VGM Internet Radio Stations!?

Originally Posted by Mr. X

I've researched building an independent VGM radio station before, but the costs of both the required software and the monthly hosting fees are large. Hundreds of dollars for each. That's probably why most webmasters settle with the somewhat inadequate Live365, but even this requires paying considerable monthly fees. It'd maybe one day be a good idea to produce a collaborative independent VGM radio station though.

I hope this does not come out as ad for my station but I wanted to tell you the information about cost and running one, which can be a lot or a little. You can relatively easily make you own broadcast station using Shoutcast and the plugin for Winamp. That solution has no cost involved for the software up front. I use Sam for my broadcasting and it is like 300 dollars for the package. Both do the same thing, that is to play the tracks on your PC then send them to a provider based on number of listeners at one time and amount of download badwidth they use up.

I broadcast 2 Shoutcast streams and 1 windows media, the cost involved for the smaller of the three is about 30 bucks a month with unlimited downloads. It can cost a lot, like with the Shoutcast stream i use for PSP listeners since this is at set at 100 listeners, that is about 110 bucks a month with unlimited bandwidth.

Now I also run the web page with my links and past songs so that is like another 10 bucks a month. But for most Shoutcast people they have only the radio url going out to the web. Bottom line is it can be as complicated as you want or relatively easy too. I have not really ever want to use 365 cause of what looks to me like complicated system of getting broadcast (this is just my opinion and it is used by a lot of ppl). Anyways I hope that helped a little to explain, I have run my station for about year now and love every minute of it. You ever have any specific questions your welcome to message me.

The easy Winamp/Shoutcast solution.


The way I do it with some of the professional software.


Jam it back in, in the dark.

Read up a few post you can easily do a station with little cost to try out how it works with the software I outlined. Shoutcast or Icecast are two system setup for the casual broadcaster to start out with. I have recently found some isp that even provide the flash player and full front end via the web for making a stream. Good luck sir, its a lot of fun.

There's nowhere I can't reach.