Slashdot Mirror

A lot of negative vibe here! I would have thought the opposite - that is the idea that Internet 'radio', free of commercials and free to listen to would be WIDELY embraced by the Slahdot crowd... but wow!
I saw an argument that questioned why anyone would listen to a stream when you had mp3's and such on your local machine? That is SO closed minded! Why, to discover NEW music, you idiot! Not only that, there is a special connection to OTHER listeners, other listeners that obviously have the same taste and are WITNESSING what you are... right now! So, how is it to live in a cave then? Sheesh!
The other argument that tweaks me is "I don't want to listen to what other people (DJ's) are playing, I want to listen to what *I* want to listen to." Fair enough. But again, CLOSED minded. Music is ART; sir, and ART is a process of DISCOVERY. Go back to your CAVE, and btw, what the HELL are you doing posting on Slashdot anyway!?
Unbelievable! I support Internet streaming (and yes, with my wallet) because it is worth it to me, to not be subject to the rediculous nature of commercial radio. Internet streaming was born out of the idea that is does NOT take lots of money and equipement to share ideas (music, in this case) - the sharing of ideas and information! Anybody? Anyone with a sense of reasoning getting this??
Btw, for you non-haters: http://www.shoutcast.com/

This will work fine... Since you don't have a sound card you will need a virtual soundcard http://www.ntonyx.com/vac.htm works great. Then you set up a shoutcast server http://shoutcast.com/ and a copy of winamp with the shoutcast dsp encoder. once you get shoutcast running and broadcasting over your network you just tell it to take it's input from the virtual audio cable. You need to fiddle with the windows mixers to get all the sounds sent out the vac. on the speaker machine tune into your stream with winamp and that should be all you need to do. Use a low bit rate so the encoder doesn't tax your CPU. I recommend the aac+ @24k. This sounds great and won't tax your cpu much at all. good luck! -DJTempest>

FM PCI card + Total Recorder + Shoutcast.

Or you could just try one of those Radio Sharks, which actually seems like what you want.

Or, you know, you could install winamp (or, on *nix, XMMS) and listen to shoutcast streams. For free. Without realplayer.

Speaking of streaming radio, I really love "Streamtuner" http://www.nongnu.org/streamtuner/ It's a very nifty internet radio stream browser for *nix platforms like linux and FreeBSD (there doesn't appear to be any windows ports that I'm aware of). Makes it very easy to find what you'd like to hear.

Strat

Or just go to http://www.shoutcast.com/ The only reason I'd own a portable MP3 player is to stream a few hours a day from shoutcast to a file, and then dump that on the mp3 player. While I like my own collection, I would just get bored with it on the bike after awhile anyway.

I tried listening to the online radio stations. I am in canada and they won't let me in. Time to go back to www.shoutcast.com.

I thought this would be nice as I'd get to listen to music at work, however the quality is so bad (highly compressed, low bandwidth)that it's not worth it.

Have you checked out ShoutCast? 30,000+ free internet radio stations, most of them commercial free, and streaming at the bitrate of your choosing (well, most stations). The sound quality is quite good, and can even reach spectacular quality using the combination of Winamp and a plugin called Ozone. Play around with the settings and listen to the difference... it's amazing what analog modeling can do for a 128k music file. Works with MP3s, Streams, and even videos too!

If 30,000+ radio stations seems a little overwhelming, might I suggest my favoriate station Beatblender (128k, streaming WMA) for some great ambient, work-inducing music.

Then listen to stations that aren't in your area --> shoutcast.com.

Pfft, just use Shoutcast man. F*ck commercials and DRM music streams.

I've never had much luck with otto. I have used Icecast to relay ogg files which were streamed from Ices or mp3s from Muse. I'd simply replace "stream" with a dedicated client. You can also broadcast/mix "live audio" (station ids) into the stream using Darkice. I've can also recommend Shoutcast.

I've used the above and am confident you can build a solution around them. Freshmeat shows tons more.

I just moved in with some flat mates from college. We have 5 regular use PCs (2 mac, 2 WinXP, and 1 Linux). Our main internet gateway/house file server is a PIII 900 Dell, 2 10/100 Nics (one taking the internet, the other to my Linksys WiFi), 1 gbE NIC connected to my PC sharing my ripped movies, and cds with everyone. The Dell runs Smoothwall, and a shoutcast server (so everyone in the house can play the same music at the same time). My Linksys router runs WiFi Box. There's plans to build a HTPC for the TV room... but we may just wait for the XBox 360.

On Sprint's CDMA cellular network, one can reasonably reliably listen to 56kbps shoutcast streams with a smart phone such as the treo. Lower bitrates are even more reliable. Sprint's unlimited data plan is $15/mo on top of your regular phone charges.

This can't compete with XM on quality and obviously not on signal reception. But a treo with a wifi card would beat the device referenced in this article hands down, in my opinion.

Plenty of online radio links at shoutcast.com. (I always follow the link from winamp.com because it's easier to remember).

Get thee to shoutcast. Admittedly it's a search engine rather than a frequency dial, but IMHO that's an improvement. As I type there's 9163 stations to choose from, and once you've found something you like it is just a case to taking a note of it's URL to type in later (or use bookmarks...)

The recording industry ARE a bunch of greedy bastards that are just in it for the money, so any place they can squeeze out a few more bucks, they'll do it. And they know the power of Intellectual Property © ® and all the fists full of money that can generate, so they do everything they can to extend and expand copyright, so they can retain monopoly rights on something they paid someone to create but somehow they own.

But the real question is how can you make it. Well, to make it on-line as a musician, this is what I would do:

• Make sure your website has features to keep and gain fan attention. Make sure you have available media such as:
  • MP3s, WMAs, OGGs, and AACs of your music in lower but still acceptable quality. I'd say 56k-96kbit, so casual listeners can listen but true fans would want to purchase high quality (192-512k) copies and lossless copies. Doesn't even have to be all your music. Imagine it like singles played on the radio. You can even have a tip section for each song so they can donate if they feel like it. And since you're distributing these files, you could have an introduction where you thank them for listening and direct them to your website, and put meta-data tags (ID3 tags and OGG comments, and I'm sure WMA and AAC have similar info blocks) on the files so it shows your information in iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, XMMS, and so on.
  • Maybe setup a Shoutcast, or IceCast channel. "All $MYBAND! All the time!"
  • Videos of the band. Again, low quality, Windows Media, Quicktime, screw Real Player. Make them stream-only for free and offer to sell downloads of higher quality copies.
  • Sell swag from your website. Audio CDs, DVDs of shows you've played, music videos if you're inclined to make them; T-shirts, hoodies, baby-doll shirts and all that crap that Cafepress will make for you. Turn album covers into desktop wallpapers, and have band photos for download. Make cell phone themes and ring-tones, sell those for $0.99 or even $0.50. Find a local starving-artist to help with the media if you want.
  • If you've got the time and energy, have a band blog, podcast, or even for have those for individual band members.
  • Promote your site with other artists and promote them on yours if you like them or if you think your fans would like them. A couple of banner ads on your site (provided that they're not obnoxious) in return for a couple banner ads on someone else's site.
• Get signed with whoever you can, but make sure you retain copyrights and possibly distribution rights. Get your music on iTMS if you can. Look into on-line record companies/distributors like Magnatune or MP3 Tunes as long as they won't interfere with you hosting your music on your own if you want.

Make it easy for interested fans to find you, refer you to their friends, buy stuff from you. Make your website easy to find and accessible. If you're not so good with visual media or website design, you probably know of a geek or a family member who is good at that, you could have them make a site for you (Payment would be between you and them). Once you're big enough, see if you can setup some tour dates. Sell CDs there, give out business cards with your website URL on them. Give away CDs with a few singles on them. You can even have an introduction on the CDs and DVDs and direct them back to your website, especially on any CDs you give away. Put a data track on audio CDs and DVDs that has some promo material or music files for your band and a link to your website. Remember everything can be used to promote yourself/your band, so make sure you've got it there where you can. But don't be obnoxious about it. People understand self-promo

You could always try alternatives such as Blastro.com for music videos and shoutcast for audio streams.

Shoutcast has a wide variety of formats available; however, since it's live netcasting, you can't carry it with you. C'est la vie.

This might not be the best solution - I've never used it over an internal network - but its worth a shot. Shoutcast... its a Winamp-based streaming audio system. You can learn more about it at Shoutcast.com Here is a tutorial on setting it up and everything. Tutorial And the Formal Documentation? Here it is Hope this was helpful.

This might not be the best solution - I've never used it over an internal network - but its worth a shot. Shoutcast... its a Winamp-based streaming audio system. You can learn more about it at Shoutcast.com Here is a tutorial on setting it up and everything. Tutorial And the Formal Documentation? Here it is Hope this was helpful.

Sure ... get the Shoutcast Server and the Broadcast Plugin. They work with WA2 and WA5. Start Server, connect Broadcast Plugin to said server (you can run both on the same computer), enjoy music. Takes a bit of configuration, but they step you through the process. And if you have the bandwidth, it helps to have a VNC connection so you can start/stop playback or switch playlists or whatever.

Sure ... get the Shoutcast Server and the Broadcast Plugin. They work with WA2 and WA5. Start Server, connect Broadcast Plugin to said server (you can run both on the same computer), enjoy music. Takes a bit of configuration, but they step you through the process. And if you have the bandwidth, it helps to have a VNC connection so you can start/stop playback or switch playlists or whatever.

Why would I install spyware to scan my hard drive with the claim that it will play some stupid random selection of what it finds, with limits on content, annoying DRM, and an unclear business model that you know is more sinister than it's letting on? Services like Shoutcast (http://www.shoutcast.com/) have been around for years, work very well, and have no spyware or content issues that I know of. This is why I never waste my time with P2P apps.

This is a tangental question.

And, the killer, I want this tool to be open sourced on Linux, eliminating tools like WinAMP.

a decent old pair of headphones and shoutcast. no noise cancellation. no blinking lights. no frequency-hopping reverse polarization. no iPod. the music is non-GPL and non-BSD compliant. the headphones were not Free. they don't even run linux.

I wonder what will become of http://www.shoutcast.com/? Any other good internet radio directories out there?

Replace "ipodder" with "Shoutcast" and you have an equally meaningless rant about how the Internet was supposed to destroy evil centralized corporate radio about 5 years ago.

News blogs aren't going to destroy CNN, and webcasted radio shows aren't going to break anyone's hegemony. What's amazing is that people hold annual conferences to make assloads of money off of people deluded enough to believe that blogs will do any more for the Internet than, say, Geocities ever did.

I for one am a Magnatune customer and find that this is all music I need. Creative Commons doesn't mean it does suck. The fine folks over at Blender chose one Magnatune artist for their SIGGRAPH demo reel. The rest ain't shabby either.

Try Cargo Cult, Curl, Brad Sucks or their shoutcasts for starters.

If you chose to buy, you set the price. Money is evenly divided between artist and label. Download options include wav, flac, vorbis and mp3.

Sure, I still buy the odd CD. But I only do this after a concert right out of the hands of the performers. Prefer my media handsigned and not watermarked, thank you.

I haven't listened to the radio in years.

I've had run ins mostly with sesac for the last year. I stream video of folks singing karaoke from a bar called 7 Bamboo here in San Jose California.

I have several problems with giving some body blanket rights to collecting royaltees.

1. They can use whatever broad definition of what requires a license.

Once you give an organization the right to collect royaltees, there is no checks or balances in place to define what entitles them to a royaltee. Remember elevator music? Thanks to the licensing boards going after elevator operators, we no longer hear it. How in the world is elevator music making someone money? It's not, it's stupid.

2. Licensing board broad collection schemes.

I read over the sesac contract very carefully. Basically, I pay based on the number of hits my website gets in a month. What does hits have to do with the number of viewers on the video stream? Nothing, the two are completely unrelated. I could see paying based on my stream traffic, but not on the number of hits I get on the site. If they wanted to make me pay based on my ttsl reports Unfortunately me and the license boards don't see eye to eye on this one.

3. Just plain old greed.

The bar I work for already pays ascap/bmi/sesac public performance fees. They pay a total of $1500@year. Isn't that enough? Why do they want more for the stream? It's just stupid.

4. Lack of disclosure from the licensing boards.

I think licensing boards should be *required* to tell folks exactly what would make them exempt from licensing fees. Unfortunatly this is not the case, they are more interested in getting you to sign a contract (which basically gives up all your rights) instead of telling you what does and does not count as copyright.

I found several sections of the US copyright law that gives me exemptions in the case with karaoke streaming on the net. There's several sections 110-117 which deal all with copyright exemptions. Parody, it's not the real singer or the real background music and it's free to watch. Also there is cultural exemption (We're a Japanese owned karaoke bar, karaoke is from japan) Despite me pointing these out to sesac on several occasions, they're still very insistant that I pay royaltees for the stream. /end stupid licensing rant

Anyways, licensing boards need to operate more like a goverment agency than a glass tower of lawyers (which is exactly what they are now) Their only interest is money, and there is no limit to where they will go to collect it. They will lie, use scare tactics, and do everything short of sending hired goons to collect it.

On top of that, lawyers are not techies. Letting a group of lawyers define the law on anything technical is a *bad* thing.

Ok, end rant. Watch my karaoke station.

Of course, then you can't listen to Internet radio...

Try shoutcast. From rap to rock, oldies to newage, trance to folk music, even music exclusive to Asia, you can find it here to listen to. Whenever I want to listen to music I use shoutcast.

Yes, I know this sounds like a sales pitch.

Why necessarily visual? Let's make it aural. My cheap proposition (patents pending) involve current technology. Hit the bong a few times, then head on out to http://www.shoutcast.com/ and queue up some Groove Salad. That's transmitting the stuff directly into the core of your being. or something.

e.o

Listen to independent (usually college) radio. I spent my formative years listening to KXLU and KALX.

Listen to indie internet radio stations. A lot of people like KEXP; check the directories at shoutcast.com and icecast.org or your mp3's builtin directory (eg iTunes) (shameless plug - I run punk stream if you like punk)

Read indie newspapers, if available. L.A. Weekly if you're in Los Angeles, for example.

Read web sites that cover indie (pitchforkmedia.com is a start). Download stuff at random.

Go to music buying sites like audiolunchbox and magnatune, and listen to samples at random.

Ask friends for recommendations. Borrow stuff from them.

Hit alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.indie. Download stuff at random.

Go to indie record stores and buy stuff at random. I actually used to do this, buy something based on the cover art. Discovered some great stuff this way. And this was on a high school allowance.

All you need is a seed, and it can open up a whole new microgenre to explore.

Once you find something you like, research them. You'll often find information along the lines of "if you like X, you might like Y". Maybe a band member used to be in another band.

Look up that band's label's site. Often, indie labels have a common "sound" across their lineup, so you might like some of their label mates. Indie label sites usually have downloadable sample songs- download them.

And so on.

I do all these things. I take music seriously, it's a big part of my life. Sometimes it feels like work, to tell you the truth. But I'm driven by the idea that, no matter how much I like the music I've enjoyed in the past, there's something even more incredible out there.

I have a lot of CDs and I continue to buy a lot. But I also have a lot of downloaded music. I have a fairly clear conscience though. I genuinely feel that most indie bands wouldn't hold it against me that I downloaded their music to give it a listen, to see what they are about.

Does all the above sound like "too much effort"? Then, perhaps, music doesn't mean as much to you as me. That's cool.

Me- I'm not content to be fed stuff by commercial interests whose agenda run contrary to my search for interesting music. And I have the time and desire to invest in this pursuit. I can appreciate that others may not. Or maybe you're out in the sticks, with no broadband. In which case, I think you to resign yourself to a certain lifestyle, anyway.

That's why I don't live in the sticks :).

-h3

I've found several comedy streams at ShoutCast. Just search for "comedy", or choose it as a genre in the pull-down menu to the right.

It seems like warez channels have been doing this forever. Once someone gets something, it spends a few days getting passed around all the high-bandwidth providers before it goes to the "public."

I'm glad to see more legal, but free (as in beer) music available. But how long before someone writes a "MyTunes" (or something similar) that allows you to download music (illegally, I'd imagine), off of this service?

How about public radio? Many public radio stations have _____ ____'s Rock/Music/Alternative Hour where some kid plays a bunch of local/regional music as well as few good mainstream songs? Sadly enough I haven't seen anyone mention listening to internet radio such as shoutcast et al. I've picked up on more GOOD unique bands from the type of music I like by those two means than any other way.

Additionally... what are peoples thoughts about donating to pub radio? I now have a few bucks and would like to promote the things I enjoy, pr being one of them.

A SqueezeBox can do that, no need for a WinXP box. The latest server software even has a module to let you browse ShoutCast with your remote.

256kbps Chillout stream

They're out there, you just gotta find them.

This is the same way with cds and the reason I stopped buying cds: they have 1 or 2 good songs and nothing else. Now I do buy cds from time to time that are "best of", which are definitely worth the $15-20 (depending on the artist), though it still has been a while. Most of the time I just listen to Shoutcast streams.

Peercast is a pretty good solution. The only problem is that it has very few stations. I've uninstalled it and I only listen to shoutcast now.

Use a combination of Snowcrash, Winamp, and SHOUTcast. I haven't tried snowcrash with Winamp 5, but it should work.

I believe SHOUTcast has a streaming-on-demand feature, but it's not as nice as Snowcrash.

You can setup the software to stream out MP3s etc and you can use WinAMP or xmms to listen in. Set the administrative page to be viewable from the internet (with user/pass of course) and then you can control the streams from there.

... you should have scooted on over to The ShoutCAST Yellow Pages

The weekend NPR show On The Media recently added a free mp3 format download of their show. I think many npr shows are reluctant to do this because they have an alternative income source by selling mp3s at audible.com.

Perhaps the recent significant contribution to npr by the McDonald's widow, and president Bush's new found appreciation for the NEA, has loosened the noose a little.

You can find mp3 streams of various npr affiliates via shoutcast.com, but I think we would all love to have a national stream, and individual shows in an open format.

The only way to get this is to A) Pledge, and B) Suggest it.

It would also be nice to download official Nova episodes in an open format.

There are thousands of sites streaming in MP3. Why don't more such sites use MP3?

Of course, for a completely open streaming solution, Ogg has both excellent encoders and numerous free players (including one that runs inside a web page, written in Java).

It's kind of a pain if the site doesn't actually put the actual mms link somewhere in their page so you can start those players with it. For sites that feed you the link through intermediaries, you can use plugins for mozilla (mplayerplug-in and a xine equivalent). It's even more of a pain if they do browser identification and so on rather than just feeding the mms link to the browser, since you'd have to spoof whatever it is they are expecting.

Using xine or mplayer to handle audio-only streaming content feels like a kluge, though, I guess I also wish they had gone the ShoutCast or IceCast route, instead.

Switch to something a little more open minded... like Nullsoft's Shoutcast. I listen to some pretty nice UK radio stations from across the pond with KDE's Noatun whilst I code thanks to Shoutcast. I don't see any reason why its not usable for radio broadcasts like Click & Clack.

Although I do have a CD player in my car, I like to hear new things that I haven't heard before, and it gets expensive buying new CD's all the time

a recent upserge in video game soundtrack popularity. There are even a couple of winamp streams out there playing them. ALT + L in winamp, under 'Internet Radio' there will be a couple. Also, check out Shoutcast for streams. Last time I tuned it, they are streaming some final fantasy tracks.

Along a similar idea, my Tungsten C can stream mp3 stations from Shoutcast with Pocket Tunes
Not hifi wifi but it's wild to see in action the first time...