Creating an Internet Radio Station

A college student in Wisconsin listens to a disc jockey in
Jamaica play the latest rapso (calypso rap) music.
A children’s advocacy group unites its geographically
diverse members via private broadcast. A radio listener
hears an ad for a computer printer and places an order
immediately using the same medium on which he heard the ad.
All of this is possible with Internet radio, the latest
technological innovation in radio broadcasting since the
business began in the early 1920s.

Internet radio has been around since the late 1990s.
Traditional radio broadcasters have used the Internet to
simulcast their programming. But, Internet radio is
undergoing a revolution that will expand its reach from your
desktop computer to access broadcasts anywhere, anytime, and
expand its programming from traditional broadcasters to
individuals, organizations and government.

In this article, we’ll explore the Internet radio revolution
in terms of equipment, transmission, programming and the
alterations in the listener/broadcaster relationship.

Freedom of the Airwaves

Radio broadcasting began in the early ‘20s, but it wasn’t
until the introduction of the transistor radio in 1954 that
radio became available in mobile situations. Internet radio
is in much the same place. Until the 21st century, the only
way to obtain radio broadcasts over the Internet was through
your PC. That will soon change, as wireless connectivity will
feed Internet broadcasts to car radios, PDAs and cell phones.
The next generation of wireless devices will greatly expand
the reach and convenience of Internet radio.

Uses and Advantages

Traditional radio station broadcasts are limited by two
factors:

* the power of the station’s transmitter (typically
100 miles).
* the available broadcast spectrum (you might get
a couple of dozen radio stations locally).

Internet radio has no geographic limitations, so
a broadcaster in Kuala Lumpur can be heard in Kansas on the
Internet. The potential for Internet radio is as vast as
cyberspace itself (for example, Live365 offers more than
30,000 Internet radio broadcasts).

In comparison to traditional radio, Internet radio is not
limited to audio. An Internet radio broadcast can be
accompanied by photos or graphics, text and links, as well as
interactivity, such as message boards and chat rooms. This
advancement allows a listener to do more than listen. In the
example at the beginning of this article, a listener who
hears an ad for a computer printer ordered that printer
through a link on the Internet radio broadcast Web site. The
relationship between advertisers and consumers becomes more
interactive and intimate on Internet radio broadcasts. This
expanded media capability could also be used in other ways.
For example, with Internet radio, you could conduct training
or education and provide links to documents and payment
options. You could also have interactivity with the trainer
or educator and other information on the Internet radio
broadcast site.

Internet radio programming offers a wide spectrum of
broadcast genres, particularly in music. Broadcast radio is
increasingly controlled by smaller numbers of media
conglomerates (such as Cox, Jefferson-Pilot and Bonneville).
In some ways, this has led to more mainstreaming of the
programming on broadcast radio, as stations often try to
reach the largest possible audience in order to charge the
highest possible rates to advertisers. Internet radio, on the
other hand, offers the opportunity to expand the types of
available programming. The cost of getting “on the air” is
less for an Internet broadcaster (see the next section,
"Creating an Internet Radio Station"), and Internet radio can
appeal to “micro-communities” of listeners focused on special
music or interests.

Creating an Internet Radio Station

What do you need to set up an Internet radio station?

* CD player.
* Ripper software (copies audio tracks from a CD onto
a computer’s hard drive).
* Assorted recording and editing software.
* Microphones.
* Audio mixer.
* Outboard audio gear (equalizer, compressor, etc.).
* Digital audio card.
* Dedicated computer with encoder software.
* Streaming media server.

Getting audio over the Internet is pretty simple:

1. The audio enters the Internet broadcaster’s encoding
computer through a sound card.
2. The encoder system translates the audio from the sound
card into streaming format. The encoder samples the incoming
audio and compresses the information so it can be sent over
the Internet.
3. The compressed audio is sent to the server, which has
a high bandwidth connection to the Internet.
4. The server sends the audio data stream over the
Internet to the player software or plug-in on the listener’s
computer. The plug-in translates the audio data stream from
the server and translates it into the sound heard by the
listener.

There are two ways to deliver audio over the Internet:
downloads or streaming media. In downloads, an audio file is
stored on the user’s computer. Compressed formats like MP3
are the most popular form of audio downloads, but any type of
audio file can be delivered through a Web or FTP site.
Streaming audio is not stored, but only played. It is
a continuous broadcast that works through three software
packages: the encoder, the server and the player. The encoder
converts audio content into a streaming format, the server
makes it available over the Internet and the player retrieves
the content. For a live broadcast, the encoder and streamer
work together in real-time. An audio feed runs to the sound
card of a computer running the encoder software at the
broadcast location and the stream is uploaded to the
streaming server. Since that requires a large amount of
computing resources, the streaming server must be a dedicated
server.