June Focus: Internet Radio
By John Anderson

Faster connections have caused Internet radio to become very popular. If you move to another state or even another country you can still listen to your favorite music, and, in some cases, your hometown radio station. You can explore new types of music that might be difficult to find on your local radio dial. Internet radio stations unite their geographically diverse listeners via private broadcasts. A radio listener that hears an ad for a computer printer can place an order immediately using the same medium on which he or she heard the ad.

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.

Freedom of the Airwaves

Radio broadcasting began in the early 1920s, 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.

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 Europe can be heard where ever people access the Internet <http://www.howstuffworks.com/sc-computers-internet.htm>. The potential for Internet radio is as vast as cyberspace itself.

Internet radio is not just 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 expanded media capability could also be used in other ways. For example, with Internet radio, you could train, educate, and provide listeners with links to documents and payment options. Listeners can interact with a trainer or educator and exchange other information on the Internet radio broadcast site.

Internet radio programming offers a wide spectrum of broadcast genres, particularly in music <http://www.howstuffworks.com/category-music.htm>. Broadcast radio is controlled by fewer and fewer numbers of media conglomerates. In some ways, this has led to mainstreaming of programming, as stations try to reach the largest possible audience in order to charge the highest possible advertising rates. On the other hand, Internet radio offers the opportunity to expand programming. The cost of getting "on the air" is often less for an Internet broadcaster, while appealing to "micro-communities" of listeners by focusing on special music or interests.

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:

• The audio enters the Internet broadcaster’s encoding computer through a sound card.
• 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.
• The compressed audio is sent to the server, which has a high bandwidth connection to the Internet.
• 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 <http://www.howstuffworks.com/mp3-player.htm> 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.

Live365 is one company that is revolutionizing the way that Internet radio is broadcast. Live365 offers more than 30,000 Internet radio broadcasts. It also unites broadcasters and listeners in online communities through features such as message boards and chat rooms. The company makes entry into the world of Internet radio fast and simple.

If you are not interested in starting your own Internet radio station, you can still listen to some of your favorite stations. Here is just a small listing of various radio stations:

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