How to Start an Internet Radio Station With Loud City

Internet radio can be far superior to traditional radio in many ways, particularly in terms of the audience you can reach. Whether you've always secretly wanted to be a DJ or if you just want to breathe new life into your website, operating your own internet radio station can be a very gratifying endeavor. It is easier than you think to start your own internet radio station, and by partnering with a service such as Loud City, it costs less than you think to pay royalties for a legal internet broadcast.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

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)

1. Visit Winamp.com to download the winamp media player onto the computer that you will be using as your broadcast station. Windows Media Player, Real Player and Quick Time are certainly all popular choices for media players, but when it comes to broadcasting your music to the world, Winamp is really the best option out there. Winamp is free, so it will cost you nothing to install this media player on your computer.

2. Gather all of your CDs together and use Winamp to copy the tracks onto your computer. This way, all of your titles will be neatly organized in your Winamp player, making it very easy for you to create play lists for your internet radio station.

3. Pop over to ShoutCast.com. Here, you will download and install the ShoutCast plug-in for Winamp. Shoutcast is a free broadcasting utility that allows others to hear what you are playing on Winamp. With ShoutCast, anyone who has your address can listen to the music or talk that you are broadcasting.

4. Sign up for an account at LoudCity.net. Read the Tips section below to understand how Loud City's royalty system works.

5. Consider the use of a professional streaming host. You can technically stream the entire station from your home computer, allowing people to access your station through your IP address, but the more listeners you have at the same time, the slower your Internet connection will become. To get around this problem, most Internet radio broadcasters make use of professional streaming hosts. The average cost of these hosts is $1 to $2 per month for each 128mbps port. The more ports you have, the more concurrent listeners you can have on your stream. Most Internet radio stations find that 10 ports (that is, 10 people can listen at the same time) is sufficient, and you can then upgrade the service as required. Loud City can make recommendations as to hosts that are equipped to work with their service.

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.

Resources

• Loud City

[bake4u]

on 4/28/2008 nice article, too technical for me but for someone who needs this will be great. very interesting