Speaking of radio, why not set up an internet radio station James? A station that airs only local, unsigned music. You have a server you can use :wink: I can help you out with if you need it, I have experience in this field. Starting an internet radio station is very much easier than getting local music to be aired on radio, and it can be a pilot test to see how many locals will listen to it.
Internet Radio on SOFT
- Thread starter sanXp
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coz this is an interesting topic which should have it's own thread. :wink:
as for the internet radio, i have planned and actually programmed the whole thing since 2003. The problem I face is funding the project. Cost of server and bandwidth and maintaining the radio.
since SOFT is not cash rich, we cannot "Just Do It" without a sound plan.
as for the internet radio, i have planned and actually programmed the whole thing since 2003. The problem I face is funding the project. Cost of server and bandwidth and maintaining the radio.
since SOFT is not cash rich, we cannot "Just Do It" without a sound plan.
Bandwidth and rackspace is always a problem with internet radio stations, but you do have your own server right James, the server this site is running on? We don't have to support all the listeners thru a singular server, we can ask for other local music sites with bandwidth to spare to mirror our server, spreading out the load. Or we can go P2P, but it's a b*tch to set up. I've always wanted to start an internet radio station but I don't have the resources or the backing, but you James, on the other hand, are already halfway there.
James, what do you mean by maintanance? Do you mean making sure the station is up and running all the time, and that there is a consistent flow of songs, and making sure there are new songs all the time?
The people who run the station can be SOFT volunteers. There are plenty of us here. Music material shouldn't be a problem either, again, there are plenty of us here. Having a station will also stress the independant artistes here to consistantly come up with new pieces, which is good.
James, what do you mean by maintanance? Do you mean making sure the station is up and running all the time, and that there is a consistent flow of songs, and making sure there are new songs all the time?
The people who run the station can be SOFT volunteers. There are plenty of us here. Music material shouldn't be a problem either, again, there are plenty of us here. Having a station will also stress the independant artistes here to consistantly come up with new pieces, which is good.
AgingYouth
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HeartRockSingapore
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I think Rediffusion has started something that is both lined and internet. I was invited but chose not to be involved in this for the moment. Some early rockers are handling the thing now.
AgingYouth
New member
he is a one-man show there...
You can try asking him if there's any chance of collaboration. We might be working with him if our time permits as well. He's in need of server space at the moment and local tunes (which is where AYP is coming in).
You can try asking him if there's any chance of collaboration. We might be working with him if our time permits as well. He's in need of server space at the moment and local tunes (which is where AYP is coming in).
AgingYouth
New member
HeartRockSingapore said:
I'm not too sure about the Internet part. I understand that they just got their DAB licence not long ago and are looking at expanding their programming. Hopefully, they will revive the good ol' days of Eight Miles High...
HeartRockSingapore
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The business philosophy between us is so different. It is not difficult to start one, but the business model must be sound, and scaleable to me.
HeartRockSingapore
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James seems the most appropriate person into this. When I consulted him on the digital radio thing, I was like jaw dropped with his research and home work. He is way ahead of many of us.
James.. i got a idea long ago..
people know about shoutcast? where u stream music yourself to ur friends? yep... james can sticky a thread.. whenever anyone here is streaming.. they can paste the URLs here ... pple come to soft.. see that theres a radio now on.. they log on....
so every one can stream also! (provided u noe how to do shoutcast lah) ...but we need those with lotsa local mp3s to help stream (i can help.. have like 200 of them or more).. oh ya.. and my comp is on 24 hrs.
IMO this idea is workable.. only if people wanna play apart in it.
but den.. must make sure dun go stream some GNR and metallica wif local music la.. we can make another channel to stream overseas music oso.
people know about shoutcast? where u stream music yourself to ur friends? yep... james can sticky a thread.. whenever anyone here is streaming.. they can paste the URLs here ... pple come to soft.. see that theres a radio now on.. they log on....
so every one can stream also! (provided u noe how to do shoutcast lah) ...but we need those with lotsa local mp3s to help stream (i can help.. have like 200 of them or more).. oh ya.. and my comp is on 24 hrs.
IMO this idea is workable.. only if people wanna play apart in it.
but den.. must make sure dun go stream some GNR and metallica wif local music la.. we can make another channel to stream overseas music oso.
ok, say we can really set up this Internet Radio thing, what about listeners, will there be enough listeners to reach out to?
how many listeners do you think we can get? how many do you feel is reasonable so that we can approach advertisers or people who are willing to fund this project?
how many listeners do you think we can get? how many do you feel is reasonable so that we can approach advertisers or people who are willing to fund this project?
Enough listeners? James, you have 5000 members in SOFT. Anyway, we can do a test run, technology is such that you can set up and tear down something in 5 minutes. :wink:
Gordon, I WAS talking in the likes of shoutcast, or maybe even using icecast (for ogg streaming). Having everyone streaming on their own stations will be too confusing, I'm talking about having a centralised server, where different people can take turns to stream on the server. This way it will be more organised and controllable. We can also schedule time slots this way. All these can be settled later though, what is more important is the setting up of the server and bandwidth calculations. Having everyone streaming from their own computer has another downside too, with a minimum of 256kbps upstream that everyone has, one can only support up to about 10 listeners on a 24kbps stream, which sounds absolutely horrible. If there is a centralised server, everyone can stream at a decent 128kbps, of course provided the server can take the load. Another way is to run P2Pcast, but it will be hard to set up and maintain.
I highly recommend running Icecast and streaming in ogg because you can get the same audio quality at half the bandwidth, i.e. a 64kbps stereo ogg stream will sound roughly the same compared to a 128kbps stereo mp3 stream. I'm not sure if winamp supports ogg streams tho, but I think they do. It's slightly harder to set up tho, you don't get a fancy statistic page among other bells and whistles, but the savings in bandwidth is very much worth it IMO.
You can check out Icecast server and the Oddcast plugin for winamp at www.oddsock.org. If you want to be professional I recommend using Streaming Audio Manager (SAM) from http://www.spacialaudio.com/ over streaming from winamp. They support a wide range of broadcasting formats, like mp3, ogg and wma, and they have other fancy stuff too. It costs though, unless you *ahem* it.
Gordon, I WAS talking in the likes of shoutcast, or maybe even using icecast (for ogg streaming). Having everyone streaming on their own stations will be too confusing, I'm talking about having a centralised server, where different people can take turns to stream on the server. This way it will be more organised and controllable. We can also schedule time slots this way. All these can be settled later though, what is more important is the setting up of the server and bandwidth calculations. Having everyone streaming from their own computer has another downside too, with a minimum of 256kbps upstream that everyone has, one can only support up to about 10 listeners on a 24kbps stream, which sounds absolutely horrible. If there is a centralised server, everyone can stream at a decent 128kbps, of course provided the server can take the load. Another way is to run P2Pcast, but it will be hard to set up and maintain.
I highly recommend running Icecast and streaming in ogg because you can get the same audio quality at half the bandwidth, i.e. a 64kbps stereo ogg stream will sound roughly the same compared to a 128kbps stereo mp3 stream. I'm not sure if winamp supports ogg streams tho, but I think they do. It's slightly harder to set up tho, you don't get a fancy statistic page among other bells and whistles, but the savings in bandwidth is very much worth it IMO.
You can check out Icecast server and the Oddcast plugin for winamp at www.oddsock.org. If you want to be professional I recommend using Streaming Audio Manager (SAM) from http://www.spacialaudio.com/ over streaming from winamp. They support a wide range of broadcasting formats, like mp3, ogg and wma, and they have other fancy stuff too. It costs though, unless you *ahem* it.
soft said:
yerp, another problem...
it'll then lie on what genre the internet radio is streaming and how many people will know of it without going to SOFT.com
honestly, i'll only listen to either punk or metal...
if its not, i 'll juzz listen for a minute or two, then close it.
That's where scheduling will come in. And seriously, I feel that listeners will not be a problem. If James can get 5000 members in here, I don't see how he cannot get a sizable amount of listeners. We can advertise the station at gigs, other local partner sites, etc etc.
The reason why the idea of internet radio over normal radio is better is that you don't need a sizable listener base to start one. This is NOT traditional radio. It is a very scalable platform. No listeners, we can cap the server at say, 10 listeners? Once we have more listeners, we can up the limit, or offload to other mirror servers. A shoutcast/icecast server is just yet another process running on a server. It just takes a kill -9 <pid> to turn it off.
The reason why the idea of internet radio over normal radio is better is that you don't need a sizable listener base to start one. This is NOT traditional radio. It is a very scalable platform. No listeners, we can cap the server at say, 10 listeners? Once we have more listeners, we can up the limit, or offload to other mirror servers. A shoutcast/icecast server is just yet another process running on a server. It just takes a kill -9 <pid> to turn it off.
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