Internet radio Day 4: Technical set-up

We wanted to find out how easy it would be to set up an Internet radio station, partly so we could write about it on our site, and partly so we could set one up ourselves.

We were looking for some simple software that would let your average computer user play music to other people over the Internet, without any expensive kit. There's a lot of software out there, but a lot of it's designed for big companies who want to stream music to thousands of people and have money to spend on servers or licences. We'd love it if thousands of people were listening to our station, but we're not raising our hopes just yet! Anyway, the point of us setting up an Internet radio station is to prove that we can, and show that you don't need to be the BBC to play music. Fortunately, we found some software that fitted our needs.

Rich: "I had the job of looking at Internet radio and streaming from a technical perspective. Shoutcast (external link) looked like a simple way to set up an Internet radio station. We set this software up and managed to broadcast some MP3s from one computer to a listener on another machine. Success!"

So we've got the basics of a radio station up and running, which is a relief. If we hadn't been able to manage that, it would have shot holes right through our story.