How to Webcast Your Music

How to stream your live performances to the web

By Krispen Hartung
www.krispenhartung.com
info@krispenhartung.com

There two bits of software required to stream your performances to the web: Winamp and a plugin for winamp that connects you to a server...that's it. It takes about 1 minute to plug in the IP address, port #, and some other info into the winamp plugin, connect to the server, and it streams anything you have coming into your line/mic in or just music you have playing from your hard-drive.

Here is what you need to do to get things running:

1) Purchase server bandwidth from SHOUTcast

http://shoutcast.serverroom.us/

I went with the $11.99 US a month option, which allows me to stream 30 GIG of traffic a month. If you stream at 64kbps, you can do the math on how much music you can stream. If you had 30 listeners (the max number of simultaneous listeners with the above package), and they all listened for an hour, that would be 64kbps X 60 X 30 = 115,200 kbps streamed in that hour...roughly 1 / 260th of your monthly bandwidth. 30 GIG is 30,000 MB, is 30,000,000 KB, divided by 115,200 is roughly 260. That is 260 hours, roughly 10 days of streaming.

NOTE: When you purchase your bandwith, you will eventually get access to three critical pieces of information: 1) The IP address you'll use to configure the Winamp streaming software, 2) the port number and password you'll use to configure the Winamp streaming software, 3) the URLs that you'll use to manage/view your streaming server, and 4) the URL you'll give to your listeners to listen to your live stream over the web

2) Download Winamp and the SHOUTcast DSP Plug-In for Winamp

3) Configure Winamp and the SHOUtcast Plugin

Go to the Options, Preferences, and Plugins section of Winamp
Click "DSP/Effect" in the left window, and then click "Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP" in the right window; close the setting window

In the Output tab of your SHOUTcast Source Window (which launches when you launch Winamp), click the Connection button and enter the IP address, port number, and login you received or setup when you purchased your SHOUTcast bandwidth

Click the Yellow Pages button and enter your stream description or title if you want it to be public (you can enter other info as well, such as a URL, AIM instant messenger ID, etc)

Click the Encoder tab and select "MP3 Encoder" for Encoder type, and then select your desired stream quality in the Encoder Settings dropdown menu

Click the Input tab and select "Soundcard Input" in the Input Device dropdown menu
Set the input setting to 44100hz, Stereo
Select Mic Input or Line Input under the Mic Input section (try Line Input first)

Open the control panel for your soundcard (for recording levels), plug the output of your live performance (e.g,, tape out our AUX out of a mixer board) into the line-in of your computer, and click the Input tab in the SHOUTcast Source window to view your levels (adjust your soundcard record level or your mixer output level to attain an appropriate level...consistently under 0db)
Once you have a decent input level, click the Output tab, and then click the Connect button (Winamp should connect with the server, and you should be broadcasting the output of your mixer board.

4) Provide the broadcast info to your listeners

When you purchase your bandwith, you will also receive a URL for listeners. It will be something like http://216.13.162.58:9030/ (they go to a URL like this and click "Listen")
Winamp is the recommended player for users to connect to your stream, but I hear that iTunes works as well (you basically need a player that will recognize and read a .pls file)
When you are streaming your performance to the web, you can also go to the above URL and see how many people are listening

5) View reports on how much bandwidth you are using, how many users, etc at this URL:

https://secure.serverroom.us/login.php?SID=b60c16005ff23386cccb3ed5a73eb4fd

You will login with the email and password you used to purchase your bandwidth and setup your account