can you broadcast radio on the internet legally without a license?

omnicorp

i was just wondering if it is possible to broadcast radio on the internet LEGALLY without a license.

BrianD

Yes you can as it is not broadcasting it is streaming. You can stream your very own station if you like. There's plenty of postings across the boards that will tell you what software to use etc.

McGonagles

BrianD wrote:

Yes you can as it is not broadcasting it is streaming.

Are you sure that is the case in Ireland?

Because it's not the case in the USA:
http://www.dnalounge.com/audio/faq.html#download
http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html

Are you sure that IMRO or IRMA or someone else won't want
to squeeze some money out of every webcaster?

You also risk getting the "gimme money" treatment if you use MP3, because the
MP3 format is patented. It might take a while for the patent holders to notice you, but
when they do, you can be sure they will want to sting you for back royalties aswell.

Using WMA/ASF/ASX may be the easiest if you run Windoze, but you are automatically
restricting everyone who doesn't also run it from listening to you (support for Windoze
Media on non-Windoze systems is flaky at best, and will probably break every time MSFT
moves the goalposts for WMA. You think MSFT give a monkey's about Mac or Linux users?)

Plug: OGG Vorbis!
It's free, open source, not patent-encumbered, it works with Winamp, and it sounds
better than MP3 for the same or lower bit rates. When you encode for streaming, you can
have one stream which can be served at the streamed rate, and your (Icecast) server can
use "bitrate peeling" to support all slower rates aswell. In other words, no more having to
encode a 128K stream, and also encode slower streams for listeners on slower connections.

More info from http://www.xiph.org/ and http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp

legofsalmon

I do amatuer web streaming over shoutcast, and there are thousands upon thousands of international listeners on the shoutcast network. The vast majority streaming via mp3. I have never heard of trouble arising with fraunhoffer over the patents. Besides their new deal is the mp4s which are getting super hot now that aacs on i tunes have exploded in popularity, and even winamp will encode rip cds to mp4.

IMRO would be the nearest thing to a worry i'd have, but they really aren't monitering it at all. Nor is there any irish regulations that I know of.

On another point although the OGG Vorbis format is of slightly higher quality, ( dear god don't go near wmas, the quicker microsponge realises its a death format the better for us all ) i would still say go for mp3. You will be paying the company for the codecs anywho of the streaming software you use so, they will have no problems, plus it is a universal format, everything plays mp3s!

also there is even a plug in for winamp that lets you stream whats playing in winamp online. the plug in is free, and cna be obtained from the winamp site, and winamp is free too. the relaying at shoutcast is also free, but you have to host the stream yourself sadly, which is free but limits how many listeners you have, based on the quality of your connection.

omnicorp

do you need a transmitter and other equipment?
Is broadband needed?
Do you need to pay royalties etc...

legofsalmon

Okay this is what you need, and the cheapest way I have found to broadcast.

1. A PC, preferabley a dedicated machine for the job of the station. The PC must have an Internet connection, the faster the better. Also a good quality soundcard is always useful. I used to get by on a soundblaster live card, but I upgraded to a Soundblaster Audigy 2 and it makes things easier.

2. An account with a relaying service, such as live365, icecast, shoutcast etc. The one I have is shoutcast because it is free. It is the only one I have tryed but they provide everything you need free of charge. You need to visit their site and go through the procedures for setting up a broadcaster. This just acts as a door for your station. Users go to shoutcast.com find your station in shoutcasts directory of stations, and click listen.

3. Streaming software on that PC you are using. I use an application called SAM2 broadcaster by spacial audio. Go to their website for more information. I have found it does the job pretty well, no complaints. It is simple to use, and as long as your music library is well kept you should have no problems.

4. A Microphone if you want to stream speech with your station. To be honest anything will do really, you will be compressing the stream before it leaves you down to between 28kbps to 128kbps ( if you get someone to relay ). The more like option of a 28kbps stream means that buying a good quality mic won't be rewarded with the broadcast quality it deserves. If possible get a directional mic if you are operating where there may be excess noise, otherwise get any decent musicians vocal mic.

Thats it really. A few points though

The internet connection is the big one. The rule is that if you decide to broadcast at... lets say.... 32kbps mp3 streaming, then if you have an 512kbps broadband connection the absolute maximum amount of listeners you can have is 16. ( 512/32 = 16 )

In practise this will be less because you never get the full 512 when connection to your ISP. Loads of unavoidable things so that maybe you will only get a max of 12 people who can listen.

The way to get round this to a) Get some hefty fiber optic cabling, run it from your pc to your ISP, knock on their door and say "Bee-atch, hook me up" or something similar.

That isn't gonna work, but if you want to try it, by all means do.

The common thing is to get a host account, what happens here is that instead of all your listeners feeding off your connection speed, you get this company who offers to host it for you, and they use that companies usually beast connection. So what you do is, send them your stream, so that you only use up the quality of your broadcast in the connection. example, you stream at 28kbps then you use 28, you stream at 128kbps you use 128 etc.

These guys charge for their services though, so thats where business and financial thinking comes in, thinking that I am not strong in so I best not explain.

Anywho, hope that helps

Colly~!

oh and royalites wise, technically you should be paying IMRO or some people like that, publishing company types, but at the moment there is no real regulations or knowledge of wrong-doing by the powers on high. So its pretty much free reign, there will probably some new rules put in place or clampdown/more fess but for the moment its easy pickings really.

omnicorp

right, but for 16 listeners, it doesn't seem worth it.

legofsalmon

but if you want to "broadcast" in some shape or form those 16 listeners are more than enough.

omnicorp

yeah, but what would it cost?

legofsalmon

okay, if you want to stream to those approx 16 listeners it will cost you...

The PC ( which you already have I take it )
The Internet connection ( for a dial up you can have 2 listeners, for 512k broadband 16 and so on )
The account at www.shoutcast.com ( for free )
And the software ( SAM2 broadcaster , www.spacialaudio.com to order it etc, or you can get it pirate if you want it free and are so inclined but I discourage it)

So potentially if you have all these it is free to broadcast to those 16 listeners.

I do it on this scale. The station I run is for a music website though. Designed so that since there is on average 20 visitors on the site at any given time, they can listen to music and stuff as they are surfing and request songs etc. as they surf in a thread on our boards.

Due to the restrictions of time though and the fact that I would have to have another connection, the service is only available at peak times.

It is still extremely fulfilling as you can have listeners from across the world, and when you get feedback on your show its just worth it.

I'd recommend you head into it if you can.

omnicorp

sounds worth it, but... could you say broadcast by voice aswell and can you loop it so that you don't have to constantly be at the computer?

legofsalmon

what would the easiest way to do it is....

in SAM2 you can set up a playlist of mp3s etc. to play on for as long as you make the play list.

If you record your voice onto your pc you can set it up that it plays that file after a certain track etc.

omnicorp

thats a good idea.
how much did it cost you and whats the web address of your site?

legofsalmon

I can't remember how much it cost me ::cough::cough::pirate::cough::cough::

and the site is www.goldenplec.com but the service is suspended while we figure out ways of linking streaming locations.

ozone6280

legofsalmon can we have a link to your station so we can listen to it

legofsalmon

heh

Okay the plan for the next while is that we were trying to set up a way to broadcast from multiple locations, i.e. have 2 or 3 studios so it would make more shows more viable ( we have people from the tallaght area, and celbridge who are interested in doing shows, sadly i'm out in Swords so makes travel a bitch ). So the station is down for tests, but if you want to listen in to whatever sound is coming out then you're welcome to.

does require winamp to make sure it runs properly. Although I know people have managed to connect using quicktime and relaplayer so I dunno whats going on with that !!! :S

Goldenplec Radio

if you can hear stuff and or have any problems it would actually help the testing so

Colly~!

omnicorp

but it's worth it though? and I'm guessing you son't "make" any money though?

legofsalmon

well unless you want to make it big, and get a good big listenership then you might be able to make money from it if you coax a sponser or advertiser in. If you do fair play to you.

If anyone listens in, I apologise for 32kbps, but its the best I can do at the mo while i'm testing. thanks

omnicorp

you're Joe Duffy!!!
I'd recognise that voice if I'd ever bothered to listen to him.

legofsalmon

heh, well if my mic was set up then maybe.

Ah you should listen to Joe Duffy tis gas craic! Him and Marian, oh bless her she's getting axed but still a gas show!

omnicorp

yeah, I think that guy who used to do the after dark show on 98fm was the funnies t guy.
They axed him though

legofsalmon

really? ahh I was never a big 98fm fan so my radio dial didn't linger too long there.

Usually end up listen to bbc radio on the web, some extremely great shows there.

omnicorp

what about Adrian Kennedy?
annoying little ****** I agree but team him with Jeremy Dixon...

legofsalmon

Ah I was glad to hear the BCC upheld a complaint made against his show, some of the stuff you get on it is real tripe. Some of it is okay, discussions are good but the way they do it in a free for all isn't really fair.

heh and the friday sex chat thing on Spin got a complaint I was waiting for that to happen

omnicorp

how do you find out these complaints.
where can I see them?

Eoin DM

This radio busy-ness sounds very interesting, I might try it myself! :eek:

omnicorp

I don't know you?
possibe, just a thought.

anyway, where can I find those complaints?
or, where can I complain?

legofsalmon

so you should Eoin! well done sir!

The people who you should complain to are the BCC ( Broadcast Complaints Commission ).

I just saw the complants on an extremely good irish radio site called Radiowaves.fm, well worth a look and even a bookmarking.

the site for the BCC is oddly enough www.bcc.ie and if you want any info on the licensing aspect of broadcasting then check out the BCI ( Broadcasting Commission of Ireland ) on www.bci.ie

omnicorp

okay, Dr. Static is trying, (compaliaining) and "trying" to find out about licences.
How about OmniCorp FM(?)

legofsalmon

Eh I dunno......

omnicorp

what? I dunno what thats abvout either

omnicorp

ok, wher'd you get that joe duffy image?

legofsalmon

I photoshopped it.

Found a pic of Joe Duffy on the net someplace.

Got a couple I use for sigs.... I shall change actually.

omnicorp

PHANTOM GOT THE LICENSE!!!

or so Dr. Static told me.

McGonagles

legofsalmon wrote:

The vast majority streaming via mp3. I have never heard of trouble arising with fraunhoffer over the patents.

IMRO would be the nearest thing to a worry i'd have, but they really aren't monitering it at all. Nor is there any irish regulations that I know of.

On another point although the OGG Vorbis format is of slightly higher quality, ( dear god don't go near wmas, the quicker microsponge realises its a death format the better for us all ) i would still say go for mp3. You will be paying the company for the codecs anywho of the streaming software you use so, they will have no problems, plus it is a universal format, everything plays mp3s!

Yes, everything can play MP3 - even the 25 euro CD portables in the supermarkets, most new
DVD players, and probably every new mobile phone next year. That's the only real advantage
the format has! And the longer people keep producing/encoding for it, the more people that
Fraunhofer will be able to squeeze money out of when they decide to stop playing so nice.

MP4 may be "super hot", but if it's a closed format, you are at the mercy of whatever the
license holders decide to do. Whereas everyone is free to implement Ogg, now and in 10
years time.

iRiver have it in some of their portables, and most video games use it for background music,
because they are a nice big target for Fraunhoffer to go after, but if you know anyone who
works for a video game developer, they don't really make a lot of money: they have massive
costs, a year or two to make any money back on each major title, so any unnecessary expenses
have to be cut...


The OGG format has been fairly well tested to be either higher quality for the same size of file
or bitrate, or the same quality for a lower bitrate. I'm no audiophile, but I can tell the difference
between CD and vinyl (the bigger the room, the bigger the difference!), and listening to MP3s
for a long time is a bit painful to my ears. I keep thinking there's a mobile phone ringing in
the background, almost out of earshot. That's the patented "psycho-acoustic modelling" at
work. You aren't supposed to be aware of the missing parts, just lke you aren't supposed to
notice the edge fringing or "chessboard" patterns in JPEG stills or on DVD movies, but they
are there.

WMA is utter tripe, the only thing worse than it is 1995-vintage RealAudio, but it does have
the backing of the world's richest man, so we are stuck with it for a while I think! And if the
company (or their shareholders) get hungry enough for more profit, they can always start
charging license fees, as they are doing now for the FAT filesystem.

If you use all Free/Open Source software for the streams, you won't be paying anyone
for codecs. Which makes it easier to run it with no income. Which makes IMRO (or whoever)
less likely to come after you for their percentage. Anyone will be happy to pay IMRO a
percentage when their income or earning is zero!


If you want your streams relayed you will have to pay, no question of that.
It's a service, and it requires lots of bandwidth, and if you have any kind of popular
content, the bandwidth needs will go through the roof.
So it could be handy to have a hosting company as one of your sponsors (nudge, nudge!)

legofsalmon

McGonagles wrote:

Yes, everything can play MP3 - even the 25 euro CD portables in the supermarkets, most new
DVD players, and probably every new mobile phone next year. That's the only real advantage
the format has! And the longer people keep producing/encoding for it, the more people that
Fraunhofer will be able to squeeze money out of when they decide to stop playing so nice.

MP4 may be "super hot", but if it's a closed format, you are at the mercy of whatever the
license holders decide to do. Whereas everyone is free to implement Ogg, now and in 10
years time.

iRiver have it in some of their portables, and most video games use it for background music,
because they are a nice big target for Fraunhoffer to go after, but if you know anyone who
works for a video game developer, they don't really make a lot of money: they have massive
costs, a year or two to make any money back on each major title, so any unnecessary expenses
have to be cut...


The OGG format has been fairly well tested to be either higher quality for the same size of file
or bitrate, or the same quality for a lower bitrate. I'm no audiophile, but I can tell the difference
between CD and vinyl (the bigger the room, the bigger the difference!), and listening to MP3s
for a long time is a bit painful to my ears. I keep thinking there's a mobile phone ringing in
the background, almost out of earshot. That's the patented "psycho-acoustic modelling" at
work. You aren't supposed to be aware of the missing parts, just lke you aren't supposed to
notice the edge fringing or "chessboard" patterns in JPEG stills or on DVD movies, but they
are there.

WMA is utter tripe, the only thing worse than it is 1995-vintage RealAudio, but it does have
the backing of the world's richest man, so we are stuck with it for a while I think! And if the
company (or their shareholders) get hungry enough for more profit, they can always start
charging license fees, as they are doing now for the FAT filesystem.

If you use all Free/Open Source software for the streams, you won't be paying anyone
for codecs. Which makes it easier to run it with no income. Which makes IMRO (or whoever)
less likely to come after you for their percentage. Anyone will be happy to pay IMRO a
percentage when their income or earning is zero!


If you want your streams relayed you will have to pay, no question of that.
It's a service, and it requires lots of bandwidth, and if you have any kind of popular
content, the bandwidth needs will go through the roof.
So it could be handy to have a hosting company as one of your sponsors (nudge, nudge!)

Didn't know those 25 quid ones played mp3s!!! Have to get me one of them!

The sample rates and bit rate for mp3s above 160 is decent to anyone less than an audiophile it would be difficult to complain about the quality. Seriously the mp3 is still a great format, it is extremely widely available. Easy to tweak i.e in audio programmes you can set bit rate, sample rate, DRM, channels, mp3pro etc.

I would disagree with you that MPEG 4 is closed technology in a practical sense. Realaudio include decoders, and so does quicktime and winamp. Winamp provides an encoder also to rip cds to, although I use winamp pro, and i'm not sure of the support in regular winamp and lite. But there are already many formats that use the technology. itunes converts to aac files, winamp does mp4s, even nokia phones record the sound on their sound recorders to amr, which is based on mpeg4. And their videos use quicktimes 3gp, which uses mpeg 4 too. In college we are being thought to start forgetting about the mp3 so as to stay with technology, as so much of the media industry, especially parts which overlap in computers, is expanding rapidly.

Anywho, I would love to see OGG do well, it is that bit better quality , and it has open source. But the biggest and the best players havn't been quick to support it. Which is what it all boils down to. If you want to stream you want to make it as easy as possible for listeners as possible. Asking them to download other stuff just to listen is a step for the worse. If it was for a major change that would profoundly affect their audio lives then possibley yes, but for OGG when MP3 is very close, I just wouldn't.


Anywho, with 64-bit processors hitting the shelves now, within the next 5 years those wanting high end home pcs will haev 64 bit machines which will inevitably lead to high end components and software, which will mean death to FAT. ( yay! )

What I was saying that IMRO mightn't come after you for a percentage, but more I think about it, the publishing companies would more so since they will argue that you are playing the artists music and the artist is entitled to a fee for that privilage. I dunno how that will work , as I have said there is no laws regarding it as far as I know.

Otherwise anyone up for killing wmas? I know DRM is a nice idea in theory, but microsponge have put it into the worse practise ever. I used to be refused to play my own CDs on one release of windows media player!!!

McGonagles

The FAT filesystem is default on most Flash and USB storage devices, so every camera
manufacturer is now being asked to license this "innovative" technology from them, for
a "fair and reasonable" fee. FAT32 is an extension of FAT16, which is largely based on
the filesystem that came with CP/M. Some features from UNIX were added, after hard drives
became affordable and people needed to put files in "folders" to arrange them better
(early versions of the Macintosh disk file system didn't support folders either).

The "forward slash or back slash" difference between MS-DOS/FAT and Unix came about
because MS-DOS already used the forward slash for command options, so they cleverly
used the backslash instead - one of those lesser-used symbols that's in a different place
on almost every type of keyboard. Making things hard to find - real innovation!

So the patents (which allow MS to squeeze money out of everyone using FAT) are now
being challenged, seeing as so much "prior art" exists that dates back to before Micros~1
even existed.

And this is income that Micros~1 didn't even know they needed until recently!

They have to grow their profits, to keep their shareholders happy. Being the world's biggest
company (and a monopoly that has escaped punishment) is not enough. Wall Street wants to
see continued growth, so they have to branch out, now that most of their products are
competing with older versions of the same product.

How many people do you know who run Windoze and Office? How many of them have the
absolute latest and greatest (that they went out and bought) version of each? How many
only really need the word processor, but had to pay for the full Office package because it's
impossible to buy it on its own anymore?


Phantom stream in WMA/ASX... We could always ask them to switch to another format, and
someone from PhFM or IBB will say that players for the format is "extremely widely available"
and sure doesn't everyone run Windoze?

McGonagles

(quote deleted)

The supermarket players are probably made from the cheapest possible CD mechanism,
with a cheap and nasty MP3 decoder on board. I've only ever seen one that did MP3, and
it was something around the 25 euro mark. I only had a fiver on me when I saw it, so I
didn't get one.

Or you could spend 150 euro on an iRiver MP3/CD player, and get much better sound
quality and an FM radio, and longer battery life.
Try before you buy, if you can, with a CD-R or CD-RW full of different bitrate files.


As for OGG support from big players - is the BBC big enough for you?
BBC Online were streaming Radio 4 in Ogg Vorbis, but apparently the service was pulled.
(the online division of the BBC has internal political problems, or so I'm told...)

Winamp supports Ogg for files and for streaming - that's most people covered.
More info from: http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp


There are different definitions of "open" and "closed", but it's a bit like that difference
between "free beer" and "free speech", that the open Source movement point out. Just
because you can download pretty shiny things for a format, doesn't mean that you will
always be free to use it, with no strings (financial or political) attached.

omnicorp

OK, is it legal?