Cloudy Mountain Radio Revised Jan 24, 2013

This is how I set up my stream "Cloudy Mountain Radio". There are other ways to do it, but the basics will be the same for everybody.

• You need a way to build or capture your stream. This will be a desktop application, running on your PC or Mac or whatever. Depending on the type of content you are sharing, this may specialize in live capture, audio editing for podcasts or DJ applications.
• You need a way to push your stream out to the Cloud. This will probably be integrated with the capture software, but you should see it as a separate piece of software. The main business of this program is to connect to the outside world.
• You need a way for your listeners to pull in your stream. It's possible to push your stream directly from your computer to the listeners, but this is not really practical if you have more than 1 or 2 listeners.

So ...

I'm using Nicecast on my mac computers. It's amazingly easy to use. Among other things, you can stream ...

• iTunes -- play your personal picks, albums, play lists ..
• System Audio -- whatever is playing on your computer. This includes podcasts u may be listening to, You Tube music video etc.
• System inputs, such as the built-in microphone 

The bind boggles. So many possibilities. But some possibilities are missing. Nicecast specializes in capturing audio into a stream and pushing it out with very little processing. It would not work well for a DJ or podcasting application. However, there is nothing stopping you from using a variety of different tools to build the streams you send out to (for example) Shoutcast.

Nicecast allows you to chose where the stream is going. There is a built - in server that will pump out your stream from your own computer, but this is pretty limited and I was never able to get it to work at all (probably due to my newbie status at the time). It makes more sense to sign up with a service like Shoutcast.

There are a few vendors of Shoutcast services in Second Life. This can be the best way to go since support is also in-world. Unless you are very lucky, you will probably need a bit of help the first time you do this. What you are buying from Shoutcast is something like this:

SHOUTcast Audio Streaming Server 25 Listeners 1 Month

- 25 Listeners 

- 1 Month

- Up to 256 Kbps High Quality Audio Streaming

- Recommended 128 kbps

- Uptime 99% Guaranty

- 24 Hours Helpdesk Support

Server Vers:  ShoutCast v1

Server   IP:  86.105.198.224

Server Port: 36800

Password:  93327

Web For Test: http://86.105.198.224:36800

For RENEWAL, Helpdesk & Support:

Visit: www.shoutcastnet.com 

Contact me in world: Sorin Todys ( sorint )

Or send an Email to: sorintodys@yahoo.com

What this means (in the above case) is that your station "address" is 86.105.198.224:36800. If you don't know what an IP address is, you should probably take a side-trip and google THAT.  Basically, there is a Shoutcast computer out in the cloud known as "host" 86.105.198.224. You have been assigned a "port' 36800, which is the way this particular "host" talks to the world about your stream.

The password is used by Nicecast  -- it makes sure than you are authorized to "stream" to this port. Anybody with the IP address and password can stream to the port, which means you can share your Shoutcast with your friends. Maybe your brother in law wants to be a Second Life DJ from time to time. Note, also that he would not need to use the same streaming software (such as Nice Cast). There are streaming applications specifically designed for DJ's and lots that run on platforms other than Mac's. The entire streaming architecture is and open industry-standard, meaning that everybody can stream from whatever hardware they have and listen to the stream with anything they can hook in to the internet.

There are many ways to listen to the stream. For example, you can get the free Shoutcast app for your iPhone or iPad and find my stream by name (Cloudy Mountain Radio). iTunes can play streams. On a PC desktop, you can use Winamp (File/Play URL). You would think that the Windows Media Player would support this kind of thing, but I haven't been able to figure out if or how.

Lots of other options, most of which I haven't discovered yet.

If you have rights to set the sound on a parcel (i.e., one of the owners of the parcel) you can set the sound to the ip address and the stream will play on your parcel. If you want to play your stream on somebody else's parcel, you can IM the IP to an owner and he or she can just drop that into the sound for his or her parcel.

This is all cheap but not entirely free. Before you start grumbling about the cost, you should remember how fantastic this is. Your own private radio station that anybody in the world can hear. And that's just the start.

Nicecast cost me $59 US. You can try it for free as long as you like but there are restrictions.

The stream (Shoutcast) costs me $L 1000 a month. That's $4.42 CDN. As shown above that allows me 25 listeners. I'd love to have that many. If I accidentally become famous, I can upgrade the Shoutcast service to as many listeners as I like without requiring any more investment in computer hardware or internet bandwidth at my end.

Of course if you do become famous, another option is to create a podcast. That can be directly streamed or made available on-demand. This is a whole different subject, which I may look into once I get tired of playing with my new radio station.

Good luck