home i quickly realized that i needed more bandwidth. There are a ton of companies out there offering radio hosting packages - do your homework and pick a plan that is right for you. START SMALL!!!

If you intend to play commercial grade music plan on losing your ass trying to pay all the royalties companies that will eventually come at you with their hands out. 

i tend to stick strictly to music that bands and labels send to me and give explicit permission to air the tracks royalty free (in an effort to build more buzz for the band - you know like radio used to be - a mutually beneficial relationship)

the hosting company i use is great - in two years i have only experienced downtime once and that was resolved in less that 20 minutes. The plan i am on offers unlimited bandwidth, a huge amount of storage, free auto dj and time slot scheduling as well as free web hosting  not to mention that they offer me perks for being a long time subscriber that pays on time every month. i have an option that allows for my DJs to activate and deactivate the auto-dj so they can take over and roll live shows. it's all pretty damn sweet. and time consuming. - lol. foraging into the world of station ownership is not for the weak or easily distracted. Be prepared to devote your time to it.

i'll be more than happy to offer advice or assist any of you in any way that i can. just drop me a line a jacks.insanity@podunkradio.com 

ji*

podunkradio.com

Tommy has a weekly live show on Real Punk Radio. 

kopper said:

What station are you on, Tommy?

$10.95/mo. sounds like a pretty decent deal.

Tommy Unit said:

you can get a 50 listener Shoutcast server (128 Kbps and a 24/7 auto DJ) for $10.95 per month here. http://makeavoice.com/shoutcast/index.php

We use it for the station where I broadcast LIVE, every Tuesday night!

What station are you on, Tommy?

$10.95/mo. sounds like a pretty decent deal.

Tommy Unit said:

you can get a 50 listener Shoutcast server (128 Kbps and a 24/7 auto DJ) for $10.95 per month here. http://makeavoice.com/shoutcast/index.php

We use it for the station where I broadcast LIVE, every Tuesday night!

Oh yes I have :-) This has nothing to do with mono vs. stereo, but with aac+ vs. mp3 to reduce streaming bandwidth and still keep a good audioquality. Streaming aac+ and in mono would gain you even more!

kopper said:

Have you listened to any of our podcasts? They're all MP3s ripped at 80 kbps mono and sound completely fine. Stereo is overrated anyThway.

Yeah Right Radio said:

Have a look at aac+ vs. mp3 streaming. Better audioquality in relation to the bandwidth used, so you can even serve smartphone users with a limited bandwidth with an acceptable to good sound! The only downside is that one needs an aac+ capable music player which are less common than plain mp3 music players, but the major players like VLC, Winamp, iTunes etc support it. Have a listen to http://yeahright.getmyip.com:8000/listen.pls with one of those players and check out the soundquality!

Have you listened to any of our podcasts? They're all MP3s ripped at 80 kbps mono and sound completely fine. Stereo is overrated anyway.

Yeah Right Radio said:

Have a look at aac+ vs. mp3 streaming. Better audioquality in relation to the bandwidth used, so you can even serve smartphone users with a limited bandwidth with an acceptable to good sound! The only downside is that one needs an aac+ capable music player which are less common than plain mp3 music players, but the major players like VLC, Winamp, iTunes etc support it. Have a listen to http://yeahright.getmyip.com:8000/listen.pls with one of those players and check out the soundquality!

Have a look at aac+ vs. mp3 streaming. Better audioquality in relation to the bandwidth used, so you can even serve smartphone users with a limited bandwidth with an acceptable to good sound! The only downside is that one needs an aac+ capable music player which are less common than plain mp3 music players, but the major players like VLC, Winamp, iTunes etc support it. Have a listen to http://yeahright.getmyip.com:8000/listen.pls with one of those players and check out the soundquality!

Pretty obvious, isn't it? What we have now are a series of podcasts. Static podcasts. Not streaming audio where there's a different song playing each time you tune in. A Shoutcast server basically dips into a pool of songs (MP3s) and plays them in a random order. It's not a bunch of hosted, pre-recorded programs (podcasts) being played back-to-back.

Jeff of the Future said:

How is this different from the podcasts that you are already hosting?

 

64kbps stereo, yes. Mono, not so bad. A 64kbps MP3 ripped in mono is equivalent to a 128kbps stereo MP3 at half the size. This is why all GPPR podcasts are ripped at 80kbps mono... same audio (compression) quality of a 160kbps stereo MP3.

jon_the_id said:

mp3s at 64kbps sound absolutely horrible too, even to the thickest of ears

you can get a 50 listener Shoutcast server (128 Kbps and a 24/7 auto DJ) for $10.95 per month here. http://makeavoice.com/shoutcast/index.php

We use it for the station where I broadcast LIVE, every Tuesday night!

Wow !!! This is something I've been dreaming of for years too but it seems such a pain in the ass !!!

Man, I mean : running this the right way looks like a full time job...and I guess you must be ready to loose hair, sleep and money !!!

But it must be such a great adventure !!!

By the way, if you're looking for djs or anything... ;)

I had a live365 show called Consolidated Fuzz for about 4 years. The plan I was on cost about $15 a month and for that I think I got 300 MB which I was happy with because I only ever did shows that were a maximum of 4 hours long, so at 64kbps bitrate I never used up my allotted space anyhow. I was limited to 25 concurrent listeners on that plan. My total listening hours per month got as high as 1400, but average about 1000 I guess. I don't know if that qualifies as "succeeded" but I felt I did OK considering I did virtually no promotion for it.

The best thing is that people can search by genre and that's how I think most of my listeners found me.

My live365 show was basically an extension of my "real" radio show and what I used to do was compile a "best of" what I had played on radio every 3 weeks or so and leave that show up for that time. I don't think I would've wanted to get into programming hugely long shows because it is just too time consuming.

Incidentally yes 64kbps mp3s normally do sound horrible but on live365 they seemed to come across OK.  If you want to upload higher quality you can, it just costs more.  

mp3s at 64kbps sound absolutely horrible too, even to the thickest of ears

How is this different from the podcasts that you are already hosting?