Radio Specifications – Getting Started
Posted 18th December 2015 by Lee
Radio Specifications can be a tricky one, and many of our customers ask us for help in this area. We have been offering online radio streaming services since 2009. Our SHOUTcast services provide a great starting point for the radio enthusiast and professional broadcasters alike. Today, we are going to cover the basic online radio specifications.
Online Radio Specifications
While you can upgrade/downgrade your radio specifications instantly via the client area with zFast, it’s often best to get the right specification from the get go. The upgrade process is instant, however requires a server restart to take effect, it would not be ideal to do this mid-show. It’s important to keep track of your limits and ensure that as you are reaching the top-end of your limits you upgrade as required.
Listeners
This is the number of simultaneous people whom can listen at one time. For new broadcasters, it may take a while for your regular listeners to grow, however on your launch day you may see increased numbers than what you would expect the rest of the week. This is often due to advertising, people finding something new and checking it out. Look at it like it’s like a job interview. You need to make a good impression and you’d get the job – if you make a good impression on your listeners they will come back again and again.
Increased Slots – Yes, I would. Look at starting with more slots then you think you will need. This way you can always downgrade after your first week or so as you figure how many actual listeners you are getting roughly (you are welcome to upgrade again should you need to in the future). It’s always better to have more than you will need in this case.
Bitrate
There’s not many reasons you’d want to stream over 128kbps these days. We offer packages up to 192kbps should you want the “higher” end of a high quality stream, but generally most users will stream at 128kbps. If you are listening on a PC speaker, through some headphones, or a smart phone, you are not really going to notice a lot of difference in the quality above 128kbps. If you are looking to stream to mobile devices, you may want to go with a lower bitrate – or have two streams set up, one as a high quality, and one for mobile devices.
Bandwidth
We, along with most other SHOUTcast providers do offer “Unlimited” bandwidth. There’s not really much else to say about this. If you do get charged by the amount of bandwidth you use however, you will want to keep an eye on this and monitor it very closely in order to prevent downtime/being charged for over usage.
Auto DJ
This is normally a cost-option, if you want to stream MP3 tracks direct from the server when no DJ’s are connected, or use it as a fallback to prevent downtime should your internet connection drop out, this can be very useful. zFast charge per GB of space – which you are welcome to fill with your favorite One Direction tracks! Only joking why would you want to do that 😉 The amount of space you require depends on how many tracks you can fit into 1GB of space. Depending on the size of these files, you may be able to get around 200 tracks per GB – which is a lot of listening hours! If you are using this as your “main” source, you should purchase more space than if you were using it as a fall back type source. Playlists can be created and set to stream at certain times of the day, so you can have “drive time” music in the morning/evening and some afternoon “chill out” music while you’re at the office during the day. It’s totally up to you!
That’s all for this one, we’ve covered a bit here. If you want to discuss any of the above in more detail, or have any questions or queries – drop us a message on Facebook or Twitter and we will be happy to help. See you all next week…
Categories: SHOUTcast
