Ok, here goes ...
Around February of 2004 I was bored one evening and began channel-hopping through the various internet radio stations out there and came across a few that I liked and bookmarked them. I had not long returned from living in South-East Asia (Thailand mostly) and had recently bought a second-hand Pentium II PC with dial-up access, having not owned a computer for a number of years.
Being an inquisitive kind of bloke and interested in all things computers, it wasn't long before I started reading through the
ShoutCast 'Wanna be a broadcaster ?' documentation. As you've probably figured already, I'm a huge Progressive Rock fan and have been for as long as I can remember. I thought it would be fun to broadcast some music from my own collection. There weren't that many internet radio stations dedicated to Prog Rock and I found that there were some gaps in the artists covered. I subscribed to a broadband service and installed the ShoutCast server software on my P II and began streaming tunes from my WinAmp. I could have only supported half-a-dozen listeners or so from my own domestic line, but it was always full ...
The station became popular very quickly. I realised that it was a good idea to have a website to accompany the radio station, so I subscribed to one of the free servers out there. The other need was to have a proper, dedicated server as opposed to people literally tuning-in to my P II at home, connected to a domestic line with limited bandwidth. Remember - we're talking about
upstream here as opposed to
downstream. You've got an 8 MB connection ? Good for you. But that's a
download speed of 8 MB not an
upload speed. With internet radio, you're streaming (sending information out) so it's the
upload speed that's all important. Most domestic carriers will only offer up to about 512 kbps maximum upload (well, they will in the U.K. and the Channel Islands anyway) - not a lot of people will be able to tune-in to that - about three listeners @ 128 kbps !!
So, the next move was to rent a server, with dedicated bandwidth for listeners to tune into. There are a large number of companies who deal in this - rent servers especially for internet radio. ShoutCast is the most popular 'type' of radio streaming software in the world today, without a doubt. This now meant that I could stream whatever music I wanted played on Stellar Attraction to my own, rented server with large
upstream bandwidth and a dedicated, fixed IP address. And when somebody tuned-in, they actually tune-in to this rented server which is in effect relaying whatever I was playing to it.
If I remember correctly, the website was the next to have an overhaul. I bought the domain name
www.stellar-attraction.com and started in earnest to design a website that would support the station properly. Providing news, links that listeners might find interesting and the like. There's actually an old webpage still on the server today if you would like to take a look as to how things were 'back in the day' -
http://www.stellar-attraction.com/whats_new_archive.htmlTo make things more interactive, a forum was added. Again, always keen to be involved personally in what I’m doing, I chose YaBB as the forum software. It’s open-source and is constantly being developed by a bunch of developers out there. Shortly after, I moved server hosts - both for the website and the radio servers.
The Pentium II had long since been replaced by a powerful, custom-built PC I made myself. I bought the superb
SAM broadcasting software which, in it’s most simplest form, ‘plays’ music to the rented ShoutCast servers which everyone tunes into.
SAM really is a powerful piece of software. The music that you hear has, on the whole, been pre-defined by me in the form of a ‘playlist’. There are simply loads of these on file and believe me when I say they’re not as simple as you might imagine to compile … I listen to music over and over again, add tracks, take tracks away, listen to it again and so on until I have anything from twenty four to forty eight hours worth of what I believe to be the finest music.
Having moved home (to where I am today) I became increasingly frustrated with streaming to my rented servers over a domestic, broadband connection. ‘Drops’ occur from time-to-time, so whatever I’m relaying to the servers will suddenly stop. This is somewhat understandable and for the most part is unnoticeable for most home users if you're simply browsing the web, downloading or whatever. But if you’re trying to run a radio station, just a few hours of ‘down time’ can be extremely frustrating. I for one knew, if I was listening to a radio station on the internet and it started to buffer (skips in the music) or cut-out altogether, I wouldn’t be that impressed and would probably give the station a miss … After suffering major downtime at the start of this year (due to the archaic wiring where I now live) I arranged a meeting with the local telecoms company, explained what I was doing and discussed what the best solution would be. Today, this custom built PC, running SAM (the broadcast software) is connected to the internet via a dedicated business line and if I do say so myself, is wonderful !! The stream very rarely breaks, there is little interruption when tuning-in and the quality is second-to-none.
... continued ...
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