How to create an internet radio station
If you’ve ever wondered how internet radio stations work and/or wanted to create your own, this tutorial will show you how. It is actually very easy, and you can set up your own radio station and begin broadcasting songs in about 10 minutes.
First of all, let me give you a quick rundown on how it works. You have your music player (I will use Winamp, get it if you don’t have it) and you play your music as you normally would. You probably need a fast internet connection so you can broadcast without buffering occuring. Through a plugin (which you will download and install), Winamp will send the music you play to the broadcasting server (which can be on your PC or on another one with a larger connection), and the server sends the music to the listeners, reencoding it to a better format, if you are so inclined. Note that the amount of listeners you will be able to support is limited by your outgoing bandwidth and the bitrate of the song you are streaming, so if you’re streaming at 128 kbps and you have 256 kbps upload bandwidth, you’ll obviously be able to support 256/128 = 2 listeners.
The programs I use are Winamp for playing, oddcast DSP for broadcasting to the server and Icecast for serving. You can use Winamp’s own Shoutcast plugin and server, but I prefer to broadcast in Vorbis because it’s smaller and has much better quality than MP3.
Let’s get started, then. Download Icecast from this page (you presumably want the Windows version) and install it. Run it and click “Edit configuration” in the “Configuration” menu. A notepad window will pop up with various configuration options. My configuration is this:
<limits>
<clients>100</clients>
<sources>2</sources>
<threadpool>5</threadpool>
<queue-size>524288</queue-size>
<client-timeout>30</client-timeout>
<header-timeout>15</header-timeout>
<source-timeout>10</source-timeout>
<burst-on-connect>1</burst-on-connect>
<burst-size>65535</burst-size>
</limits>
<authentication>
<source-password>hackme</source-password>
<relay-password>hackme</relay-password>
<admin-user>admin</admin-user>
<admin-password>hackme</admin-password>
</authentication>
<hostname>localhost</hostname>
<listen-socket>
<port>8000</port>
</listen-socket>
<fileserve>1</fileserve>
<paths>
<basedir>./</basedir>
<logdir>./logs</logdir>
<webroot>./web</webroot>
<adminroot>./admin</adminroot>
<alias source="/" dest="/status.xsl"/>
</paths>
<logging>
<accesslog>access.log</accesslog>
<errorlog>error.log</errorlog>
<loglevel>4</loglevel> <!-- 4 Debug, 3 Info, 2 Warn, 1 Error -->
<logsize>10000</logsize> <!-- Max size of a logfile -->
</logging>
<security>
<chroot>0</chroot>
</security>
</icecast>
You can copy it and paste it in the open notepad window (the one with the configuration), but make sure you change “hackme” to more secure passwords. Once you have done this, save the file and close the window. Click the “Start server” button and the listboxes below should be populated with various information, like this:
Your server is now ready for people to connect to it, but there’s no music playing, so let’s tend to that. Download oddcast for Winamp from this page and install it. Now, run Winamp, go to the “DSP/Effect” section of the preferences and click on “oddcast DSP v3”. You should see the oddcast window pop up, looking something like this:
Click on “Add encoder” and a new encoder will be added in the box below. Right-click on it and select “configure”. A dialog will pop up, asking for various information. For “Encoder type” select “OggVorbis” (or MP3, if you are so inclined), this will make you stream in Vorbis. Some people might not be able to have the available codecs if they’re running a very old version of their player (all newer players worth their salt support Vorbis).
For “Quality” I have entered -2, it is the lowest quality, giving you about 30 kbps bitrate and very acceptable quality. You can experiment with 0 or 2, going over 6 is overkill in my opinion (since 6 is what I use to archive music from my CDs), and you will be able to support more listeners if you have lower bitrate for the song.
For “Server IP” enter the IP of the server you’re running Icecast on (it’s “localhost” if you’re running it on your own PC). “Server port” is whatever you entered in the configuration, 8000 if you used mine, and “Encoder password” is hopefully something other than “hackme”. I also use mono, because my connection only has 128 available upstream bandwidth and it doesn’t sound too bad. It should now look like this:
Click OK here and then click “Connect”. If you did everything right, the encoder should now connect to Icecast and begin streaming, like so:
If you want to do a voiceover (speak in your radio) just click the Live Recording button and it will broadcast anything that you say in the microphone (or whatever you enter as the input device). Click on it again to return to your normal music (I haven’t actually tested this, if there are any problems just comment here).
The “Source Level Stats” section of Icecast should also change to include your stream, and will look something like this:
Try connecting with another player (not the one playing the songs) to http://localhost:8000/stream.ogg (e.g. for Winamp click Open URL). If that connects and plays, everything is set up correctly. You can now tell people to connect with Winamp or whatever player they use (and NOT WITH AN INTERNET BROWSER) to http://[yourip]:8000/stream.ogg (if you don’t know your IP, visit http://www.whatismyip.com/, or see the “Client address” in the “Details” tab of your Local Area Connection if you want to stream on a LAN) with their players, and that’s all there was to it.
If you get a permission error under Vista, swamplingman suggested that you give your user full permissions for the Icecast and Winamp folders. That should solve the error.
Note: Before you broadcast any music, make sure you have the right to do so, otherwise you could be breaking the law of your country. Also, if you are having connection problems, you are probably behind a NAT or a firewall that does not allow other people to connect to your computer. To clarify, you (from your internal network) can only connect to your station using your internal IP (192.168.0.1 or whatever) and people from the internet can only connect to you using the IP from whatismyip.com and only if you have forwarded port 8000 corrrectly. Ask your network administrator or visit www.portforward.com for help, as these problems are outside the scope of this tutorial.
perfect! that's good.
Submitted by Nabi (not verified) on Tue, 08/01/2008 - 02:58.very thanks for this tutorial.
i wishes i have enough time to transfer this to the persion language for iranian peoples ;-)
have a nice time.
Thanks :) If you translate it tell me, and I'll link to you from here.
Submitted by Stavros on Tue, 08/01/2008 - 10:51.---
Vidi, Vici, Veni.
But I Am Not Sure What Link To Paste To My Friends So They Can Hear My Live Radio Station?
And I Was Wondering Do They Need Winamp To Be Able To Hear Me?
Reply ASAP Please
Thanks Tom
Submitted by Tom (not verified) on Wed, 23/01/2008 - 21:55.I have the programs set up how you said in your tutorial. I can connect to the stream via "http://{yourip}:8000/stream.mp3" and listen fine through my own computer, but not through my parent's computer in the living room.
I'm playing from Winamp (duh) and I can access the stream on the same computer via iTunes but I try connecting using WMP on another computer, and after seeing "Connecting to media..." I get an error and can't connect.
Hopefully someone can help me out a little bit. I'm taking a new position at work in a week and I get my own computer, but I can't bring in any media and can't store anything on that computer.
Thanks.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 28/01/2008 - 01:19.Is this ilegal?
Submitted by Dorian (not verified) on Fri, 08/02/2008 - 12:26.It worked for me...but i have a problem:only people conected to my internet can listen it.is this because i have a router?Do i neet to port forward?please help.
Submitted by Dorian (not verified) on Sat, 09/02/2008 - 10:13.Better yet, how DO you forward a port? I've only gotten this thing to work two ways: me with localhost connecting from WMP to Winamp, and from the internet...odd
Submitted by Drake (not verified) on Sun, 10/02/2008 - 04:15.Well nevermind that, I forwarded my port and everything, but I can only get the stream to com through after I stop the icecast server...
Submitted by Drake (not verified) on Sun, 10/02/2008 - 16:17.Ok ive done everything it said to do but now wen i try to hear it on another play list nothing plays ugh im getting streesed out how do i get it so i can hear it on another play list
Submitted by DX (not verified) on Mon, 11/02/2008 - 02:32.Can i "re"name my radio station and the genre
Stream Title: This is my server name
Stream Description: This is my server description
Content Type: application/ogg
Mount Uptime: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:49:56 Pacific Standard Time
Bitrate: Quality 0
Current Listeners: 0
Peak Listeners: 0
Stream Genre: Rock
Stream URL: http://www.oddsock.org
This is my station----> http://89.215.83.53:8001
Submitted by White_hart_lane (not verified) on Tue, 19/02/2008 - 20:09.i know that you can help me...pls do it!
Hi there,
First, thank You for tutorial. I did everything like is stated above. It seems everything works perfect, except one thing – very poor volume signal on other PC. Why?
Submitted by Domas (not verified) on Tue, 19/02/2008 - 21:06.my computer wont let me configure the settings, i copy and paste your cade that you provided, but after i try to save the new set up it says that i cant save the settings..
heres a picture of the place where i incounter the problem.
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/3745/helpersqf2.jpg
can you help me?
Submitted by aaron (not verified) on Mon, 25/02/2008 - 01:38.my computer wont let me configure the settings, i copy and paste your cade that you provided, but after i try to save the new set up it says that i cant save the settings..
heres a picture of the place where i incounter the problem.
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/3745/helpersqf2.jpg
can you help me?
Submitted by aaron (not verified) on Mon, 25/02/2008 - 01:39.I have the exact same problem as you, and I don't know what to do. If you have found a solution, please post it, I will definitely post if come across something.
Thanks,
awc
Submitted by awc (not verified) on Wed, 19/03/2008 - 01:13.hi, can you help me configure this with sam broadcaster??
or even better, if you know how to do it for a mac os....
thanks
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/02/2008 - 07:48.I don't get it, i have done everything that has been said on the pictures etc, but still it doesn't work. When i try to connect localhost, it just keeps connecting and nothing happends.
Submitted by Don't get it (not verified) on Sun, 16/03/2008 - 10:07.When I try to save after I cut and paste the code into notepad it gives me the following message:
Cannot create the icecast.xml file, Make sure the path and file name are correct.
What am I doing incorrectly?
Thanks,
Submitted by awc (not verified) on Tue, 18/03/2008 - 00:09.awc
http://beatproject.blogspot.com/
here is a link to my own personal tutorial that has been developed through using this tutorial and my own knowledge and experience.
http://beatproject.blogspot.com/
hope this helps as much as intended!!
DjWaYnoS
Submitted by DjWaynos@drupal.org on Thu, 20/03/2008 - 15:48.ive done everything the tutorial has instructed
but for some reason when i try to connect in oddcastV3
under transfer rate it will say Encoder init failed.
what am i doing worng
C_R_O_W
Submitted by C_R_O_W (not verified) on Fri, 21/03/2008 - 04:31.this is a amazing - For a very long time I've wanted to run a hobbyist's station, and naturally I first came across the rather overbearing IceCast. Several times i tried to follow their frankly-rubbish documentation, and failed miserably every time.
I continued to read in forums about how other people were buying into Live365 because trhey couldn't stand the pitiful stup of Icecast.
After a lot of searching, i found this article - I ran through it, and (with the minour few hiccups that I get wheveer I do something) I managed to set up a comprehensive stream within the hour... amazing! I was SO pleased when this worked!
congratulations - you are officially a legend. ;)
Submitted by DJ SMITH (not verified) on Sun, 23/03/2008 - 00:46.is there anyway to let ppl though without disabling the NAT
if not How do u disable it
Can anyone help
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 24/03/2008 - 18:44.plz thx
How do i change the name of my radio or make one visible to the listener, and also, what is the URL so people can lsiten to the radio, and how can i change it? Its very technical and annoying =[ I have set up everything i needand it says muy microphone is 'invalid' and it keeps re-connecting and disconnecting when i play music.
Submitted by Jake (not verified) on Tue, 25/03/2008 - 12:56.My microphone is now working and everything is running BUT on the OddcastV3 It keeps counting down until its connceted, then it connects for a second then it will disconnect and start the proccess again, what is wrong?
Submitted by Jake (not verified) on Tue, 25/03/2008 - 13:06.In the notepad file, make sure you have all 3 passwords the same, preferably not "hackme" and beware it is case-sensitive.
Then try it.
Read the tutorial thoroughly.
I'm just have trouble on Sam Broadcaster now.
Submitted by Mat (not verified) on Sun, 30/03/2008 - 18:14.I have read what you put about it earlier again now, but another problem has arisen, i have had to redo the configuration of the Icecast and it wont let me save it, it says:
cannot create the icecast.xml file
make sure the path and file name are correct
What doI do from here?
Submitted by Jake (not verified) on Tue, 25/03/2008 - 13:13.Ik keep getting "encoder init failed" in Oddcastv3.. All the passwords are correct, what am I doing wrong?
Submitted by Sperti (not verified) on Mon, 31/03/2008 - 08:46.it keeps going "connected" to "disconneted"
Submitted by Facz (not verified) on Sat, 05/04/2008 - 00:23.put quality on -1 because on -2 not working
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 11/04/2008 - 04:10.I was just wondering can i use icecast as a server and use the Shoutcast DSP from Winamp? If so, what are the configuration for that? Because I tried downloading the oddcast V3 and it didn't have the mp3 lame_enc.dll and i downloaded that lame bundle package from that pop up site ... and then i extracted lame_enc.dll to my Winamp directory, my oddcast finally had it, but for some reason everytime I add my information to Oddcast, all the information I entered are gone and are back to the Oddcast OGG defaults.
I don't know what happened.. can you help please? If so, thank you soo much!!
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 13/04/2008 - 16:59.Hmm, I'm not really sure... I think you might be able to, but it will only broadcast mp3, but I'm not certain. Try Shoutcast DSP with the settings mentioned above (they should be more or less the same) and see.
Submitted by Stavros on Sun, 13/04/2008 - 17:16.---
Vidi, Vici, Veni.
Hi all,
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 08/05/2008 - 10:44.i wanna to know How i can put my radio station on my site?
Can I use are Winamp for playing, oddcast DSP for broadcasting to the server and Icecast for serving?
i cant turn off mic can someone help me?
Submitted by kez (not verified) on Sat, 10/05/2008 - 06:21.how does other people see/listen to your station
Submitted by kez (not verified) on Sat, 10/05/2008 - 07:58.Hey,
This works AMAZINGLY!!! This is my first time doing this, and I, obviously, runned a test, this is what I dow:
File-->Open Url-->http://myip:8000/stream.ogg
and it says connecting, and It doesn't let me hear it... why not???
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 13/05/2008 - 01:51.anybody can also try www.ipmango.com to check the ip.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 13/05/2008 - 13:52.Can someone tell me what is the problem, because my oddcastv3 will not download.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 22/05/2008 - 12:42.iv done evything uv said to do mad it excatly like u but its still not workin can u pls help me to gt it too work it comes up iv done the config and preesed ok it counts down then keeps counting down
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 28/05/2008 - 09:57.i set everything up excactly as you have said but it won't connect to icecast2 Version 2.x
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/06/2008 - 11:56.i'm trying to post it on a website. It will work for me perfectly but not for my friends. What's wrong
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/06/2008 - 12:24.It's a good articles to read. Internet Radio give us more benefit nowaday
Submitted by zyreel (not verified) on Wed, 04/06/2008 - 08:34.I CANT USE MY IP! IT JUST SAYS "UNABLE TO CONNECT"
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 11/06/2008 - 04:53.IS THERE A WAY U CAN USE WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER?
Submitted by MAtt (not verified) on Thu, 12/06/2008 - 01:00.does anyone know why the listeners aren't shown...? it's '0' . but someone listenes the radio : \ so it shouldn't be 0 . pleaasee tell me
Submitted by black.zzz (not verified) on Thu, 12/06/2008 - 15:18.I don't know how to add it in the DSP/Effect thing... It's not there... Can someone please tell me how, that would help me a LOT...
Submitted by Zetsae (not verified) on Fri, 13/06/2008 - 23:00.i have problem when i try to connect it says this
Submitted by igor (not verified) on Sun, 15/06/2008 - 12:06."unable to connect zo socket"
help me please
but how can i create my own radio station that i can use it on my blogs ?
Submitted by codex (not verified) on Mon, 16/06/2008 - 21:42.This Doesnt work
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 24/06/2008 - 21:15.thanks always wanted to know ow to make an internet radio!
Submitted by joe (not verified) on Thu, 03/07/2008 - 18:19.Great tut but there's just one thing I can't seem to fix:
Everything works out perfectly, OddCast is connecting to Icecast, but then when I start to play a song with Winamp all of a sudden Oddcast disconnects from Icecast and sometimes Winamp gets an error.
I can't seem to get the connection from Oddcast while playing a song to Icecast.
Any tips?
Submitted by Wanto Pk (not verified) on Tue, 15/07/2008 - 20:33.um is this program only for playing music? or can u talk on it if u have a microphone? please reply!
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 20/07/2008 - 00:02.