How to Start an Internet Radio Station With Loud City

Start your own internet radio station from home.

LoudCity is an Internet service that allows you to stream your own music as an online radio station for listeners. The service costs a monthly fee, which covers the cost of royalties for playing the music and makes the service legal to use. To stream to LoudCity, you must have an account at the website, the Winamp media player and the Winamp SHOUTcast plug-in. You can then play any music files on your computer as a playlist to your Internet radio station.

Things You'll Need

• Good music library containing several hours of music
• PC with a minimum of 256 megabytes of RAM memory
• Quality sound card (most factory defaults are sufficient)
• Broadband internet connection
• Copy of Winamp Media Player (free)
• Microphone (optional, for talking on air)

Instructions

Set Up Music Files

1. Move all of your MP3 files to the same folder on your computer. This allows you to easily import and play all of your songs.

2. Download and install the newest free version of Winamp from the Winamp website.

3. Launch the Winamp program, click “File,” then click “Play Folder” from the top menu.

4. Navigate your computer to your music folder. Highlight it and click “OK” to import all the music into Winamp.

5. Click the “Toggle Playlist/Song Repeating” button on the Winamp player to allow your music to repeat even after all songs have played. This allows your radio station to continue playing even if you are not at your computer.

Set Up Radio Station

1. Navigate to the LoudCity website and sign up for a broadcasting account. The price of this account varies depending on the number of listeners, the amount of storage space and which features you want to use with your account. LoudCity provides a free trial period to allow you to test your radio station.

2. Download and install the SHOUTcast DSP Plug-In for Winamp from the SHOUTcast website.

3. Click “Options” and then “Preferences” from the Winamp menu bar. Select “Plug-ins.”

4. Select “SHOUTcast source DSP” as your “DPS/effect plug-in directory” setting and then click “Close.” The SHOUTcast interface appears in a new window. This is where you set up your broadcasting information.

5. Navigate to the “Output” tab and type the LoudCity server and account information provided with your account.

6. Navigate to the “Yellow Pages” tab and ensure the server is marked as public. Also, type in your radio station information such as name, URL and genre.

7. Click “Play” on your Winamp player to begin broadcasting to your LoudCity radio station.

Tips & Warnings

• The purpose of Loud City is to give you a cheaper, more efficient method of paying royalties on the music that you play. By piggy-backing on their agreements with the major record labels, you can save thousands of dollars a year over the cost of doing it yourself. Loud City automatically tracks all of the songs that you play and pays royalties to the artist. All you pay is a monthly subscription fee that is as little as $35. The fee is based on the number of music hours and listeners, so high traffic stations may have to pay more, but most people fall into the $35 category.

• Note that you can technically broadcast without Loud City or without even paying royalties at all, but it is recommended to do this step so that your station will remain legal. Royalties are only calculated for the music that you pay. You do not pay royalties on your talk programming or on most indie (independent) music.

• Remember that ShoutCast will broadcast any sound being played on your computer. So if you're playing video games, for example, at the same time as music, your listening audience will hear all of the video game sound effects on top of the music.

References

• Loud City: LoudCaster
• Loud City: Broadcaster Plan Setup - SHOUTcast Only
• SHOUTcast: Getting Started

Resources

• Winamp
• SHOUTcast: Start Your Own Station / Download Broadcaster Tools