Removing Ads from a Live Audio Stream in Unix?

Soothh writes "A local radio station here is finally doing streaming audio again on the net so i can listen at work. The catch, they go through Hiwire, which only supports Windows Media Player. Their tech page says that this technology has 'proven difficult to implement on the Unix platform.' Is there any validity to the claim that WMP is the only cost effective way to remove commercials. Anyone know other ways to get streams from real radio stations on a *nix platform?"

Comments

Here's the relevant text

[PD]

Copied it straight out of the link. This might help with those who didn't read the article.

7. Why don't you support Linux/Unix/Solaris? (Unix)
Supporting Unix is more complex than simply offering a Windows Media Player for Unix. There was a ruling in favor of AFTRA, the actor's union, which states that commercials made for radio cannot be re-broadcast onto the Internet without payment of huge royalties. Therefore, if you want to stream your radio station on the Internet you need to remove the commercials. Our software enables us to automate the process of removing radio commercials and replacing them with Internet safe ads on Windows platforms. This technology has proven difficult to implement on the Unix platform. At this point we have no plans for supporting the Unix platform.

Low Tech Solution

[FattMattP]

It's not like this is rocket science. Plug sound output of machine with stream from windows media player into input of machine with Shoutcast encoder (or whatever). Distribute your stream to the masses in MP3 from new server. So you'll lose a little quality from the re-encoding. Big deal, few people will probably notice.